9th Senior Disaster Management Officials Forum (SDMOF)

Project summary:
The Asia-Pacific region is prone to various types of disasters, both natural and human-induced. Referred to as the “new normal”, disasters are becoming more complex, frequent and unpredictable.

Addressing the new normal is the highlight of the 9th SDMOF, with the proposed theme “Whole-of-Economy Approach: A Paradigm Shift to Adapt to the New Normal”. It stresses the need for an inter-economy cooperation in dealing with disasters to ensure sustainable economic growth in the Asia-Pacific region. More importantly, it promotes a holistic, comprehensive, integrated and proactive approach as a new paradigm in addressing disasters and managing risks.

An important output is a policy paper for adoption by the APEC economies. The paper shall recommend the paradigm containing strategies and approaches to collectively address the new normal.

The Forum will be attended by delegates from APEC economies, private sector, non-government organizations and the academe.

Relevance:
This proposal directly links to Rank 1: (1) Building sustainable and resilient communities; (2) Connectivity, including the implementation of the APEC Connectivity Blueprint on enhancing physical, institutional and people-to-people connectivity. It also directly links to Rank 2: (1) Sustainable Growth: Activities/ issues related to safeguarding the quality of life through sustainable growth; (2) Innovative Growth: Science and technology and ICS approaches in disaster preparedness, risk reduction, response and post-disaster recovery and cooperation in search and rescue.

These ranks are all related to ensuring resiliency and reducing disaster risks to promote sustainable development. Such holds true especially for the developing economies. It cannot be denied that developing economies are usually at risk to disasters and are frequently visited by calamities in the region. The Forum shall then serve as mechanism for the developing economies to share their best Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) practices and lessons learned out of their experiences. Furthermore, the Forum shall also provide an opportunity for the developed economies to offer DRR interventions, technologies, systems and innovations that the developing economies can implement and adopt. Thus, following the whole-of-economy approach, the Forum shall create synergy and foster connectivity among the developing and developed economies, together with the regional and local organizations, to collectively address the new normal and promote sustainable economic growth.

Objectives:
The general objective is to develop a new paradigm to collectively adapt to the new normal and further strengthen resiliency in the Asia-Pacific region. The specific objectives are as follows:

1. To provide a venue for disaster management officials in the Asia-Pacific region to share best experiences and develop new approaches in managing the new normal towards building resiliency;
2. To revisit existing DRR mechanisms of the APEC economies and discover new opportunities for further enhancing and strengthening regional and international collaboration in the field of DRR; and
3. To develop a policy paper for adoption of the APEC economies at the end of the Forum. The paper shall recommend the paradigm containing strategic policies, best practices and approaches to collectively address the new normal. It shall also put forward the need to bring DRR to the consciousness of the leaders of the APEC economies.