Question posed by the moderator: What can be done to increase investment in disaster preparedness and prevention, risk reduction and adaptation, and climate-resilient infrastructure?   
 

Thank you very much. Indeed, the question is very pertinent, as we need to intensify our investments into preparedness and prevention and oveall resilience building.

In a world that is changing fast, we must refine our analysis and understanding of crisis and recovery in an equally rapid way. And we must change our categories and open our siloes too. When we speak of a humanitarian crisis, of a refugee crisis, or of a food crisis, we describe the impact of the crisis, not the drivers that contributed to these often-catastrophic effects, nor the type of response that is needed.. So put it very simple - we need to invest in addressing the root causes, as many times, the impact is a result of development failures, lack of systems that strengthen resilience.  

The reality is that in today’s world, progress towards sustainable development and peaceful societies is significantly undermined by multiple and intersecting threats all happening at the same time, often compounding each other. 
We are facing an exponential escalation of people in need and a deepening failure of the international system to prevent it, with humanitarian asks rising from USD 9 billion in 2012 to more than USD 56.1 billion as of June 2023.1 This is fueled by the escalating confluence of multiple crises.

As a result, the world is facing unprecedented cascading challenges, with 340 million people estimated to need humanitarian assistance, 45 million facing emergency levels of food insecurity,2 and more than 100 million people forcibly displaced, the highest number ever recorded. In 2022, the number of displaced people grew by 21%, standing at an estimated 108.4 million at the end of the year. And they are likely to keep growing in 2023.

Only few weeks ago, Italy's Emilia-Romagna region experienced historic floods and numerous landslides claiming14 lives and huge damages. Zimbabwe was badly affected in 2019 by Hurricane Idai, causing catastrophic damage and displacements. This shows that nobody is safe from the effects of climate change/extreme and unprecedented meteorological events.

If we want to avoid facing a status of permanent global poly-crisis, our investment shouldn’t only be operational, but investment into a paradigm shift 
We must adopt systemic, long-term thinking.

Preparing for and addressing current and future challenges will be contingent on our collective ability to manage complex systemic risks and build long-term resilience.  This requires risk becoming an integral element of the sustainable development agenda, rather than dealing with it as an add-on. It also means moving forward with a much more integrated resilience building approach that is able to address multi-dimensional and systemic risks.

In this regard, I would like to Welcome that key high-level UN meetings have addressed systemic risks and resilience building, (such as the 2023 UN Water Conference and the Midterm Review of the implementation of the Sendai Framework, where the Political Declaration called for a shift from disasters and to risks, while reaffirming commitment to building resilience). It is high time to advance operationalization.

I would also like to stress that, through its Crisis Offer, UNDP strives to help countries facing persistent development challenges to anticipate, prevent, respond to and recover from crisis, every day, and in every development context. We focus on breaking the cycle of fragility, getting ahead of the crisis curve, and investing in hope – from jobs to justice – in times of crisis.  

UNDP’s added value in fostering an HDP Nexus approach in providing development solutions that complement humanitarian responses and reduce humanitarian needs; investing in programming that promotes recovery and resilience and which can withstand shocks that put development progress at risk; and delivering integrated analysis that is both conflict and climate-sensitive, centered on people and local capacities, to end dependence on humanitarian assistance over time. 

Let me mention just few examples that demonstrate where investment can bring significant benefits:  

In Bangladesh, UNDP’s support helped improve national-level capacities for risk-informed, gender-responsive and disability-inclusive development planning. This risk-informed approach mainstreams a risk reduction paradigm into development through its deep experience in governance, institution building and policy making, while pursuing a systems approach.  

UNDP facilitated the drafting of the UN Common Guidance on Resilience, which brings the UN together around a common operational approach on resilience building that applies across the humanitarian-development-peace nexus. 

Then at the regional level, we supported COMESA, the Common Market for East and Southern Africa, to develop a Regional Resilience Framework along with its implementation and Resource Mobilization Plan.

In the Latin American region alone, 22 countries engaged in different stages of post-disaster recovery work in the last five years with support. This is an integral part of our Resilient Recovery approach. UNDP enhances recovery assessment, planning and preparedness capacities that ensure building back better and resilience after disasters. We pursue this through conducting Post Disaster Needs Assessments, developing recovery frameworks, and assisting with the design and implementation of gender-responsive recovery projects/programmes etc.

Let me conclude by saying that traditional forms of responses are no longer a match for the challenges the world is facing. We need major investments in applying a resilience lens and risk-informed development is needed to prepare for and address current and future challenges. We therefore encourage Member States to partner with the UN system around its common approach to resilience building. Concrete suggestions to move forward:  
i. Applying a risk lens and a deeper reflection on underlying risk drivers from a systems perspective 
iii. Overcome risk management siloes that exist across the disaster, climate, environment, health and conflict spheres
iv. Foster strong risk governance that is ”fit-for-purpose” to deal with both conventional and systemic risk 
iv. Focus on prospective risk management to avoid new risks by controlling the development of risk drivers, such as environmental degradation, poverty and inequality 
v. Build new partnerships and solutions to unblock a wide range of financing streams with a long-term perspective.

In short, our investments in risk management need to bend the curve informed by an integrated resilience building approach. This will help overcome the existing risk management siloes as addressing one typology of risks only tends to elevate the unaddressed ones and will   prevent trading-off one risk management practice over the other. But most importantly, we need to work together for a paradigm shift that addresses systemic issues and help manage risks in order to reduce the needs for ad-hoc, high-volume humanitarian responses.

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