INTERNATIONAL EVENTS

GFDRR actively engages in global dialogue and works with partners to ensure that the resilience agenda remains central to global policy discussions.

Paris Agreement

In December 2015, the international community made great advances by placing the climate agenda at the center of national priorities for 157 countries, which signed the Paris Agreement at the 21st Conference of Parties in Paris (COP 21). The Paris Agreement is the first of its kind, marking global recognition of the disastrous effects of climate change on sustainable development and indicating a serious commitment to limiting the temperature increase to an ambitious goal of 2 degrees, or even 1.5 degrees celsius.

A key component of the climate agreements is that all countries should report on their emissions and implementation efforts, including adaptation priorities through the development of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), where countries determine their contributions in the context of their national priorities, circumstances, and capabilities. Over 160 countries prepared their NDCs outlining their priorities for the next fifteen years. A significant percentage of NDCs prioritize adaptation and resilience, placing an emphasis, for example, on investments in the development of early warning systems. This is a clear indication that countries recognize climate change exacerbates disaster risk.

Given the importance of this agenda—and the inter-related risks associated with climate change, disasters, and poverty—building resilience to climate change is central to GFDRR’s mandate of mainstreaming DRM into countries’ development planning and investments.

At COP21, GFDRR led several successful campaigns to strongly position the climate change adaptation and DRM within the global arena. At the event, GFDRR helped facilitate participation of several high-level delegates from international institutions to further advance the resilience agenda. GFDRR also launched several flagship reports on DRM including Shockwaves: Managing the Impacts of Climate Change and Poverty and The Triple Dividend of Resilience.

Additionally, GFDRR also engaged in several events within the risk financing and insurance industry. In partnership with JICA, GFDRR was involved in an event that shared a scientific evidence- based approach in bringing about effective policy investments in hydro- related areas. Furthermore, GFDRR is a partner of the Insurance Development Forum (IDF), which was announced at the Opening Ceremony of COP21. The IDF aims to incorporate insurance industry know-how into existing governmental DRR and resilience and build a more resilient global insurance market in a world facing growing natural disaster and climate risk.

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CREWS: UNISDR, World Bank, and WMO Coordinate Efforts on Early Warning Systems

Lack of effective early warning systems in low-income countries is well recognized as an important issue. International attention toward the need for strengthened early warning increased significantly after the Indian Ocean Tsunami in December 2004, as well as following the adoption of the Sendai Framework, which highlighted the need for multi-hazard early warning systems.

At the Sendai Conference, France announced a target to mobilize the international community to support early warning systems in the most vulnerable countries, targeting least developed countries and Small Island States, which became the basis for the Climate Risk and Early Warning Systems (CREWS) initiative. The initiative was launched at COP21 in December the same year.

GFDRR was an active contributor to the establishment of CREWS. Program funding from CREWS will contribute to narrowing the gap between priority needs in developing countries and available funding. The implementing partners include UNISDR, WBG/GFDRR, WMO, given their complementary strengths and breadth of analytical, technical, and operational knowledge. The proposed integrated approach of focusing on multi-hazard early warning systems will help to address key systemic deficiencies including building long-term capacity and sustainability.

By bringing together three of the leading global actors for early warning, which serve as coordination mechanisms between DRM and hydrometeorological services, CREWS will formalize donor and agency coordination for early warning systems. CREWS will leverage the broader coordination mandates of implementing partners to provide a formal process and space for focused discussions, planning, and reporting specifically on early warning systems.

World Humanitarian Summit

BRIDGING THE FRAGILE, CONFLICT, AND DISASTERS NEXUS

Conflict in Nigeria has claimed over 20,000 lives and displaced nearly two million people since 2014. In FY16, GFDRR responded to the government’s request for an assessment of the needs associated with peacebuilding and crisis recovery. To conduct the assessment, GFDRR, in collaboration with the World Bank, organized and coordinated international experts from the European Union and the United Nations, as well as national experts from six northeastern state and federal line departments. Part of this effort included using satellite-imagery-based technology and social media analytics, making this the largest-scale assessment to use this technology, which helped to find information gaps and validate baseline and damage data. The completed assessment has been instrumental in informing the priorities of all projects in the country.

In May 2016, the international community convened for the first-ever World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) in Istanbul, Turkey. The summit brought together 9,000 participants from 173 Member States, including 55 Heads of State and Government, and strong representation from private sector, civil society and non-governmental organizations. In its 70 years, this was the first time that the United Nations came with as many different stakeholders to discuss the pressing challenges that are resulting in so much suffering today. This is a recognition that today’s challenges can only be adequately addressed through the collaboration of national governments, civil society, people affected by crises, the private sector, national and international organizations, and others.

Given the interrelation between conflict, fragility, and disasters, GFDRR closely followed discussions leading up to the WHS and supported dialogue on the three elements. Furthermore, GFDRR actively participated at WHS, supporting and organizing several events, including high-level round tables on “Humanitarian Financing” and “Managing and Preparing for Disasters Differently.” At the summit, GFDRR partnered with the Government of Germany to release a report on “Disaster, Conflict, and Fragility: A Joint Agenda,” to develop a better understanding of this space and identify ways in which GFDRR can strengthen its engagement in adopting a more holistic approach to address multiple risks.

A key announcement at WHS was the launch of the Global Preparedness Partnership. GFDRR played a key role in formalizing this partnership, which is led by the Vulnerable Twenty Group of Ministers of Finance (V20) of the Climate Vulnerable Forum, representing 43 high-risk developing nations, in collaboration with the World Bank, GFDRR and a number of UN agencies including the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the World Food Programme (WFP).

The partnership will strengthen preparedness capacities initially in 20 countries, so they attain a minimum level of readiness by 2020 for future disaster risks mainly caused by climate change.

GFDRR's Support in Fragile and Conflict-Affected States

Over the years, GFDRR has continued to support engagements in fragile and conflict-affected states. More recently, these engagements, however, have evolved with the changing needs of countries by adapting post-disaster methodologies to post-conflict scenarios. In FY16, GFDRR supported 17 fragile and conflict affected countries’ efforts to build resilience through 35 grants worth $29 million. Demand for GFDRR’s expertise is growing, due to increased need, but also GFDRR’s timely response to post-disaster needs in fragile and conflict-affected contexts, as well as being able to apply its methodologies to areas where access is not possible. Since 2007, GFDRR has mobilized $48.6 million in investments to support 25 fragile and conflict-affected countries, including Afghanistan, Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Lebanon, Madagascar, Mali, Nepal, Sudan, Syria, Timor-Leste, Togo, and Yemen.

CAPACITY BUILDING AND ANALYTICAL WORK

GFDRR continues to generate knowledge and promote efforts to share best practices among partners and recipient countries. GFDRR also strives to build the capacity of developing countries to be able to use and apply best practices for implementing DRM solutions.

Capacity Building

Central America Probabilistic Risk Assessment

The Central America Probabilistic Risk Assessment (CAPRA) Program began in 2008 to create a free and open-source probabilistic risk assessment platform. What started with engagements in fi e Central American countries rapidly expanded to three Latin American countries. The project effectively built long-term institutional capacity in disaster- prone countries to develop and communicate risk information. The initiative demonstrated that disaster risks can be quantifiably understood, and ultimately integrated into policies and development planning. The CAPRA program supported the construction and consolidation of a community of experts in disaster risk assessment at both a country and regional level. Local CAPRA teams, often composed of experts from government, academia, and the private sector are now building upon the generated data, acquired skills, and impetus for action to integrate risk information into policies and investment programs. These groups of experts are now working independently, expanding studies initiated with GFDRR funding and providing training to other practitioners to continue growing the community. CAPRA was a true precursor initiative. It demonstrated the potential of risk-assessment platforms and inspired a number of similar programs that have been subsequently launched. GFDRR support to the program ended in FY16, when the Universidad de los Andes in Colombia was selected to take over the full management of the CAPRA initiative and community.

GFDRR’s portfolio analysis indicates that a significant proportion of its resources—up to 24 percent annually —contributes to building the capacity of developing countries in order to help them better understand emerging disaster risks, reduce their vulnerabilities to natural hazards, and adapt to climate change.

In FY16, GFDRR developed a detailed stock-taking report to better understand the impact of its capacity-building activities. The effort evaluated FY14 and FY15 grants, focusing on “human” capacity building—developing and sharing knowledge and skills, as well as consensus and network building. The report outlines best practices, provides guidance on operational steps and considerations leading to the most effective activities, and provides recommendations as to how GFDRR can improve the value of its capacity building efforts.

The report findings show that the primary beneficiaries of GFDRR’s capacity-building activities include government and institutional counterparts. Over the past few years, GFDRR capacity-building activities have reached 64 countries. Of the 300 grants analyzed, 109 included activities that reached government counterparts, while 191 grants targeted building capacity of institutional counterparts. A large number of resources are diverted toward short- term learning activities and knowledge products. Fifty-nine percent of the grants analyzed incorporated at least one short term learning activity and 31 percent reported at least one knowledge product. While capacity building remains an element of most of GFDRR’s projects, it is rarely the sole focus; only a small portion of grants had as much as 50 percent of total resources allocated to capacity-building activities.

The analysis identified key areas for GFDRR to better track the impact capacity-building activities:

  • Improving monitoring and evaluation at the project and portfolio level.
  • Improving mechanisms for sharing knowledge, best practices and lessons learned.
  • Coordinating and facilitating training and e-learning for developing country counterparts.
  • Providing training and resources for project leaders to support well- designed approaches to capacity-building activities.

Capacity building remains a critical component of GFDRR’s work. It is only through this transfer of knowledge and technical expertise that programs will be sustained, and ultimately, owned at the local level.