Comprehensive disaster and climate risk management (CRM)

What is Comprehensive Risk Management (CRM)?

CRM is a holistic approach to managing the risks associated with both climatic and non-climatic hazards across varied time scales and levels. It seeks to build long-term resilience among countries and communities in vulnerable conditions, considering the full spectrum of extreme and slow-onset events, as well as their resulting impacts.

CRM involves fostering active collaboration among government institutions, non-state actors and other stakeholders to enhance and foster coherence and synergies between climate action, efforts to halt and reverse biodiversity loss, and a wide spectrum of DRR measures. The effectiveness of the CRM approach relies on these elements being adequately integrated into planning, implementation and financing frameworks across and within sectors and systems.

Climate change and disasters threaten sustainable development, with disproportionate impacts in developing countries and communities in vulnerable conditions. Addressing this challenge is one of the key expectations of the CRM approach, including through global frameworks. Among the post-2015 global multilateral agendas, CRM is anchored in the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, Paris Agreement, and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, providing a strong foundation to pursue holistic action. It is also inherent in the Rio Conventions: the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Convention on Biological Diversity (UNCBD), and the Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

Effective risk governance —marked by robust institutions and inclusive policy and legal frameworks —requires a systems approach to preventing and reducing risks, adapting to a changing climate, and addressing losses and damages.

CRM encompasses collaborative efforts to enhance understanding, action, and support in averting, minimizing, and addressing loss and damage. It involves managing extreme and slow-onset events through near-, medium-, and long-term risk reduction and adaptation actions, while fostering active collaboration among government institutions, non-State actors, and stakeholders.

With average global land and sea surface temperature increasing approximately 1.0°C-1.2°C above pre-industrial levels (IPCC-AR6), climate change is rapidly altering the risk profile of the planet, magnifying the magnitude, frequency and severity of hazards triggering disasters. Extreme weather events have doubled over the last 20-year period when compared with the previous twenty years. The adverse impacts of these changes are evident in societies, nature and economies.

It is estimated that between 2001 and 2020, direct disaster losses more than doubled, reaching over US$200 billion annually compared with the previous decades. The 2025 Global Assessment Report (GAR25) notes that this exceeds US$2.3 trillion if cascading and ecosystem impact are considered, with climate-related disasters accounting for a significant portion of the impact.

Risk-blind planning can and has created new risks and resulted in maladaptation. Hence, risk reduction cannot occur without the use of climate information; climate action will not be successful without risk reduction. The Midterm Review of the Sendai Framework emphasizes the necessity for adaptive governance that integrates risk management across sectors. It calls for coherent policies that address all dimensions of risk, ensuring stakeholder involvement and aligning disaster risk reduction with broader development goals for effective outcomes. The outcomes of the 8th Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction, held in June 2025, further amplified the call for such approaches.

Recognizing the synergies between DRR and climate action, UNDRR is committed to supporting countries achieve risk-informed and integrated approach to sustainable development, by promoting and facilitating coherent DRR and climate action across international, regional, national and local policies, plans and strategies, platforms and individual initiatives. This is reflected in the new Strategic Framework 2026-2030 and reflected as a key result (Result 2.1) with clear deliverables.

CRM is one of UNDRR’s flagship initiatives. It is aligned with the Target E of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction that seeks to increase the number of countries with national and local disaster risk reduction strategies, wherein promotion of policy coherence with climate change, among others, is one of the defined principles. A comprehensive approach takes into consideration several factors to purposely strengthen synergies between disaster risk reduction and climate action, by identifying mutually beneficial opportunities across policies and programmes, while developing capacities of governments for cross-sectoral planning, and ensuring vertical alignment.

The CRM programme focuses on risks across different timescales – short, medium, long-term – and therefore using information from weather, seasonal and climate forecasts and predictions, and translating such information into meaningful information to enable more comprehensive planning and implementation.

Full-spectrum analysis

Building on risk understanding, including through the Disaster & Hazardous Events, Losses and Damages Tracking & Analysis (DELTA Resilience) system, the CRM approach promotes application of a full-spectrum analysis of risk in a country, provision of technical resources and guidance, and targeted capacity development. This is based on analysis of the existing policy landscape between disaster risk reduction and climate change at various levels, while good practices are documented and disseminated.

2025 Global Status of National Disaster Risk Reduction Strategies. Governance in action: towards resilient and risk-informed development

By the end of 2025 - 141 countries reported national DRR strategies, representing over 70% of nations worldwide.