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The role of ISDR in climate change
Overall strategic goal:
To promote the integration of the climate change and disaster risk reduction agendas in order to assist governments and other parties to reduce climate-related vulnerabilities and risk, in line with the Hyogo Framework.
The IPCC Forth Assessment Report confirmed that our atmosphere is warming, a trend that will have an enormous impact on the frequency and severity of hazards. The increase of temperature by 1.8 to 4 degrees Celsius this century will make hot extremes, heat waves and heavy precipitation events more frequent. Similarly there will be more precipitation at high latitudes and less precipitation in most subtropical land regions. It is also likely that tropical cyclones will become more intense.
Climate-related risk and vulnerabilities can be reduced through early warning, education, public awareness, as well as better urban and land use planning. The Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015: Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities to Disasters, to which 168 Governments agreed in Hyogo, Kobe, Japan, in 2005 , provides an agreed plan for reducing disaster risks and provides relevant guidance to begin concrete adaptation measures.
The Hyogo Framework states under its Priority for Action 4 “Reduce the underlying risk factors” to “promote the integration of risk reduction associated with existing climate variability and future climate change into strategies for the reduction of disaster risk and adaptation to climate change, which would include the clear identification of climate related disaster risks, the design of specific risk reduction measures and an improved and routine use of climate risk information by planners, engineers and other decision-makers.”
In the sixty-second session of the General Assembly the Report of the Secretary-General on the Implementation of the ISDR “Member States are encouraged to ensure coordination among all the authorities entrusted with reducing disaster risk and adapting to climate change in order to benefit from the synergies available in the existing tools, practices and experiences in both groups of actors.”
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) supports disaster risk reduction activities through several of its decisions (5/CP.7 and 1/CP.10). The activities to be undertaken as part of the recently adopted Nairobi Work Programme on Impacts, Vulnerability and Adaptation to Climate Change clearly relate to the priority actions of the Hyogo Framework, and the ISDR system has been recognized as a major partner in its implementation.
As part of its efforts to implement the Hyogo Framework, the ISDR secretariat has maintained a consistent level of activity in many areas of climate change. By targeting the main processes and engaging with a variety of key actors, the secretariat has been successful in raising awareness in the climate change community of the relevance of disaster risk reduction concepts and tools, and the importance of the Hyogo Framework, as evidenced by explicit mention in speeches and documents and by increasing invitations to collaborate with the UNFCCC secretariat and other partners. The secretariat also has facilitated action within the ISDR system, including to raise awareness of climate change within the disaster risk reduction community and to support the ISDR Working Group on Climate Change and Disaster Risk Reduction.
The secretariat will continue this dual approach, i.e. maintaining an active involvement in ongoing UNFCCC and other climate change processes while at the same time pursuing the incorporation of climate change perspectives into ISDR system processes, in particular via the Global Platform sessions, the ISDR system Joint Work Programme, the various thematic, regional and national platforms and the activities supported by the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR).
For more information on ISDR system partner’s activities in climate change please explore the "Matrix of commitments and initiatives". The matrix is a compilation of commitments and initiatives which aims to support the planning, guidance and reporting on accomplishments of the goals of the Hyogo Framework, as well as identifying any eventual gaps or overlapping commitments with respect to the Priority Actions and their respective key activities.
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