GENEVA, 13 September 2013 - The Geneva roundtable, entitled "Options for Increasing the Effectiveness of Development Assistance for Disaster Risk Reduction," was hosted by Ambassador Elissa Golberg of the Permanent Mission of Canada on behalf of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR).
More than 20 participants, representing the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) member states, welcomed a joint initiative on tracking DRM financing from the World Bank's Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) and UNISDR.
The two organizations presented a business case for a disaster risk management 'marker' in the OECD's Creditor Reporting System (CRS) that would strengthen the ability of all parties to analyze, measure and report results in this area. Such a marker would also provide an incentive to increase "risk-informed" development investments, as it would necessitate development assistance to be reviewed through a "disaster risk management lens."
The GFDRR and UNISDR present a business case for a disaster risk management 'marker' in the OECD's Creditor Reporting System.
Government partners said it was important that such a mechanism be widely adopted and mainstreamed into the finance tracking systems of all development partners. They called on the OECD DAC, the GFDRR, and UNISDR to lead the process to develop such a disaster risk management marker in 2014.
The Head of UNISDR, Margareta Wahlström, welcomed efforts to systematize the tracking of international investments in disaster risk management. "We need to provide more evidence-based advocacy that stimulates the assessment of disaster risk as a key element of all development spending," she said.
The Chair of the DAC, Erik Solheim, said, "We have every reason to be fairly optimistic. What really matters is the impact out there in support of the people who are taking action. We need to challenge ourselves on how we can best use development assistance as a catalyst in support of national action."
The Head of the GFDRR Secretariat, Francis Ghesquiere, echoed such optimism and noted how the issue of disaster risk reduction has "come an extremely long way and has now moved squarely into the development agenda."
The Geneva roundtable came ahead of the September 20th launch in London of a new study entitled Financing Disaster Risk Reduction: A 20 year story of international aid, produced by GFDRR and the Overseas Development Institute (ODI). This study presents a thorough review of natural disaster related international financing primarily based on the Disaster Aid Tracking (DAT) database developed by the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery on the AidData platform. This database, accessible at http://gfdrr.aiddata.org, is the most comprehensive attempt to identify natural disaster related financing within international humanitarian and development assistance.