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An update from Mami Mizutori, UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction — 13 July 2020

In the newsletter circulated by United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction Mami Mizutori writes about the lessons brought about by the COVID crisis: with good governance being at the heart of disaster resilience and the need for better recovery strategies that are climate-conscious and environmentally sustainable.

I have been thinking, writing, and talking a lot about good governance recently and how its absence can drive disaster risk.

COVID-19 has driven home the understanding that without good disaster risk governance it is extremely difficult to manage any other underlying drivers of disaster risk. The most glaring example of this is the continued failure to make progress on tackling the climate emergency, notably the continuing rise in greenhouse gas emissions as we ignore the catastrophe in waiting if we stay on the current path towards 3˚C or more in global warming. I was glad to have the opportunity to announce on the first day of the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) in my keynote remarks for the ‘Virtual Side Event on Water-related DRR under the COVID-19 Pandemic’ that the focus of this year’s International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction on October 13 will be on disaster risk governance. This is in the context of promoting target E of the Sendai Framework which seeks a substantial increase in the number of national and local disaster risk reduction strategies by 2020.

Failure to act on the science and warnings about the threat of a pandemic were at the heart of the inertia to prepare for COVID-19 in many countries despite the inclusion — at the insistence of UN member States — of biological hazards and risks (including pandemics) in the Sendai Framework five years ago.

Since then only a few national disaster risk reduction strategies have taken pandemics into account, a point I made again during my participation earlier this month in The Economist magazine’s podcast The World Ahead.

You can be rest assured that our Regional Offices are working hard to redress this and to support governments to put in place DRR strategies which recognise the multi-hazard and systemic nature of disaster risk.

 RESPONSE, RECOVERY AND PREVENTION

Speaking at another event hosted by the HLPF focused on sustaining efforts to switch to sustainable energy, I made the point that there is no doubt that fossil fuels are a major contributor to the alarming levels of increasingly systemic disaster risk across the world.

The five years since the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction was adopted have been the hottest on record, and the number of extreme weather events has almost doubled over the last twenty years.

Many countries are now challenged with responding to extreme weather events such as cyclones, drought and storms while struggling to contain COVID-19. A key guiding principle of the Sendai Framework is to ensure that all new investments are risk-informed to avoid the creation of new disaster risk.

This is especially important for energy sector infrastructure which in turn supports other critical infrastructure on which societies depend.

We need to recover better from the COVID-19 pandemic, and that requires political commitment and ambition to fight climate change, and a wholesale switch to sustainable energy.

We look to the G20 nations, responsible for almost 80% of greenhouse gas emissions, to lead by example.

 LEARNING AND GUIDANCE 

Work is now underway in UNDRR to pull together the initial learnings we have been able to gather on the response to the COVID-19 pandemic as it currently stands and make it readily accessible in a user-friendly format. We know that the pandemic is far from over but the better we know what has worked well and what hasn’t thus far will help us in tackling the next phases, reducing its impact and recovering faster and better.

In the meantime, you can catch up here on the informative series of webinars that we have been running with partners since the onset of the pandemic.

PARTNERING AND SHARING 

Mexico is one of the countries hardest hit by COVID-19. Over 30,000 people have lost their lives and there are over 270,000 confirmed cases, in the country which is in a region which has now become the epicentre of the pandemic. Many people are finding it hard to make a living and businesses are struggling to stay afloat as preventive measures are introduced.

UNDRR’s Regional Office for the Americas and the Caribbean has signed a “Resilience Protocol” which is a collaborative agreement with ARISE Mexico and the Confederation of National Chambers of Commerce, Services and Tourism aimed to support micro, small and medium-sized enterprises which are so important to employment.

ARISE Mexico is part of UNDRR’s worldwide Private Sector Alliance for Disaster Resilient Societies (ARISE) which recognizes the need to better integrate risk into business practices and decisions, as well as generate networks of support with different partners like Chambers of Commerce.

ADVOCACY 

UNDRR’s newly appointed Director, Ricardo Mena, delivered a statement to the HLPF under the theme “protecting the planet and building resilience” in which he highlighted the fact that less than half of UN member States have developed national and local disaster risk reduction strategies since the adoption of the Sendai Framework five years ago.

His statement concluded: “Disaster risk governance requires clear vision, plans, competence, guidance and coordination within and across sectors, and full engagement with civil society.

An important way of measuring disaster risk governance is against key targets of the Sendai Framework including reducing loss of life, reducing the numbers of people affected and reducing economic losses.

COVID-19 has been an enormous setback for the efforts of many countries in achieving these targets with serious implications for efforts to achieve the SDGs.

UNDRR urges UN Member States to put in place national and local disaster risk reduction strategies which recognise the fact that disaster risk is systemic in nature and widespread across all sectors and development processes.”

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#PreventionSavesLives

I hope that you will find this update useful and informative.
If you would like more information about UNDRR’s many activities, please do visit www.undrr.org and please — stay safe and well.

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An update from Mami Mizutori, UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction — 25 June 2020

In the newsletter circulated by United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction Mami Mizutori writes an update on the on-going efforts and initiatives by DRR Organizations and Advocates in the fight against COVID-19.

There is worldwide recognition that the fight against COVID-19 will mainly take place in our cities and towns. The denser the population, and the more informal the human settlement, the more likely it is that the virus will spread.

In my opinion piece, with the Executive Director of UN-Habitat, Maimunah Mohd Sharif, we highlight the fact that some 95% of COVID-19 cases have come from urban areas where pandemic preparedness is more urgent than ever, particularly in challenging situations where disease outbreaks could coincide with an extreme weather event.
It was a theme that I revisited in a webinar organized by our Panama Regional Office The cities of the Americas and the Caribbean facing COVID-19: Resilient Cities. A major economic contraction could plunge 28 million people in the region into poverty in one of the world’s most urbanized regions.

Later this year, the Making Cities Resilient Campaign will be succeeded by an initiative joining forces with UN-Habitat, the World Bank, UCLG, ICLEI, and other partners to shift the focus from advocacy to implementation of local DRR strategies to enhance local resilience over the next decade.

In my recent remarks to the Executive Bureau of UCLG I highlighted three focus areas:

  • First, provide advisory support for improved and risk-informed investment and development planning, climate finance, municipal finance, and climate adaptation;
  • Second, improve coordination between national and local governments and national associations of local governments for risk reduction measures,
  • And third, forge strong partnerships at the local level for more efficient implementation of policies for local resilience.

The lack of funding has been identified as the biggest challenge in building local resilience and we hope this broadened engagement will help cities to overcome this. We also want to enhance city-to-city exchanges and mentoring amongst local governments at different stages of development.

RESPONSE, RECOVERY AND PREVENTION

The International Recovery Platform (IRP) has produced a useful compendium for COVID-19 Pandemic Recovery comprising 21 tools and guidelines for Health Sector Recovery; Private Sector and Livelihood Recovery; Inclusive Recovery; and Disaster Recovery Governance.

Recovery from COVID-19 must seek to build the resilience of public and private systems and the sooner we start planning to factor in biological hazards and risks in national and local DRR strategies (Sendai Framework Target (e), the better.

The wider recovery effort will require multisectoral participation to address a range of issues that are also relevant for many other types of disaster (e.g. infrastructure, education, governance, commerce). The unprecedented nature of the current disaster requires consideration of new approaches in order to recover better.

The COVID-19 Recovery Policy Brief for decision and policymakers defines the COVID-19 recovery context and supplements existing guidance with key principles and practices to guide recovery planning.

LEARNING AND GUIDANCE


Work is continuing through our Regional Offices to ensure national strategies are aligned with the Sendai Framework on the inclusion of biological hazards and risks.

For instance, our Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific has completed a review of 22 existing national strategies to examine the level of integration of biological hazards. The Office is now moving to interviews with country Sendai Framework focal points to understand and support countries in strengthening their risk management governance.

Similar review processes are underway in all other Regional Offices.

Given the concentration of COVID-19 cases in urban settings, the Regional Office for Arab States has developed a questionnaire on cities’ role in preparing and responding to COVID-19.

PARTNERING AND SHARING

We recently disseminated the UNDRR Statement by the Stakeholder Engagement Mechanism on “Applying Lessons from COVID-19 Prevention and Risk Reduction to Build a Sustainable and Resilient World”. It calls on government leaders to:

  1. Implement a preventive approach as we build back better.
  2. Commit to protect the most vulnerable.
  3. Strengthen multilateralism based on long-term vision, democratic values, human rights, health equity, accessibility, social justice, and respect for nature.
  4. Provide messaging consistent with medical advice and ensuring that harmful misinformation is quickly countered.
  5. Encourage appropriate individual action.

The Statement reads: “Despite the disruption and suffering caused by COVID-19, we are provided with a rare opportunity to develop case studies, lessons learned and policy guidelines on the risk management of the pandemic and share them globally. It also will lead us to revisit much that underpins our modern world – from governance, investment, production, and consumption, to our relationship with nature and each other, placing risk reduction at its heart.

ADVOCACY

The UN Secretary-General has appointed Ricardo Mena as the new Director of UNDRR. Ricardo has a wealth of disaster response and DRR knowledge from his field and HQ experiences. He joined UNDRR as head of our Regional Office for the Americas and the Caribbean in 2009. Since 2017 he has been chief of branch in charge of Supporting and Monitoring the Implementation of the Sendai Framework. In his new role as my deputy, Ricardo is well-positioned to become an even stronger advocate on behalf of DRR.

Do check out our ongoing series of blog posts under DRR Voices on PreventionWeb. Dr. Rahel Steinbach highlights how gender and age are decisive factors influencing people’s ability to prevent, prepare for and recover from COVID-19 and its consequences. PhD researcher, Sapana Basnet Bista, has four recommendations for inclusive risk communication. Dr. Aaron Clark-Ginsberg writes about How DRR can help reduce elderly loneliness during the pandemic.

#PreventionSavesLives

I hope that you will find this update useful and informative.
If you would like more information about UNDRR’s many activities, please do visit www.undrr.org and please — stay safe and well.

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