The Covid pandemic recovery provides a chance to implement green and sustainable economic and social policies, but it is far from certain that governments will seize the opportunity, the VII Regional Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction heard today.
The analysis examines the steps taken to deliver a green and resilient recovery and indicates that current action is not commensurate with the sheer scale of the challenge – the rapid accumulation of disaster risk that is systemic, interconnected and cascading.
Despite the deep scars left by the crisis, countries now have a fresh focus on health, resilience and regionalism plus a chance to fully incorporate disaster risk reduction into their recovery.
In the wake of the 2004 tsunami, coastal forests helped dampen damage from the tsunami. Building on this, an Indonesian NGO called 'Yagasu' are using mangroves to bolster ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction, improve local livelihood, and aid in climate change mitigation and adaptation.
Despite logistical hurdles thrown up by the pandemic, the all-encompassing disaster risk reduction strategies countries are steadily putting in place are already helping build resilience and score gains against international targets.
The Caribbean’s fragile economy is being battered by the pandemic that is keeping tourists from its tropical beaches and leaving heavily-indebted countries ill-prepared to cope with violent hurricanes and other emergencies, say experts.
Arab States identified preventing new risk, reducing existing risk and strengthening resilience as central to regional efforts to realize sustainable development pathways in the twenty-first century.
The year 2020 saw Asia-Pacific deal with the dual occurrence of the COVID-19 pandemic along with climate-related disasters, which triggered cascading impacts across sectors. As the region was already not projected to achieve any of the Sustainable
