Workshop on Urban Risk Reduction and Making Cities Resilient: Towards the development and implementation of local disaster risk reduction strategy

Background and Introduction

Over the past 20 years disasters have affected 4.4 billion people, caused USD 2 trillion of damage and killed 1.3 million people. Disasters affected people living in developing countries and the most vulnerable communities within those countries. Over 95 percent of people killed by disasters are from developing countries.

Current and future challenges of mainstreaming Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) and Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) in development planning demand new approaches, mechanisms, sets of skills and competencies that need to be identified and strengthened in order to form the basis of increasing public demand and political commitment to local actions and budget allocations. Lack of appropriate knowledge on the subject, lack of government commitment and the absence of mainstreaming in current organizational and government strategy are key existing challenges.

Urban risk is continually increasing. It has been estimated that, more than 50 per cent of the world's population is living in urban areas. Urbanization is taking place at an unprecedented rate. In the next 20 years, the world’s population is predicted to increase by an additional two billion. By 2030 more than 60% of the world’s population is expected to live in cities, with record concentrations in large urban conglomerations and megacities in the developing world.  Vulnerability of cities to disasters is on the rise especially as poor people settle in high-risk urban areas. Unfortunately, planning and development of cities has given little consideration to the consequences of hazards such as earthquakes, hydro-meteorological risks and others.  The implication of this reality is the need for countries to focus their collective energies to create a safer world for urban dwellers and develop a series of innovative approaches to meet this challenge. 

In this regard, building resilience and adapting to climate change is crucial for cities. Efforts to build resilience in cities can benefit from integrating disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation with existing efforts in disaster risk management, sustainable development and other similar planning processes.

This capacity building workshop, while promoting the importance of effective climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction, aims to:

1. Increase political commitment and social demand for disaster resilient development, adapted for climate change, aiming for sustainable development.
2. Increase engagement of local government actors in the field of local development and planning with disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation agenda as well as to enhance city planners and decision makers’ ability and commitment to promote disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation through relevant systems, policies, and processes
3. Learn about the Making Cities Resilient Global Campaign and how its tools, materials and approaches may be used to build local resilience to disasters.
4. Provide an opportunity for local experts and officials to enhance capacities with a focus on DRR action plan development and implementation based on the Making Cities Resilient Campaign 10 Essentials for making cities resilient
5. Strengthen the linkage between national-local disaster risk reduction planning and implementation
6. Serve as a platform to share good practices and exchange in-depth learning among participants

Expected Outcomes:

• Trained cadres of national and local government officials, equiped with knowledge and tools in making cities resilient with focus on the development and implementation of local DRR strategies and action plans in alignment with the national DRR strategies and Sendai Framework