Applying Cost Benefit Analysis at a Community Level: A Review of Its Use for Community Based Climate and Disaster Risk Management

Cost benefit analysis (CBA) is an economic tool used to compare the benefits against the costs of a given project or activity. Its use as part of a participatory process with communities in a disaster and climate risk context has become more widespread. It is increasingly being used to provide a more robust analysis of the costs of community-based disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation: before a programme is implemented to decide on the most appro-priate package of interventions; or after a programme has been implemented to evaluate the effectiveness of activities. More recently there has been a convergence of CBA with social re-turn on investment (SROI) methodologies, as CBAs increasingly incorporate community participation and broaden their scope to account for social and environmental issues.