Disaster Risk Governance – Target E

 15:00h-16:15h CET
 25 November 2021
 EFDRR Virtual Platform
 Virtual

Governance of risk plays a central role in the management of disaster risk. In an unprecedented context of sanitary and climate crises, marked by dramatic impacts to our societies and our future climate (see the 2021 IPCC report), engaging an all-of-government and all-of-society approach in preventing, mitigating, responding and recovering to disasters in a complex risk landscape has never been so critical. The overall imperative, addressed by this working session, will be to strengthen disaster risk governance for long-term resilience goals with a key focus on the systemic and emerging risk.  

The complex risk context to which Europe and Central Asia is confronted has seen numerous developments to reinforce risk governance championed across the region. As the EFDRR Roadmap underscores, regional and national (inter-) governmental bodies should have the convening power or legislation to promote multi-stakeholder engagement. At a local level, cities drive urban resilience through unique and at times innovative governance structures, reflected in the work of cities in and beyond the Making Cities Resilient 2030 Initiative.  

These experiences underscore opportunities and challenges for collaborative, cross-border, and all-of-society fit-for-purpose systems of governance and decision-making processes required for current and uncertain future risk scenarios. Recognizing this, EFDRR members are committed to explore innovative and risk-informed all-of-society, cross-border and collaborative approaches to resilience building and sustainable development. 

However, actors driving the risk reduction and resilience agendas across various levels of governance face recurrent challenges in ensuring robust engagement of non-traditional stakeholders reflective of the comprehensive and cross-cutting nature of DRR. A siloed approach to public, private, academic, and civil society decision-making systems limit collaboration with a fragmented understanding of terminology, concepts, approaches, databases, assessments, standards, and ultimately less effective utilization of resources and communication of the benefits of all-of-society approaches.  

At a supranational level, collaborative and advisory initiatives are playing an increasingly important role in driving the risk reduction and resilience agendas in their respective regional space, including through convening and coordinating influence and contributions of knowledge and expertise to governance and decision-making.

Speakers

Moderator

Ms. Patricia Gaspar
Secretary of State for Home-Affairs - Portugal

Panelists

Mr. Haki Çako
Director General, National Civil Protection Agency, Albania

Dr. Carina Fearnley
 Associate Professor, Warning Research Centre, University College London, United Kingdom

Mr. Ronald Jackson
Head Disaster Risk Reduction & Recovery for Building Resilience, UNDP

Ms. Kathryn Oldham
Chief Resilience Officer, Greater Manchester, United Kingdom

Dr. Vasko Popovski
Disaster Risk Reduction Expert consultant, UNDP

Mr. Dzhergalbek Ukashev
Director, Center for Emergency Situations and Disaster Risk Reduction, Central Asia