Helping millions of people become more resilient to flooding
Floating gardens can protect livelihoods in a flood in Nepal.
Photo credit: Practical Action
Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance
We cannot stop the rain. We cannot stop the water. But we can help communities cope with the impacts.
The Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance (the Alliance) connects with people familiar with an affected community and builds an understanding of how the risks everyone is facing interrelate. The question then isn’t always how we stop the next flood, but how a rice farmer might find a secondary source of income should the river break its banks.
It is a multi-sector cooperation, launched in 2013 and funded by the Z Zurich Foundation, which focuses on finding practical ways to help communities in developed and developing countries strengthen their resilience to flood risk.
By using Zurich’s risk expertise as a global insurer, the Alliance helps customers and communities to reduce the devastating impacts of floods, even before a flood hits – we call this flood resilience. Floods affect more people globally than any other type of natural hazard and cause some of the largest economic, social and humanitarian losses. USD 1 invested in prevention saves, on average, USD 5 in future losses.
Learn more on Zurich’s website and visit the Alliance’s Flood Resilience Portal for more resources.
This program was the recipient of the 2014 UN Lighthouse Award and also earned the Outstanding Achievement Award from the 2019 National Hurricane Conference in the U.S. for its work to develop and implement its Post Event Review Capability approach. The program also received the National Civil Protection Award by the President of Mexico in September 2019.
Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance members:
Publications
Towards transformative action: The unfulfilled promise of resilient recovery
Lessons Through the Years
An Alliance Team visits a section of a river in Chiapas, Mexico, upstream from the communities with whom the Alliance is working.