From risk to resilience: Pathways for sustainable development

Mami Mizutori, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction, wrote this global policy perspective on the importance of DRR as a tool to build and safeguard development, wellbeing and prosperity in an increasingly interconnected and complex risk landscape. This viewpoint explores the current and serious state of play in disaster risk, while also addressing the resilience dividends of risk reduction investments. Mizutori writes that practitioners must shift their mind-sets and look at the opportunities that resilience building affords stakeholders. Resilience actions are already outlined in the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, which unifies other key frameworks, including the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Agreement. Several stakeholders, from governments at all levels to the private sector and civil society, are taking action, and resilience will be centre stage at several platforms in 2019.