Reducing Economic Losses from Disasters

The Leaders Forum will feature world leaders, including Heads of State, Heads of Governments, senior ministers, CEOs, UN Executive Heads and community leaders, and will discuss key strategies to address the growing economic losses from disasters. Co-Chaired by the President of Mexico and the UN Secretary-General, the Leaders Forum will focus on ‘Resilient Public and Private Critical Infrastructure and Housing’.

Whilst major achievements were made over 2005-2015 in reducing mortality linked to hydro-meteorological disasters, significant efforts are still urgently required to address future risks and to systematically address the growing global economic losses from disasters.
In line with the Sendai Framework Target (c) that aims to reduce direct disaster economic loss in relation to global gross domestic product, the Leaders Forum will address how to make public and private investments risk sensitive and will explore opportunities for public private partnerships in support of resilient critical infrastructures and housing, as core elements to people’s lives and sustainable livelihoods. This will be discussed in the context of the Target (d) that seeks to reduce disaster damage to critical infrastructure and disruption of basic services, and of the Sendai Framework Priority 3 on ‘Investing in disaster risk reduction for resilience’.

The Leaders Forum represents an opportunity to catalyze new action and forge high-level commitments to accelerate the achievements of the Sendai Framework’s global priorities and targets and the Sustainable Development Goals. The outcome of this session will be a high level communiqué as one of the key outcome documents of the 2017 Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction, and a true reflection of the Leaders Forum discussions and commitments.