Read this section to learn more about the topic of COVID-19 lessons to ensure social and economic recovery for all. 

Where do we stand

Despite strong efforts to strengthen disaster risk governance systems over the years, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that significant challenges remain. These include: 

• Insufficient knowledge and integration mechanisms of the health and other sectors as part of the scope of disaster risk management  
• Lack of understanding of risk complexity and the effects of cascading socio-economic impacts on vulnerable populations 
• Absence of investment in prevention and preparedness actions as part of recovery efforts, notably those that would address social and economic drivers of inequality 

At the same time, there are opportunities. 

• Despite insufficient past coordination between the health and other sectors, there has been a recent increase in the establishment of policy frameworks and recognition to increase coordination between the heath and other sectors in response to COVID-19, particularly disaster managers that should be taken advantage of. 
• Recognition of the need for multi-hazard risk management for effective risk governance and evidence-based recovery.
• Recognition of the impact of disasters on the more vulnerable and of the need to adopt a whole of society and inclusive approach to disaster risk reduction and recovery from COVID-19.

Session guiding questions

• Considering the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on different co-existing groups, sectors and systems, how can governments and stakeholders better identify and manage current and emerging systemic risks, including the climate crisis? 
• How can we address identified challenges and accelerate progress in managing the “new” and multiple types of hazards and disaster risks included in the Sendai Framework for DRR1?  
• What are the key elements identified from the pandemic experience that can help us strengthen disaster risk governance and build stronger and more forward-looking, innovative and transformative systems for managing all types of hazards and risks? 
• How can governments and stakeholders plan using the information on current and emerging systemic risks, including the climate crisis to better manage risks in the future? 

Read this section to learn more about Sendai Framework implementation, its progress and challenges, ensuring you come prepared to the session. 

Where do we stand  

The first seven years of Sendai Framework Implementation have seen increased efforts of countries and communities to reduce risk and protect hard-earned development gains. With 153 countries now reporting on at least one of seven Sendai Targets, new trends are emerging. Global disaster-related mortality is on a downward trajectory and has declined by 40% compared to the 2000s, bringing us closer to reaching Sendai Target A. In the meantime, there has been a 1.5-fold increase in the number of countries with national and/or local DRR strategies, reaching 120 in 2020 (Target E).  

Despite this progress, disaster risk is proliferating, pointing to an urgent need to significantly accelerate action to implement the Sendai Framework. At no other point in history has the world faced such an array of familiar and unfamiliar risks, interacting in a hyperconnected world and a precipitously changing landscape. Climate change is the defining crisis of our time and is happening quicker than anticipated. The ripple effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have shown that disasters are not confined to one sector, one location or one community and can quickly escalate into global crises. 

To be effective, global, national and local DRR efforts must be grounded in a comprehensive understanding of the far-reaching impacts of disasters, threats, crises and climate change. Achievement of the Sendai Framework requires greater focus on managing disaster risk in all its dimensions (hazards, exposure and vulnerability) with a particular focus on addressing the drivers of risk (including poverty, inequality, structural discrimination, and social norms) alongside building the enabling environment for more inclusive decision making. Furthermore, managing risk in all its dimensions is also a critical means of achieving the ambitious goals and policy commitments of Agenda 2030 and the Paris Agreement.    

Session guiding questions  

Where do we stand on Sendai Framework implementation?  

• Are we on track to reach the expected outcomes, goals and targets by 2030? 
• What are key good practices, experience and learning at regional level?  
• What are we learning from recent global DRR policy stocktaking processes? 

How do we strengthen our understanding of risk?  

• How to strengthen the evidence base for DRR and incorporate risk analysis at all levels of policy, programming and action? 

How do we accelerate progress?  

• How to promote an effective enabling environment for comprehensive disaster risk management and achieving the Sendai Framework?  
• What is needed to hardwire disaster and climate risk into humanitarian and development policy and action in order to catalyse synergies across the post-2015 commitments? 

How do we work together?  

• How to strengthen international cooperation for disaster risk reduction that is multi-hazard, multi-disciplinary, multi-sector, and multi-stakeholder? 
• Way forward: what are the foremost priorities for action towards 2030? 

Join the session to learn more about the latest practices in multi-hazard and multi-sector risk assessments, established to meet the challenges emerging from increasingly interconnected and systemic risks. 

Where do we stand? 

A survey by the OECD highlighted that while many countries had strategies to manage risks in some critical infrastructure sectors, few map interdependencies across sectors and only half have the capacity to identify new, unforeseen and complex crises (OECD, 2018).  The COVID-19 pandemic and climate crisis further underscore the need to address these shortcomings. The increasing frequency and scale of shocks calls for application of better risk analytics to guide and underpin national and sectoral plans, investments, and resilience building. 

The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction stipulates that the global community must come to terms with a new understanding of the dynamic nature of systemic risks. New structures are needed to govern risk in complex, adaptive systems and new tools for risk-informed decision making are required. Only with such approaches can human societies flourish amid uncertainty. Coming to terms with the limitations of a hazard-by-hazard view of risk management, the Sendai Framework encourages dialogue and action to refine, extend and enhance our ability to understand and manage systemic risks.  

Member States, the UN system, and partners need to be better equipped to undertake multi-hazard and multi-sectoral risk assessments. More cross-sectoral collaboration is needed in order to move beyond linear risk analysis. Interconnected and systemic risk requires informed multi-stakeholder action.

Session guiding questions 

• How can we transition from hazard-by-hazard risk assessments towards multi-hazard and multi-sectoral risk assessments? 
• What lessons, good practices and use-cases can be distilled from emerging practices, and what approaches can be pointed to that have been effective in reducing aggregate risk and barriers across sectors? 
• What does this transition to assessing multi-hazard, multi-sectoral and inter-connected risk mean for communities of practice in terms of building the state-of-the-art, ensuring the fitness of analytic tools and approaches, improving risk data and information ecosystems, and broader risk governance across institutions at multiple levels? 

Join this session to learn more about decision-making and investments related to resilient infrastructure. 

Where do we stand? 

Key challenges in integrating resilience in infrastructure planning and management include: 

• Lack of agreed upon terminology and resilience metrics 
• Insufficient investment in prevention and resilience 
• Regulatory frameworks do not take full account of risks and vulnerability and do not include resilience measures 

At the same time, there are opportunities which could put us on the path to sustainability and resilience. These include: 

• Establishing overarching benchmarks for resilient infrastructure 
• Include infrastructure resilience in national DRR strategies and develop/update national and local regulations around infrastructure so that resilience measures are taken into consideration 
• Promote a ‘Think Resilience’ approach to all infrastructure investments, creating an enabling policy and investment environment for the integration of resilience into infrastructure development 
• Urge international financial institutions and development banks, as well as national financial institutions, to align their strategies, operations and activities with the 2030 initiatives. 

Session guiding questions 

• What do we understand by “resilient” infrastructure and what should some basic metrics of resilience look like? 
• What are some good examples of national DRR strategies incorporating infrastructure resilience and in what ways? 
• What tools and collaborations would best address the critical infrastructure damage and basic service disruption data gap in relation to SF Target D? 
• What regulatory and policy changes would bring the most dividends to communities and would ensure the resilience of infrastructure? 
• What kind of incentives could governments provide to private sectors to invest in resilience of infrastructure?  
• What are some of the bottlenecks for increasing investment in resilient infrastructure? 
• What measures and tools should we use to ensure that those investments are risk informed? 

Read this section to learn more about the potential of cross border cooperation for strengthened DRR capacity and action to ensure you come prepared to the session. 

Where do we stand? 

Challenges 

A mere 0.5% of the total amount of official development assistance between 2010 and 2019 was allocated to DRR. Moreover, only $5.5 billion was aimed at ex-ante risk reduction measures, compared to $119.8 billion spent on post-disaster response and recovery. Very few national development cooperation policies include disaster risk reduction. International development cooperation must become more risk-informed, given the increasingly complex risk landscape and the scope of resources and expertise required. A much broader range of experts and stakeholders must be engaged in cross-border collaboration for DRR. 

Opportunities 

Development cooperation can be a catalyst for disaster risk-informed domestic public and private investment as well as foreign direct investment. Yet traditional development partners cannot meet the scale of investment needed for DRR alone. COVID-19 recovery packages as well as C0P 26 commitments to increase financing for climate change adaptation provide opportunities to increase cross border collaboration for DRR. Moreover, the wealth of knowledge and expertise within civil society organizations, and academic, research and scientific institutions, in both developed and developing countries can be leveraged to strengthen cross-border cooperation and capacity support for DRR. 

Cross-border cooperation between such organizations and actors: 

• supports the exchange of risk data and science and technology for disaster risk reduction 
• allows for more systemic and regular sharing of expertise, best practices and lessons learnt 
• promotes coherence and synergies between their work 
• supports cost-sharing for a more effective use of both financial and human resources more efficiently. 

Session guiding questions 

• How can DRR be better integrated into international development cooperation across all sectors? 
• What kind of approaches to cross-border disaster risk governance and cooperation have been most effective, including across shared ecosystems, water resources, and infrastructure assets?  
• What opportunities exist to better integrate academic, research, and science and technology institutions into cross-border cooperation for risk reduction? What types of policies, mechanisms and networks are needed? 
• To what extent are South-South and triangular cooperation being sufficiently leveraged as means of implementation? 

Read this section to learn more about the topic of current data challenges and identify possible solutions. 

Where do we stand 

Urgent efforts to scale-up the collection, analysis and reporting of disaster-related statistics are key to achieve the Sendai Framework, and hence SDG targets, by 2030. 

The 7 targets and 38 indicators of the Sendai Framework lay out an ambitious agenda to prevent new and reduce existing disaster risk. However, achieving these goals is not the only challenge. Monitoring progress towards the Sendai Framework Targets represents an arduous yet crucial task for national statistical systems. While the past seven years have seen a substantial increase in reporting rates – a total of 153 countries are now reporting across different Sendai targets – significant data gaps prevail.   

The under-representation of disaster impact – especially that of extensive disasters – and issues of data generation, incomplete records, lack of disaggregation and granularity, etc. are hampering our understanding of the full impact of disasters across time, geographies and sectors.  

Effective disaster risk reduction policy and action requires functioning disaster loss and risk information systems that can provide reliable and timely data, statistics and analysis. This is a key enabling condition for countries to develop and implement DRR strategies and investment that are tailored to specific risk contexts, vulnerabilities, impacts and needs. 

Therefore, coordinated global, national and local efforts to strengthen data generation and statistical capacities for disaster impact and risk analysis must be scaled-up. This would allow for a sound evidence base to be used in DRR and climate change decision making, policy, planning and investment. It will also contribute to greater coherence and synergies from holistic information management across UN instruments, including the 2030 Agenda, the Paris Agreement and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. 

Key guiding questions are: 

• How can we meet the growing demands for disaster-related statistics, while coping with the resulting complexity? 
• How can global, regional, national and local-level actions be scaled up to produce and use more timely, accurate, disaggregated and granular DRR data? 
• How can we ensure accessibility of DRR data?  
• How can we strengthen evidence-informed and data-backed decision making for DRR and climate change policy and action, including through coordination among stakeholders? 
• How can we scale up the data revolution for DRR and climate action, including through new technologies and innovations?

What do you need to know about disaster displacement and the links between climate change, disaster risk reduction, data and governance in advance of this session? 

Where do we stand? 

The exposure and vulnerability of persons to disaster displacement is multicausal and driven by political, social and economic factors, among others, and exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. To avoid the negative impacts of disaster displacement, risk governance must be strengthened. It needs to be evidence-based and place at-risk or affected communities at the center of action; this includes displaced people and communities in their areas of return, refuge or alternative settlement. It needs to draw on Human Rights standards, and existing guidance such as the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and Durable Solutions Frameworks.  

Effective and comprehensive responses to the risks of disaster displacement are required at all levels, but challenges include: 

• Weak or insufficient governance; 
• Gaps in data and evidence and barriers to its effective use to inform governance; 
• Coordination challenges to the integrated implementation of DRR with other policy areas such as human rights, humanitarian action, sustainable development, climate action and human mobility; 
• Insufficient capacity at all levels to address disaster displacement coherently. 

However, there are tools and existing effective practices to take guidance and learn from, which include: 

• The Words into Action Guidelines, Checklist and eLearning; 
• International standards and guidance on displacement of relevance for human mobility and DRR; 
• Experiences and learnings from the local, national and regional levels where specific stakeholders’ commitments will be presented at this event. 

Session guiding questions 

• In what ways can data strengthen governance, and what are the key challenges? 
• Why is it important to ensure coherence between DRR and other policy areas? 
• How can the Words into Action Guidelines, Checklist and eLearning support the inclusion of disaster displacement into DRR strategies and policies? 
• How can we ensure meaningful and inclusive participation of those affected by, or at risk of displacement, in data collection and governance? 

Read this section to learn more about the topic of inclusive and resilient recovery in urban contexts, ensuring you come prepared to the session. 

Where do we stand? 

Urban areas face increasingly complex risks. Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent, threatening cities and citizens. At the same time, many local governments continue to operate under severe resource constraints while dealing with consecutive and compound disasters. Vulnerable groups, such as women and girls, people with disabilities, migrants, and informal workers, are particularly affected. 
However, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 highlights the opportunity of enhancing the capacity of cities to rebound from hazards and disasters. National and local authorities around the world are increasingly adopting a partnership approach to risk resilience. Disaster risk management and climate change adaptation is increasingly being incorporated into municipal policies. In many cases, this is translating into increased investment in disaster risk reduction across sectors and at different levels. 

Session guiding questions 

• What steps are cities taking to address climate emergency and how can civil society and academia strengthen their partnership with local governments? 
• What are the best practices in urban settings for a socially inclusive recovery from the ongoing COVID-19 crisis? 
• How can the Making Cities Resilient 2030 initiative (MCR2030) scale up its practical support to local governments to prevent and reduce disaster risk? 
• What are the main learnings and recommendations on recovery in urban contexts for the years to come?