What is more, Covid-19 reached communities that are already dealing with multiple shocks and stresses from other causes. Low-income communities in developing countries face poverty and also other public health crises (e.g. linked to insecure housing, unsafe water and lack of sanitation) and both the slow- and rapid-onset impacts of climate change. In response, communities self-organised to cope with Covid-19, as well as these other intersecting risks; and often with delayed or limited government assistance.

CDKN and the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD) in Dhaka, Bangladesh reached out through networks of civil society organisations and local groups to commission interviews with community pioneers at the frontlines of devising localised solutions to Covid-19.

The result is the interview series, ‘Voices from the frontline of Covid-19’ which ICCCAD and CDKN published weekly, since early June 2020 to October 2021. These stories aim to document learning from community practices, and to disseminate the learning widely, to foster more effective responses to future crises, and greater resilience.

At the end of 2021, CDKN and ICCCAD synthesised these many stories from around the world and looked at them through the prism of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and what communities have done to retain hard-won development in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis and other multiple shocks. This synthesis report is available as a digibook or as a downloadable pdf.