It's not easy; the current local community really is that climate change and associated disasters are becoming more intense, unpredictable, frequent and costly impacting on rural and urban areas. How can we help communities? Many rural communities, particularly in low income countries and their local governments, residents and small to medium business enterprises (SMEs), find in the context of climate change adaptation that shifting towards Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) difficult. Local governments in rural areas particularly in developing countries and SMEs are often exposed and cannot better protect and prepare themselves. However, there are many resilient rural communities, farmers, businesses and good tools and examples where more public-private sector partnerships can help local government and business shift to DRR. This paper/presentation will review 3 case studies, based on research in this area at CESDI – Griffith University's' Centre for Sustainable Development for Indonesia with its main office in Brisbane, Australia.