Banten and Central Sulawesi are two areas where earthquakes are often followed by tsunamis. History records that the community has experienced earthquakes and tsunamis for a long time. They have been recorded in Central Sulawesi and Banten. Several of these earthquakes were of quite a large magnitude. These experiences help to produces a variety of different beliefs and knowledge about how to protect oneself from disasters. This knowledge then appears in the form of various traditional ceremonies, stories or fairy tales, or are believed to be Pamali or prohibitions. This knowledge can be used as part of a community-based disaster risk reduction strategy.

This side event follows the session on Nature-based Solutions on the morning of the 26th of May. It will look cross-thematically at the Global Platform’s themes and address how Nature-based solutions can contribute to the implementation of the Sendai Framework 2015-2030 and what is still needed at country level. It will also look at what is needed beyond the current framework.

Afghanistan is one of worst natural disaster prone countries in the world. Being a highly mountainous country located in the Himalayan Hindukush mountain region, it is affected by natural disasters such as Earthquake, Flood, Drought and Extreme weather conditions. With over 30 years of conflict, the country lacks infrastructure and capacity to tackle impacts of these natural disasters. Afghanaid leads a group of International NGOs operating in Afghanistan to form a consortium called, the Afghanistan Resilience Consortium or ARC to support Afghan communities fight natural disasters and climate change.

Between 2015 and 2019, ARC implemented a 16m GBP project on Community Based Disaster Risk Reduction (CBDRR) in 705 communities in Afghanistan. Between 2019 - 2021, ARC implemented a 10m GBP project on Ecosystem Based Disaster Risk Reduction (Eco-DRR) in 245 communities, where it used ecosystem restoration and soil-water conservation as its main methodologies. This work not only reduced disaster risk from flash floods, but also improved climate adaptation against drought in a degraded mountain ecosystem like Afghanistan. This short presentation, “Source of Hope (Climate Resilience in Afghanistan)” documents this project.

Nepal is one of the 20 most disaster-prone countries in the world. Lightning was the second most frequent with 354 incidents during 2020 and 2021 according to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA) data. These occurrences have resulted in 92 deaths and 338 injured. This presentation will explain how Asian Preparedness Partnership (APP), its national steering committee, the Nepal Preparedness Partnership (NPP), and local partners implement knowledge sharing, organize training to comprehend the risks associated with lightning, conduct lightning risk assessments, support to identify possible risk reduction measures and publish findings to promote information sharing from the community to national levels.

By 2030, 40% of the world will be living in substandard housing, and an increasing number of the global population is at risk of one or more hazards. Yet, despite repeating losses that are disproportionately concentrated in the housing sector during disasters, housing loss is often addressed after the fact. Build Change has identified three key factors for addressing resilient housing: people, money and technology. With a whole of society approach to increase the resilience of houses, we can create a virtuous cycle for a resilient future. Let’s build better now.

Session objectives

1. Review global trends in extreme events and implications for cascading risk
2. "Take stock" of progress in the implementation of Target G of the Sendai Framework and review gaps
3. Report on latest trends in MHEWS and early action design, results, and impact and share knowledge, lessons learned, and emerging examples of good practices

The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030

The Sendai Framework was adopted by 187 Member States at the Forth United (UN) World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Sendai, Japan, on March 18, 2015 “to achieve the substantial reduction of disaster risk and losses in lives, livelihoods and health and in the economic, physical, social, cultural and environmental assets of persons, businesses, communities and countries over the next 15 years”.  

The Sendai Framework puts forward seven global targets including Target G: Substantially increase the availability of and access to multi-hazard early warning systems and disaster risk information and assessments to people by 2030. 

While considerable progress has been made, for example, in terms of information and communication technology access and use, many challenges remain including reaching the “last mile”. It is estimated a third of people globally – mostly in developing countries – are still not covered by EWSs.  Integrating early warning systems into coherent multi-sector and multi-hazard risk governance and reaching all exposed and vulnerable populations in many countries remains a challenge. 

Seven years into the  implementation of  the  Framework, the  Disaster Risk Reduction community has an excellent opportunity to take stock of where we are, what we have accomplished, what we have learned, and to jointly explore how we can collectively transform our engagement  to  accelerate progress in achieving the Framework’s ambitions.  Moreover, the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, has tasked the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) to lead an effort in collaboration with other UN agencies to address the gap in early warning access and present an action plan by 27th  Conference of the Parties (COP 27) to the UNFCCC in November 2022, to achieve the goal that Early Warning Systems protecting everyone within five years . 

The mid-point of Sendai Framework implementation marks a time of increased global urgency. Disasters strike at an unprecedented rate, with the most recent decade experiencing an over three-fold increase in the frequency of disaster occurrence, compared to the 1980s. Disasters are also becoming more costly, disrupting critical services and economic activities, setting back the global economy by an average of USD 170 billion every year.   

Agenda

Panel 1: Speakers from different regions will share progress, challenges and solutions

Panel 2: Good practice examples of EWS to enable action, and remaining challenges and solutions.

Concluding session: Stocktake on progress on ensuring early warning is accessible and for Sendai Framework Mid-Term Review.

Local governments are on the ‘frontline of opportunity’ to protect lives, livelihoods and their infrastructure assets and systems. The Local Leaders Forum will showcase how municipalities are using disaster risk management to strengthen resilience across various sectors and achieve progress against the SDGs. The Forum is organized by the Making Cities Resilient 2030 (MCR2030) global partnership which aims to Leave No Municipality Behind as they scale up their climate and disaster risk reduction action. MCR2030 has more than 1,000 member cities and municipalities as well as 200 service providers offering a range of tools and supports to local governments.
 

Session objectives

1. Capture practical experiences and learnings from local governments of ‘SDGs in Action’
2. Provide policy recommendations for local governments to scale up their progress towards the SDGs
3. Guide how the Making Cities Resilient 2030 (MCR2030) global partnership can better support local governments to be more inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable

This presentation shares findings from a policy review that shows the connections between disaster risk reduction and health, in existing policies at the regional and sub-regional levels in Asia and the Pacific. It also reviews how these policies address human rights and gender equality, which are drivers of vulnerability to both disaster and health risks, at the intersection of the two arenas. While policies have increasingly interwoven health and disaster risk reduction, most miss human rights and gender issues in this interlocking policy nexus.

The Africa Multi-Hazard Early Warning and Early Action (AMHEWAS) Programme strengthens continental, regional and national capacities to collect, exchange and analyse data relevant to multi-disaster and impact-based early warning systems and cross-border disaster risk management in Africa.

Social protection has deep relevance for CCA, DRR and Disaster Response, and can be a mechanism to support people when they need it the most. However, not all social protection systems are geared to respond to covariate shocks. UNICEF has developed a tool that helps to assess the preparedness of social protection systems & incrementally strengthen them. This tool creates a unique opportunity for DRR and social protection stakeholders to collaborate on operationalizing the priority actions outlined in the Sendai Framework for DRR. This session presents the tool & an example of its application.