With countries declaring drought emergencies and islands facing inundation, it can be difficult to turn away from the big picture when it comes to climate change. If we are to build a climate-resilient society, though, we must look to resilience at its origins, says one group of experts: the individual.

“Climate work is practical, common-sense, good development,” said Carrie Thompson, deputy assistant administrator at the Bureau for Economic Growth, Education, and Environment at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). “It’s prevention, and we all know that preventative medicine is the best medicine.”

The world of 2035 will be facing global and regional insecurities that could be “more dangerous than the second half of the Cold War era,” according to a 2016 report from the Atlantic Council.

 For island nations already dealing with more frequent and intense extreme weather events, climate change is an imposing burden. But many island states are responding and becoming “incubators of resilience,” as Lynae Bresser recently wrote.

It had been raining for two full days when the landslide came. Nirjala Adhikari vividly remembers the instant it hit her village in Sindhupalchok District, Nepal. “It was a very scary moment, and I couldn’t think of anything else than grabbing my mobile phone and my school certificate before I ran out of the house,” she recalled. “I secured my certificate because only this will help me establish a bright future.”

Over the past four years, I have been a member of the Resilience Academy, an initiative of the United Nations University, International Center for Climate Change and Development, and Munich Re Foundation bringing together thinkers from 29 countries to gather insight on climate change resilience and “loss and damage.” Loss and damage has many definitions, but broadly refers to the impacts of climate change that cannot be addressed via adaptation (adjusting to the effects) or mitigation (preventing them from happening at all).

As the international community meets in Marrakesh for the climate change negotiations at COP-22, one of the most delicate issues on the table is the review of what’s called the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage, or WIM.