International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction

International cooperation for disaster risk reduction in agri-food systems

FAO Hosted Event

13 October 2021

14:00 – 15:30 hours (CEST)

Statement by SRSG Mami Mizutori

FAO Deputy Director General, Mr Laurent Thomas,

Moderator Mr Dominique Burgeon, Director of FAO Geneva,

Distinguished guests, speakers, and participants,

The world is fast approaching the stage when the impacts of systemic risk and disaster occurrences could surpass our ability to manage them. The evidence is all around us. 4.5 million deaths from a pandemic which could have been mitigated if we had acted on the warnings.

A world that is on course for a suicidal rise in global temperatures because of a failure to rein in greenhouse gas emissions.

Ever increasing numbers of people are losing their homes and livelihoods in extreme weather events, such as those which displaced 30 million people last year.

There has been a shocking escalation of world hunger to the point where over two billion people struggled to feed themselves adequately in 2020 and 811 million people face chronic hunger.

As successive FAO reports have demonstrated, a doubling of disaster events over the last twenty years has had a huge impact on food production, especially in developing countries with strong dependence on the agricultural sector, not least through drought, pests, floods, storms, heatwaves, and rising sea levels.

Agriculture itself is a major contributor to climate change through greenhouse gas emissions including land use change driven by unsustainable agribusiness practices including the use of manure and synthetic fertilizers. The meat and dairy industry accounts for 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

I fully support the call by FAO, UNEP and UNDP for international cooperation to revise global support to producers in the agriculture sector, much of which is inefficient and  destructive of protective eco-systems, and overlooks the needs of smallholders in developing countries, many of whom are women.

Indeed, enhancing international cooperation to developing countries to reduce their disaster risk is the focus of this year’s International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction.

This is Target F, the 6^th of the seven Sendai Framework targets, and a new report from UNDRR shows clearly that investments in disaster prevention and risk reduction are not keeping pace with the exponential rise in disaster events.

Our review of the available evidence shows that

• Financing for disaster risk reduction makes up a tiny fraction of overall investments in development aid
• USD 133 billion of financing for DRR has been made available between 2010-2019: this is 11 percent of overall aid (USD 1.17 Trillion).
• Of this, just a fraction – USD 5.5 billion – was aimed at risk reduction measures before disasters strike, compared to USD 119.8 billion spent on post-disaster response.
• Of overall aid financing between 2010-2019, the $5.5 billion spent on DRR accounts for just 0.5% of the total amount spent on international aid.

This lack of investment undermines efforts to enable developing countries to formulate and implement national and local strategies for disaster risk reduction aligned with the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction.

Only 20 of the 46 countries with UN recognised Least Developed Country status report having national disaster risk reduction strategies.

Another challenging area for policymakers, is the lack of data on economic losses from disasters in many low and middle-income countries to inform decision-making and risk-informed investment in critical infrastructure including agriculture.

FAO deserves a lot of credit for its support to over 40 countries in applying its

damage and loss (D&L) assessment methodology including the recent introduction of an e-learning forum.

FAO’s regular reports on the impact of disasters on agriculture and food security have helped to improve understanding of disaster risk and make the case for greater international cooperation on reducing disaster risk in developing countries.

UNDRR values partnership with FAO on both strengthening the assessment of disaster related losses and damages, as well as enhancing resilience of the agricultural sector, most recently in context of the UN Food Systems Summit. We hope that, jointly, we can advance comprehensive climate and disaster risk management in vulnerable countries, and reap resilience dividends for development sectors.

Thank you everyone for joining us in marking this year’s International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction and my sincere thanks to FAO for organizing this event to mark the day in a very meaningful way.