Three and a half years ago the national governments of the Asia Pacific region and partners, agreed a headline message: Preventing disaster risk protects sustainable development. A two-year Action Plan for Implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 was adopted. It addressed how the ongoing global emergency of climate change is increasing the cascading and compounding nature of disaster risk. It called for several actions, mainly focused on the need to strengthen the integrated nature of risk governance to protect development gains.
As the review of progress against the Action Plan began ahead of the planned Asia Pacific Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Brisbane (APMCDRR), Australia, in June 2020, the climate change crisis was compounded by another global disaster: the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in the postponement of the Brisbane conference – extensive consultations, however, continued to review and update the Action Plan taking account of experience both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Asia-Pacific Action Plan 2021-2024 for the implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction seeks to accelerate disaster risk reduction in the region, especially taking into consideration the COVID-19 pandemic and the increasing impacts of climate change. The Action Plan will be launched in December 2021, at a virtual Special Session of the Asia-Pacific Partnership for Disaster Risk reduction (APP-DRR), hosted by the Australian Government and UNDRR.
To date, UNDRR has engaged with countries and stakeholder to initiate the development of the next Action Plan. The zero draft of the Asia-Pacific Action plan 2021-2024 is grounded in a review of the current state of implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 in the region. As highlighted above, UNDRR works closely with diverse stakeholder groups to actualise the all-of-society approach to disaster risk reduction that is outlined in the Sendai Framework. To solicit their inputs on the Asia-Pacific Action Plan 2021-2024, UNDRR is requesting the stakeholder groups to hold stakeholder consultations.
To assist in this process, ADRRN will continue to convene civil society engagement to contribute to the Special Session of the Asia-Pacific Partnership for Disaster Risk Reduction (APP-DRR) 2021, with increased outreach along with the Global Network of Civil Society Organisations for Disaster Reduction (GNDR), the International Council of Voluntary Agencies (ICVA), national NGO networks, other NGOs and local CSOs in the region. This includes carrying out dialogue, resulting in effective mechanisms, modalities for collaboration with national networks in place in all the countries across the region.
For APP-DRR 2021, ADRRN’s role as a coordinating entity alongside our aforementioned partners is to streamline and provide a cohesive response from NGOs, CSOs and practitioner stakeholder groups in the Asia-Pacific region. To date, we have produced and disseminated a questionnaire to our member networks to obtain initial feedback on the zero draft Action Plan, which was also shared to members under GNDR and ICVA.
This month, to supplement the questionnaire, we will be having a CSO stakeholders’ consultation meeting, to ensure that all voices and opinions from NGOs across Asia- Pacific are heard – this valuable input will then be consolidated and presented in the form of a report to UNDRR at the end of the month, contributing to the final plan, which is expected to be launched at the end of the year.
