Climate resilience
Standing up to heavier rain.
ICVI has led a series of community-based initiatives to strengthen resilience to climate change and reduce the impacts of heavy rainfall and soil erosion.
The pressure
The rain is heavier than the ground was built for.
In rural Rwanda climate change arrives as rainfall the slopes cannot absorb. It washes away soil, and the roads built on that soil.
Heavier rainfall
Seasonal rain arrives harder and less predictably than the ground and the roads were built for.
Soil erosion
Water runs off unprotected slopes, taking the topsoil and the roadbed with it.
Damaged access
Roads and crossings are cut, and the routes households use every day stop working.
What we did
Put the route back and make it hold.
Within our local community the work took two practical forms. We repaired the roads the rain kept damaging, and we helped bridge the crossings it had cut.
Roads repaired and improved
A road that washes out every rainy season is a recurring cost for the households who depend on it. ICVI worked with the community to repair those routes and improve them, so they hold up better against the rain that keeps damaging them.
Small bridges built
Some crossings fail first and cut households off when the rain is heaviest. ICVI contributed to building small bridges there, alongside the community, so the route holds.
How the work was done
Community led. Youth driven.
These activities were carried out by the community itself, with young people at the front of them. ICVI combines community participation, environmental protection and practical local solutions against the impacts of climate change.
Our approach
Three things at once.
None of the three works on its own. Participation needs practical work to do, and practical work needs the slope protected or the repair washes out again.
Community participation
The people who use the road decide what gets repaired and do the work. That is what makes it hold once we have gone.
Environmental protection
Slowing erosion protects the catchment as well as the route across it. The same ground supplies the water.
Practical local solutions
Built from what the community has, with the materials and skills already there, so repairs can be made again without us.
Where this work sits
Climate resilience is not a separate programme. It is delivery inside Infrastructure & Environmental Conservation, one of the six standing programmes set by ICVI's statutes. That programme commits us to constructing and rehabilitating basic infrastructure and carrying out environmental conservation against the effects of climate change.
Help the next community stay connected.
Repaired roads, protected slopes and small bridges keep households connected to markets, clinics and school when the rain is heaviest.