UNDRR Americas & Caribbean Magazine: COVID-19, a risk context

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown the fragility of our global networks. A health crisis has shocked economies, policies, governance, trade, infrastructure. In short, it has changed today’s society and may well leave a significant mark on the shaping of tomorrow’s society.

The clearest lesson from the pandemic has been the necessity to be prepared for disasters. This is pointed out in the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015- 2030), which explicitly calls for work to prevent or mitigate the effects of “small and large scale, frequent and infrequent, sudden and slow-onset disasters, whether caused by natural or man-made hazards, as well as related environmental, technological and biological hazards and risks”.

Several partners and communities are developing a variety of concepts that contribute significantly to building preparedness for this type of complex and interlinked threat. It is vital to understand the risks and vulnerabilities in everything that surrounds us. This is the objective of this newsletter: understanding better these risks means approaching them from different perspectives and different points of view, absorbing the information, and reflecting on it. This will help to address effective preparedness from a multi-sectoral and multi-stakeholder perspective, as required by the complexity of the threats we face and we will face.