Context: 

Recently, the Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction (GAR) was released by the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR).

About Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR)

• It is the concept and practice of reducing disaster risks through systematic efforts to analyse and reduce the causal factors of disasters. 
• DRR is aimed at preventing the creation of disaster risk, the reduction of existing risk and the strengthening of economic, social, health and environmental resilience.
• Examples of DRR: Reducing exposure to hazards, lessening vulnerability of people and property, wise management of land and the environment, and improving preparedness and early warning for adverse events.

Highlight of Report

• Weak Support: Despite pledges to increase resilience, combat climate change, and forge paths towards sustainable development, present societal, political, and economic decisions are having the opposite effect. 
  • This jeopardizes not only the achievement of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030, but also hinders progress towards the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
• World at risk: Human choices and demographic trends increase the likelihood that disaster can spread and impact all continents rapidly. 
  • Exposure to underlying risk factors, such as high levels of air pollution, unsafe housing or limited access to health services, were found to significantly affect fatality rates.
• Systemic Risk: The systemic impacts of disaster derailes  SDG achievements across almost all indicators. 
  • Example: the economic and social costs of the pandemic in 2020, measured in lifeyears lost, far outweighed the average annual costs of other disasters, and the summed cost of all epidemics from 2000 to 2019.
• Disaster loss and poverty: Poverty is a cause and a consequence of disaster risk, particularly extensive risk. 
  • The frequent disasters add to the poverty burden of the world. 
  • An additional 37.6 million people are estimated to be living in conditions of extreme poverty due to the impacts of climate change and disasters by 2030.
  • According to the UN, a “worst case” scenario of climate change and disasters will push an additional 100.7 million into poverty by 2030.
• Low Insurance Cover: Annual direct economic loss from disasters has more than doubled over the past three decades. It increased to over $170 billion in the 2010s from an average of around $70 billion in the 1990s.
  • Just 40 per cent of all disaster-related losses were insured between 1980 and 2018.
• Increasing Tendency: According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), global warming reaching 1.5 degrees Celsius in the near-term will cause unavoidable increases in multiple climate hazards and present multiple risks to ecosystems and humans.
• Unequal Impact on Vulnerables: Although the pandemic has affected all countries and regions, vaccine inequity has seen lower-income countries left behind. 
  • The cascading health and economic impacts have been worse for poorer and marginalized communities, women exposed to violence and small economies dependent on tourism.
  • Myopic thinking: Despite warnings and data that a COVID-19 pandemic was overdue, preparedness was inadequate and governance systems across the world struggled to pivot to a new reality.

Recommendation from the Report:

• Shifting perception about risk: Hazards highlights the need to recognize that planetary and human systems are interdependent, and that risk knowledge systems need to become more flexible and open to different world-views, including indigenous and traditional perspectives.
• Reconfigure governance to work across silos and design in consultation with affected people.
  • This requires increased efforts to create common terminologies and provide open access data across disciplines to create shared knowledge, encourage lateral collaboration and speed up the pace of learning.
• Strict Monitoring: Governments need to ensure regulations are in place to prevent, reduce or ensure the resilience of construction in unsafe locations, such as flood-plains, areas subject to sea-level rise or areas at extremely high risk of fire or other hazards.
  • Rework the way current institutional arrangements design and account for the costs of disaster-related losses, particularly with regard to long-term risks.
• Role of Private sector has a major role to play in accelerating risk reduction action and in reducing losses from future disasters.
  • Example: Banks and financial institutions that provide property improvement loans can require specific risk reduction measures to be undertaken as a condition for a mortgage
• Innovative Financial Solutions: Rework financial systems to account for the real costs of risk, particularly long-term risks, and rework investment and insurance systems to incentivize risk reduction.
  • Ex:  Green bonds helped accelerate the finance of renewable energy, similar financial products are needed to incentivize and ease investment that is resilient to disaster risk and climate change.
  • Financial systems, including insurance, must be reworked to account for the real costs of risk, particularly long-term risks,
• Changes in Sovereign Budget: National budgets need to evolve to include risk and uncertainty components, so financial planners can become more adept at adaptive planning and are better able to pivot resources in crisis situations.
• Data for Decision Making: Basic data collection at national and local levels to inform comprehensive needs and risk assessments for the formulation of policy and plans
• Technology for Disaster Proofing: AI based modelling is probably the right approach to build scenarios for the medium, long term on these aspects. 
  • These may be linked to a city based economic model to quantify the likely cost in the event of occurrence of climate-led disaster in a megacity.
• Accelerating the implementation of Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 and aligned with the other post-2015 agendas, such as the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Paris Agreement on climate change, the New Urban Agenda and the Agenda for Humanity.

Conclusion:

• It is important to show examples of success all over the world that this is doable and with the mobilization and leadership of the most marginalized, with greater resources at local level for DRR and climate resilient sustainable livelihoods and with climate friendly policies and its strict implementation, the earth will be a more hospitable and peaceful place.

News Source: Report