ALEXANDRIA, Va. (March 15, 2023) – The Climate Risk Informed Decision Analysis (CRIDA) methodology has been translated into French and Arabic, increasing global acceptance of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) climate change adaptation tool.
The USACE Institute for Water Resources (IWR) developed CRIDA in 2018 through it’s International Center for Integrated Water Resources Management (ICIWaRM) to help United Nation leaders plan for an uncertain future, mainly as it relates to climate change and water. After being presented and adopted by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), CRIDA was then translated from English into Spanish in 2019.
With French and Arabic translations having occurred this year, USACE’s Institute for Water Resources (IWR) International Program Manager, Guillermo Mendoza says these upcoming translations move the tool closer to global adaptation. “Every nation is concerned about climate change, but mitigation levels, capabilities and approaches vary from country to country. By working from the same methodology, the global community benefits from a shared wealth of knowledge, while also moving in the same direction.”
Mendoza says that even though nations using the tool have unique cultural views on water management, the priorities that are native to this tool are universally beneficial. “CRIDA embraces public participation, a bottom-up approach to identify water security hazards and is sensitive to indigenous and gender-related water vulnerabilities. These are all areas of global concern and should be factored in when exploring the feasibility of climate change mitigation projects,” Mendoza said.
The French translation has been published to the UNESCO website, with the Arabic translation to be posted soon. Translation of the methodology to Portuguese and possibly other languages is in the works.
In addition to ICIWaRM and its parent entity, the USACE Institute for Water Resources, the primary authors of the CRIDA handbook were from the Alliance for Global Water Adaptation (AGWA) and Climate Adaptation area of Deltares (Delft, The Netherlands) and UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Hydrological Programme. Much of the methodology was developed in collaboration with the Hydrosystems Group of the University of Massachusetts and the Global Water Practice of the World Bank.
Next, a CRIDA case study will be featured at UNESCO’s upcoming International Conference on Climate Risk, Vulnerability and Resilience Building on 19-21 April 2023 in Paris.