Financing Long Term Resilience
11:45h – 13:15h CET
26 November 2021
EFDRR Virtual Platform
Virtual
Disaster risk is a systemic issue. When a disaster strikes, it often further divides societies and has unequal impacts leading to greater inequality. This was a key lesson from the 2008 financial crisis.
There are degrees of financial vulnerability to disasters, from sectors and supply chains at risk from specific hazards like flooding and earthquakes to the entire economy impacted by a pandemic, as COVID-19 as show us. Across all disaster risk, inequality is a crucial issue in addressing financing resilience. It is important therefore to lead in shift in understanding disaster resilience as a core public good to ensure that no one is left behind. There is a strong need for a new “social contract” on investing in disaster resilience setting out the responsibilities and liabilities of public and private bodies.
There has been good progress on financial disclosure of physical climate risk. However, there is a crucial difference between risk disclosure and truly incentivizing investment in resilience. Accelerated investment in disaster resilience is now urgently needed, ensuring risk is taken into account in strategic planning and public budgeting.
A major challenge is that the investment needed to ensure society is disaster resilience is enormous, and likely runs into trillions of Euros. While companies and investors are increasingly engaged in the low carbon transition, it is harder to build the business case for disaster resilience and climate adaptation. This is because many of the measures are project based, bottom up and often are investing to avoid future costs rather than to generate a return on investment.
The better integration of risk can protect the most vulnerable and reduce financial risk from regions that are especially vulnerable to disaster risk. Building disaster resilient infrastructure and SMEs is very important. We need to support a transition to net zero that is also resilient, with enough capital to achieve it. The COVID-19 pandemic has seen a return of the state and is a moment to re-think the values and frameworks for the future we want. This is fundamentally about structural reform and good governance for a green and resilient recovery.
Speakers
Moderator
Mr. Olaf Bruns
Senior Journalist
Keynote speaker
H.E. Nelson de Souza
Minister for Planning, Portugal
Panelists
Ms. Véronique Lehideux
Head of service, General Directorate for Risk Prevention, France
Mr. Henk Ovink
Special Envoy for International Water Affairs, The Netherlands
Mr. Dragoş Pîslaru
Member of the European Parliament, Romania
Ms. Alanna Simpson
Lead Disaster Risk Management Specialist, Resilience & Land, World Bank
Replay at:
Session information
Format
Session type: Plenary session
Who can attend: Registered participants
Interpretation
English, Portuguese, Russian
Accessibility
International sign language
Closed captions