This platform provides guides and tools based on The Blue Guide for Coastal Resilience for disaster risk reduction practitioners to learn about nature-based solutions (NbS). NbS involves harnessing the power of ecosystems, such as reefs and mangroves to reduce the impacts of climate hazards such as storms and coastal flooding. This platform also supports users to learn how to integrate NbS into disaster planning to reduce risks in coastal areas. Search by hazards or nature-based solutions to find the solution you need to take action to support vulnerable communities reduce the impacts of climate-related disasters and adapt to climate change.

After reading the last chapter in the eight stages towards enhanced coastal resilience of the Blue Guide. Revisit any of the stages as you navigate the planning, implementation, and monitoring of your community's project. As you deepen your learning, can also revisit the step-by-step guides to nature-based solutions, which you can easily find in the menu to your left.

Who is the Blue Guide to Coastal Resilience and the Nature Protects People learning platform designed for?

The Nature Protects People learning platform is primarily designed for practitioners, particularly those in the humanitarian sector supporting coastal communities. This includes technical experts and project managers who will be able to follow the various stages in this Guide, who can integrate NbS into DRR planning, implement such plans, and scale up good practices. To use this guide, expertise in ecology and prior knowledge of NbS is not necessary. However, prior knowledge of project management is required.

The guide is also useful for:

• Community members who co-design efforts towards safer and greener coastal communities with humanitarian organizations;
• Government staff who work with humanitarian organizations on efforts to reduce disaster risk; and
• Staff/volunteers of NGOs or National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies working in coastal communities and supporting risk reduction or wider resilience efforts.

For DRR practitioners, this Guide is a formidable resource to bring calls for more transformational changes to life. In the face of growing climate change impact, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) argued that the first priority must be the long-term reduction of vulnerability and exposure (IFRC 2019:23). Integrating nature-based solutions can help achieve both. 

As many examples from around the world have shown, NbS can be powerful and cost-effective means to help communities adapt while lowering hazard-related damages and losses. The challenge is to bring such solutions to scale, and to do so fast. 

Over the past three decades, DRR has been successful in reducing fatalities. The next task is to also halt and reverse the trend of globally increasing livelihood losses. This shift requires the formation of new alliances - for instance, between humanitarian and environmental organizations. It requires learning and adoption of new techniques. This is where the Blue Guide comes in. 

The Guide’s focus is global: after all, no matter where you live in the world, NbS can be implemented with great effect. Yet, local context matters - and the Guide offers a wide range of actions for the various ecosystems as well as practical case studies from many regions of the world.  

Alignment with other manuals

You may be familiar with other guidance documents on community-based programming. The Blue Guide generally aligns with and complements the IFRC Road Map to Community Resilience, the WWF Green Guide on Flood Management, and CARE’s Climate Vulnerability and Capacity Assessment manual. Where relevant, the Blue Guide shows how the step relates to those in the above manuals.