Using Community Mobilization and Science to Build Climate Resilience

Onno Ruhl is the first General Manager of the Aga Khan Agency for Habitat (AKAH), created in 2016 to address the increasing threat posed by natural disasters and climate change. Previously, he held positions in the World Bank, including as country director for Nigeria, followed by India. At AKAH, Ruhl leads work to ensure that communities are as safe as possible from natural disasters, that residents who live in high-risk areas are able to cope in terms of preparedness and response, and that they have access to social and financial services that lead to greater opportunity and a better quality of life.

Aga Khan Foundation Canada sat down with Ruhl during a visit to Canada at the end of last year to learn more. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Tell us about the work of AKAH. How did the agency come about?

Onno Ruhl (O.R.): AKAH is a new agency, but it isn’t new in the sense that it’s actually built on the legacy of a number of organizations that existed in the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN). His Highness the Aga Khan realized that the intensity, in terms of frequency and severity, of natural disasters all over the world was getting much worse. From that perspective, the solutions that worked to keep a community safe in the last 20 years were unlikely to be enough to keep the community safe 20 years, let alone 50 years, going forward.

His Highness said the work should no longer be about understanding the habitat in terms of “what is,” but in terms of “what ought to be.” The way we've formulated that in our strategy is to move our work from planning for safety to planning for opportunity, even in the face of increasing risk.

What role do communities play in “planning for opportunity”?

Now, the combination of the survey and geology skills that we have, and the ability to work with the GIS [Geographic Information System] databases, is the same skill set that one would need to use for planning. So the logic is to build on these skills to work with these communities to plan.

But planning has no value if you just start planning a community without engagement. The community will either ignore you or they might turn hostile, because who are we to make a plan for the community? So it requires two important aspects of engagement. First with the community itself, and then with the government responsible for the particular geography.

Why is this an important part of the world to be working on issues of climate and habitat?

O.R.: It is well known that there are two ice caps that are melting in the world: the North and the South Pole. What not so many people realize is the third largest concentration of ice in the world, sometimes referred to as the "Third Pole," is the Himalayan mountain range. It's a very different geography. There are no polar bears there. There are people living there, and they are as threatened as the polar bears. And when you go downstream, that "Third Pole" is actually the watershed that feeds one-and-a-half billion people in Asia, stretching all the way from Afghanistan to Vietnam, and into China, Central Asia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh. It's one of the most important frontlines of climate change adaptation.

People love to talk about climate change mitigation. But people often forget 200 million people are already at risk in their habitat because of climate change that has already happened. You can't just move 200 million people, there's no way that would work. We have to work with these people to adapt to where they are.

The second reason we work there is because these are the areas where the AKDN historically has engaged. We are rooted in these communities in a way that allows us to do things that, I think I can say with some confidence, other development networks wouldn't be able to do.