The health emergency and disaster risk management: An emerging framework for achieving synergies among the Sendai Framework, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the New Urban Agenda and the Paris Agreement

This contributing paper discusses the potential of the Health Emergency and Disaster Risk Management (Health-EDRM) Framework in promoting synergies in pursing risk-resilient sustainable development pathways via conceptual analysis of the key roles of health and Health-EDRM in the major international risk-resilient and sustainable development agendas of the Sendai Framework, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the New Urban Agenda and the Paris Agreement. It first analyses the Health-EDRM Framework, which is a comprehensive, systematic, cross-sectoral, and interdisciplinary endeavour of the World Health Organization and its health and non- health partners. The four key international risk-resilient and sustainable development agendas are then analysed in detail to explore how they can be interlinked and synergised under the Health-EDRM Framework.

This study indicates that the underlying elements of the Health-EDRM Framework in these agendas laid a strong foundation for the Framework’s further development. The systematic and comprehensive nature of this Framework also has a strong potential for generating evidence to inform disaster resilience, sustainable development and urban development policies at national and global levels, taking climate change impact into account. The study also finds clear synergy between health concepts and the aforementioned major international risk-resilient and sustainable development agendas with health serving as a pivotal base and Health-EDRM as a conceptual framework for the implementation of the relevant sections of the agendas.