UNDRR and FIABCI sign a Global Partnership Agreement: Toward resilient infrastructure

The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) and the International Real Estate Federation (FIABCI) signed a global partnership agreement aiming to foster a culture of prevention and resilience in the real estate sector through advocacy and promotion of standards and tools to support sustainable and resilient infrastructure.

The UNDRR, as the designated focal point in the United Nations system for the coordination of efforts to reduce disaster risks, will cooperate with the FIABCI, which provides access and opportunity for real estate professionals interested in gaining knowledge, sharing information, and conducting international business with each other and which has a strong commitment to the SDGs and to the world sustainable urban development, on the following subjects: (1) application of Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 in the real estate industry utilizing FIABCI global outreach, (2) spreading awareness about resilience and disaster risk management in the real estate industry, (3) organization of real estate resilience events and webinars, (4) consult the real estate developers, investors, and regulators on the prospect of development of resilience indicators/ standards and tools to assess resilience in the real estate sector, (5) carry out research in the field of real estate resilience, and (6) develop guidelines for resilience.

The world has been stuck in a vicious cycle of disaster, response, recovery, and repeat. Innovative partnerships are needed to scale up interventions and ensure they reach down to the community level, where the impact is the greatest. UNDRR and FIABCI partnership comes to address this and enhance the role that real estate can play in fostering resilience and reducing vulnerabilities and the role that the private sector can play in promoting and supporting the integration of disaster risk and disaster preparedness into business management strategies and investment decisions.

In the upcoming period, UNDRR and FIABCI will be launching a “real estate resilience tool”, co-facilitating multi-disciplinary consultation workshops on the development of real estate resilience tool, co-facilitating promotional events for real estate resilience tool, and developing a mutually agreed annual plan of action with clear deliverables, time frame, roles, and responsibilities.

The UNDRR and FIABCI partnership agreement will encourage the need to think and act differently about disasters and to shift the focus from picking up the pieces post-disaster to risk-proofing.