Policy coherence for disaster risk reduction and resilience: From evidence to implementation

Disaster risk reduction and resilience is crucial to achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Embedded across the SDGs, disaster risk reduction is an enabler of more than a dozen goals spanning food security, human health, infrastructure, and ecosystem-related targets. Enhancing policy coherence among the SDGs and across the 2030 Development Agendas requires an approach that can be adapted to the specific circumstances, context and needs of countries. The SDGs do not work in isolation- these goals are inherently linked to each other and can be mutually reinforcing or conflicting. Assessing how these goals interact, especially in each individual country context is crucial to building the institutional capacity to operationalize the policy coherence. A systems approach to understanding the integrated nature of Sustainable Development Goals can generate high value addition for policy coherence and can help us look across the goals at the possible synergies and trade-offs to prioritize policies and investments that are mutually beneficial to build disaster resilience. It can help us to see how to change policy systems more effectively to further sustainable development.

To implement systems thinking at the country level, this toolkit presents a methodology to quantify how disaster-related Sustainable Development Goals interact as a system in five pilot countries - Bangladesh, Cambodia, Maldives, Myanmar and Nepal. Using a methodology built on the systems approach, the toolkit has mapped out country-specific and quantified synergies and trade-offs, including the key entry points for disaster resilience which can be a starting point to discuss operationalization of policy coherence. As an instrument for building disaster resilience into policy making, the toolkit can support prioritization of economic and social sectors that can be the key drivers towards achievement of the SDG goals in the region.