This week, from 18-19 May 2023, the High-Level Meeting of the Midterm Review of the Sendai Framework will be held in New York, organised by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR). The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction is an agreement that all of our countries have signed up to in order to substantially reduce global disaster risks and losses.
Also this week, a severe tropical cyclone, ‘Mocha’, hit the border region of Myanmar and Bangladesh, an area of particular vulnerability due to massive refugee camps and low-lying land. Early reports of the death toll suggested that the impact had been much less than feared (in part due to the several days warning given by both the Myanmar and Bangladesh meteorological agencies and the mobilised response), but hundreds of thousands have people have still been left homeless.
And also this week, disaster preparedness and response has been a major issue in a Presidential election in Turkey, the Australian Government has announced a major restructure of national flood monitoring and warning arrangements, and a year 11 student died in a caving tragedy in New Zealand that occurred while the area was under a rain warning.
It’s fair to say that disasters, large and small, are never far away from the headlines in any part of the world. Consequently, the discussions in New York this week, and the wider work of disaster risk reduction, matter greatly.
So, where are we at, half-way through Sendai? Earlier this year, the UNDRR released the Report of the Midterm Review of Sendai. And, while it has lots of good news to report, it’s a far from rosy report, as highlighted in the Foreword:
“However, at the midpoint of the implementation of the 2015 agreements, progress has stalled and, in some cases, reversed. This has resulted not only from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, but also from short- versus long-termism, weakened multilateralism, disconnects between the real and the financial economies, rising inequality, and barriers between risk science, perception and risk-informed decision-making. Risks are being created and accumulating faster than our ability to anticipate, manage and reduce them, and when those risks are realized as shocks or disasters, they bring increasingly dire consequences for people, livelihoods, society and the ecosystems on which we depend.”
The report discusses the mixed progress against the goals of the Framework, the challenges encountered (including the grim lessons from COVID), and then lays out some strategic perspectives and recommendations, sprinkled with more less than cheerful phrases:
“The complexity of global catastrophic risk is overwhelming conventional governance systems, which were designed to address incremental environmental and social changes, rather than non-linear processes and complex interactions between drivers of risk and the irreversible impacts of breaching planetary boundaries.”
“With growing uncertainties and increasingly complex risks, amplified by increasing disaster impacts and losses, belief in our collective ability to achieve the 2030 Agenda appears to be waning.”
At the meeting this week, delegates will consider a draft political declaration coordinated by co-facilitators (from Australia and Indonesia). Fully charged and armed with the groundwork behind the review, the draft doesn’t pull any punches:
“We express deep concern at the increasing frequency and intensity, as well as the number and scale of disasters and their devastating impacts, which have resulted in massive loss of life, food insecurity and famine, biodiversity loss, water-related challenges, increased displacement, humanitarian and development needs and longterm negative economic, social and environmental consequences, especially for those in vulnerable situations throughout the world, and which are undermining progress towards sustainable development, the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the achievement of its Sustainable Development Goals, in particular for the least developed countries, small island developing States, landlocked developing countries and African countries, as well as middle-income countries facing specific challenges.”
The draft declaration renews and updates calls for action on the four Sendai priorities: 1) Understanding disaster risk, 2) Strengthening disaster risk governance, 3) Investing in disaster risk reduction for resilience, and 4) Enhancing disaster preparedness for effective response and to “Build Back Better” in recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction. In support of that last priority, the declaration also highlights the UN Early Warnings For All initiative and calls for universal coverage of multi-hazard early warning systems.
Live streams of the meeting sessions on Wednesday 17- Friday 19 May (New York time) are available here. Country reports, regional reports, UN reports, thematic studies, and other contributions are also available as part of the meeting documents.
It’s easy to see UN processes as remote, inaccessible, and ineffective. But the vital work of the world’s disaster risk reduction community affects us all, and includes us all – nothing globally agreed can occur without local hands making it work. The first step to making progress on global disaster risk reduction is to make sure we’re all on board. Accessing Sendai processes is as easy as clicking a link and then considering how to help make it happen.