Annual Event 2022: Integrating uncertainty – risk-informed and climate-resilient programming in international cooperation
Why climate and disaster risks deserve greater attention
“Nothing undermines sustainable development like disasters. They can destroy decades of progress in an instant. Understanding and managing disaster risk is essential to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals” (cit. António Guterres, UN Secretary General, in: UNDRR GAR 2022: Our World at Risk: Transforming Governance for a Resilient Future. Geneva).
This is a very fitting statement to reflect on the global trend of more climatic extremes and changes, and events in previously unaffected areas. These trends are worrying globally and are eroding coping capacities locally, bringing people and nature to their limits of adaptation, and affecting all sectors of society.
Risk-informed and climate-resilient projects and programmes thus should be a no-brainer, do you agree? So, we all know why we advocate for mainstreaming disaster risk reduction (DRR) and Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) in our portfolio across sectors, right?
Then why is it still not happening? We believe that we need to take a closer look at how we integrate climate and disaster risk into our work, and across different thematic sectors. 11 years after our first ever annual event, we will again dive deep into the what and the hot to mainstream DRR and CCA, starting with concrete tools and broadening our perspective towards the enabling environment. We will learn from each other based on case studies and inputs from key resource persons. Organised as a virtual event on the first two days, and including as a F2F event on the third day, we are working on a participatory hybrid format to allow colleagues from outside Switzerland to participate in a meaningful way as well.
What we aimed for
- Increase understanding of what DRR and CCA mainstreaming, and a risk assessment in particular, can bring and what its main components are. Participants are guided through the essential steps in order to be fit for risk-informed project planning and decision-making.
- familiarise with the most common mainstreaming approaches and tools and know how to apply DRR and CCA mainstreaming in practice
- exchange experience on mainstreaming DRR and CCA and network within a larger community of practice
