4th Meeting of the Small Island States Resilience Initiative
Opening remarks
SRSG Mami Mizutori
4th Meeting of the Small Island States Resilience Initiative
‘Bringing Resilience to Scale in SIDS’
09.00 Sunday 12 May 2019
Room C1 WMO 7bis Avenue de la Paix
Delegates & representatives from Small Islands Developing States from all over the world – A very Good Morning to you all and welcome to Geneva!
The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction – now known as UNDRR – is delighted to join with our fellow UN partners and colleagues at the World Bank and European Commission to organize this very important event ahead of the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction which formally opens on Wednesday.
Bringing together representatives of the global SIDS community at the 4th Meeting of the Small Island States Resilience Initiative ahead of the Global Platform is something I strongly support.
Your challenges are often unique and indeed more extreme than for many other nations. At the same time your innovation and resolve to address these difficulties is a shining example to the wider international community.
This global lead is visible in many areas, including multi-hazard early warning systems that reach down to the remotest communities; integrated approaches to risk governance that reflect the realities at the local level; and a continuing ability to combine traditional knowledge with the best of new technology to reduce disaster and climate risk.
Over the next two days you have the opportunity – and critically the space – to share your expertise and experience with friends and colleagues from other small island developing states.
We also have to acknowledge the common constraints of small island states globally, such as a lack of size, resources and connectivity.
More importantly, the theme of these two days – Bringing Resilience to Scale in SIDS – compels us to rise above these difficulties and harness the can-do culture that continues to lead your communities and countries towards solutions during these ever more testing times.
Your focus on Bringing Resilience to Scale ties in with the overall theme of the Global Platform which is ‘The Resilience Dividend: Towards Sustainable and Inclusive Societies’.
I’ve looked through the very interesting agenda that will guide your discussions over the next couple of days and my eye was particularly drawn to the final session tomorrow: ‘Leaving No One Behind: Inclusive Risk Reduction Strategies’.
Inclusion is the hallmark of good disaster and climate risk governance and so often it has been SIDS who have led the way in this regard.
SIDS were hugely influential in the design of the Sendia Framework and your voices were also raised loud and clear in the discussions which preceded the adoption of the Paris Agreement on climate.
You were also among the first countries three years ago to deposit instruments of ratification for the Paris Agreement.
Your commitment to action is also evident in the progress you are making with adopting national and local strategies for disaster risk reduction as the deadline approaches to have these in place by 2020, as set out in target (e) of the Sendai Framework.
Thank you again for allowing me to make these opening remarks today. Good luck for your discussions here today and tomorrow.
I am sure you will have many opportunities to share your collective wisdom with your peers from around the world at the Global Platform later in the week.
Thank you!