The Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation Budget Tagging Guide (DCBT) provides direction to help government officials design a coordinated budget tagging initiative that addresses both disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA).
Governments often approach disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA) separately despite the significant overlap between the two issues. This leads to inefficiencies in resource utilisation. To improve this, it is essential to quantify and track public expenses on DRR and CCA in an integrated manner. DRR and CCA budget tagging focuses on integrating these issues into the annual budget and decision-making processes by quantifying the amount allocated to these priorities and enabling the tracking of expenses over time. The guide includes a reference table of DRR and CCA expenses to help countries consistently identify these expenses, which can be adapted to suit national circumstances.
The guide proposes using a slightly elaborated version of the OECD DAC approach (DAC+) as a standard international approach for DRR and CCA budget tagging, with flexibility for country-specific adjustments. It discusses the key roles and responsibilities of different institutions involved in DCBT, such as finance, planning, environment, disaster management, and cross-cutting agencies, a clarification of the types of risks and actions that DCBT covers, the potential benefits of taking a joint approach to DRR and CCA, and the linkages with international initiatives and frameworks.
The guide relates to a report published earlier this year, “Tracking the money for climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction,” which provided an overview of the latest international trends in tagging budgets and tracking public expenditure for climate and disaster resilience.
This paper examined current practices, processes and approaches in tracking DRR and CCA in public expenditures across Africa, Asia-Pacific, Europe and Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. it is noteworthy that the only reference to good practice in the UK regarding CCA/DRR was that the national risk register factored in climate change projections and impacts. Since the publication of this report, the UK Government has released the revised national risk register, however, this no longer includes chronic risks such as climate change.