For the urban coastal city of Hong Kong, typhoons are a regular occurrence from May to October. Consequently, Hong Kong’s infrastructure is designed to cope with the strong winds, floods, and storm surges they bring. Recently, however, the territory experienced two powerful storms in consecutive years. In 2017, Super Typhoon Hato struck the region, and in the following year, the city witnessed Super Typhoon Mangkhut, the strongest typhoon since 1983. But Hong Kong suffered lower economic losses from both storms when compared with the neighboring Guangdong region and the city of Macau, thanks partly to its well-coordinated response and resilient infrastructure.
While tsunamis are not common in the Caribbean – the last major one hit 75 years ago – people are well aware of the impact of storm surges and quick to get on board with the “Tsunami Ready” program.
Despite the deep scars left by the crisis, countries now have a fresh focus on health, resilience and regionalism plus a chance to fully incorporate disaster risk reduction into their recovery.
In the wake of the 2004 tsunami, coastal forests helped dampen damage from the tsunami. Building on this, an Indonesian NGO called 'Yagasu' are using mangroves to bolster ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction, improve local livelihood, and aid in climate change mitigation and adaptation.
Municipal officials working in urban development and planning, environmental management, civil defense, health, social affairs, among others, now have another way to discover and master the tools of the Making Cities Resilient 2030 (MCR2030) initiative
The second Panel of the International Forum “Connect RN” on “Paving the way to Resilient and Sustainable Cities” explored how Latin American and European cities are innovating to become more resilient and sustainable in face of the global challenges posed
Despite logistical hurdles thrown up by the pandemic, the all-encompassing disaster risk reduction strategies countries are steadily putting in place are already helping build resilience and score gains against international targets.
On September 9th, MCR2030 had its FIRST INPPERSON CAPACITY BUILDING in the Americas and the Caribbean! Under the guidance of MCR2030 Technical Advisor, Clément Da Cruz, and with the collaboration of the State of São Paulo Civil Defense, municipal officials from 14 cities in the state acquired practical knowledge on Disaster Risk Reduction, building urban resilience and using MCR2030's tool for self-assessment of resilience capacities for local governments - the Scorecard.
Menaced by increasingly ferocious and costly hurricanes, alongside eruptions, earthquakes and floods, Caribbean countries have made huge strides towards developing multi-hazard early warning systems (EWS).
