GNDR’s executive director, Marcos Concepcion Raba, head of policy, Becky Murphy, and regional lead for Asia and Europe, Ipsita Sircar, are in Montenegro for the Europe and Central Asia Regional Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction 2024. Follow their updates:
Thursday 7th November 2024
- The platform officially opened
- GNDR supported the Sendai Stakeholder Engagement Mechanism (SEM) to run a session at our SEM market stall with the European Commission. Specifically coordinating a discussion on why it is so important to involve children and youth in DRR, the commitments that the European Commission has made on this and how the European Commission is doing so.
- SEM, GNDR members and the Children and Youth constituency got the opportunity to meet with a representative from the European Commission, connect, share contact details and ask questions.
- We met with our members attending: Ivane Grigolashvilli (Association Rural Development for Future Georgia) & Zeynep Sanduvac (Nirengi Dernegi).
Afternoon sessions:
Interactive Panel: Multisectoral Risk Governance and Cooperation
Key notes / takeaway:
- Trust was a big theme. The need for trust. The lack of trust. Particularly towards the media and government. We must address this for effective risk governance.
- GNDR asked a question on the challenges of local leadership and how we can help.
- The need for the whole of society approach was emphasised.
- It is still very hard to get governments to spend money on what may not happen – so data is important
Thematic session on Resilient Infrastructure
Key notes / takeaway:
- The importance of private sector in being a meaningful member of the value chain for resilient infrastructure investment
- Importance of the whole of society approach
- The resilience dividend is crucial to support justification for investment in resilient infrastructure.
- Issue of conflict coming through: for this region this of course means the war in Ukraine
- We need to build resilience into the private sector investment business case, for the whole life of the asset. Here, we must make sure we can share risk data and forecasts on risk. UNDRR is working with the investment board to develop a set of products on this. Integrate the resilience capability from day one. Include an investment pillar on existing and future assets on resilience.
- Challenges: short term returns for investors, the significant upfront investment and lastly, the need for regulation across the private sector for resilience. Legislate or it won’t happen.
- UNDRR are championing a stress tester tool, which can be found here: Stress test for resilient infrastructure.
Thematic session: Strengthening Resilience through Data
- We then met with Animesh Kumar from UNDRR to catch up on the UNDRR Bonn office’s preparation for COP.