If we are serious about multi-hazard early warning systems, we need to address shortcomings in our global structures, for example with volcanoes. Volcanoes produce many different natural hazards that cross-disciplines and borders. Unlike in hydrometeorology, which has the World Meteorological Organization with clear responsibility for international coordination, there is no UN treaty level organization tasked to assist the world’s volcano observatories in running a globally coordinated system. This is a fixable problem and addressing it would provide great benefits.

The COVID-19 pandemic along with concurrent emergencies, has exposed vulnerabilities and caused disruptions to health services in even the most robust health systems. Health facilities need to maintain maximum capacity of their services and functions during and immediately after major emergencies and disasters to ensure continuity of healthcare service provision and avoid excess mortality and morbidity, particularly among vulnerable populations.To do so, safe and resilient health facilities need to institute systems, procedures and capacities that address prevention, preparedness, response and recovery. In the response to the needs that emerged during COVID-19, several new tools were rapidly developed that complemented existing tools and built on the experience and lessons from the pandemic response and other emergencies. Country and hospital experience effective strategies to ensure uninterrupted health service delivery during emergencies and new tools will be shared and discussed.

Session objectives

This session shows the international standard Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) helping nations achieve coherent warning systems, without major disruption and at minimal expense. In any complex emergency, multiple trusted authorities are always involved. Each needs to communicate particular messages about the emergency. By using CAP to communicate the key facts coherently, the different authorities avoid confusing the public.

Eliot Christian is a leader of the worldwide movement to leverage the all-hazards, all-media Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) standard. He is a pro bono consultant working with many international companies and organizations, including AccuWeather, Google, IFRC, ITU, WMO and WBU, among others. Together with Ian Ibbotson, he runs the non-profit Alert-Hub.Org CIC, providing free, open source software: CAP Editor for publishing alerts and the cloud-based Filtered Alert Hub for disseminating alerts at any scale.

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

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused social, economic, and health crises, and in particular, has severely affected people in vulnerable situations. To leave no one behind in the response to and recovery from the pandemic, faith actors and faith-based organizations (FBOs) have connected with individuals at the grassroots level.

In this presentation, Soka Gakkai International will showcase relevant experiences in Japan and share the findings of a joint research project together with other FBOs, in the hope of advancing global DRR efforts.

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.

As the population is growing and urbanization is progressing, higher numbers of people are exposed to disaster risks, especially in developing countries. Climate change is further worsening the impacts of existing risks and introducing new ones. To date, various international arenas have recommended increasing investment in DRR. The Sendai Framework for DRR, adopted by the UN member states in 2015 during the Third UN World Conference on DRR, emphasizes investment as a priority for decreasing disaster risks and losses. It is imperative that countries need to invest more in disaster risk reduction (DRR) as well as climate change adaptation (CCA) not only to minimize their impacts but also to build resilience.

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.