under these criteria local communities are recognized as the front line in the search for solutions to reduce their disaster vulnerability and increase their resilience gaillard accordingly gaillard argues that an approach that considers the community entails working both to strengthen individuals means of subsistence and also improve their capacities to cope better with disaster situations both disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation use geographic areas or population groups as their units of intervention in contrast to work at the individual or household level which generally is applied in intervention specific to social protection unlike disaster risk reduction which seeks to minimize the effect of extreme phenomena the climate change adaptation approach develops intervention tools to deal with immediate upheavals floods droughts epidemics wars civil violence and ethnic or other types of persecution and gradual situations of short or longterm tension such as increases in temperature or rainfall that cause soil degradation demographic pressures or temporary resource shortages stemming from a change in normal weather conditions chambers and conway