Towards systemic disaster risk reduction in mountains

This publication covers complex interactions between natural and socioeconomic factors in Mountain areas. This reality creates unique multi-risk areas which serve as the subject of this article. These risks can manifest locally but can also have severe impacts in distant lowland areas, thus requiring coordinated approaches across sectors and regions. Moreover, mountain risks are embedded in the specific natural, cultural, social and economic contexts of mountains, which call for local knowledge and livelihood options that can adapt to and reduce exposure to these risks.

This publication recommends the following: 

• Risk management in mountain regions should not be limited to administrative units (e.g. municipality, province) and should consider the interactions and cascading impacts between highlands and lowlands with gender-responsive approaches.
• Especially when addressing mountain risks, countries need to cooperate more extensively and effectively by sharing data, information, and scientific and indigenous knowledge, and by fostering transboundary disaster risk reduction practices.
• Measures for climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction in mountain areas should be planned, managed, and implemented by considering multiple goals.
• Institutions and governments urgently need to adopt a standardized, multihazard risk assessment approach that can explicitly account for mountain-specific vulnerabilities and resilience.
• Greater inclusion of risk perception and social aspects should be integrated in disaster risk reduction processes and policies in mountains, which allows for the development of more comprehensive measures combining scientific and local knowledge.
• People-centered, impact-based Multi-Hazard Early Warning Systems (MHEWS) and related Early Action or Anticipatory Action (AA) must be tailored to the specific conditions in mountainous regions to become effective instruments of DRR and resilience-building.