
Global assessment report on disaster risk reduction - our world at risk: Transforming governance for a resilient future
The report explores the challenges faced in managing systemic risk, the complexity of decision-making in volatile situations and offers solutions for improving risk communication.
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OVERVIEW
The report highlights the need for a systemic approach to address complex risks faced by governments, businesses, and communities worldwide. The integration of Indigenous and traditional knowledge with scientific data to develop all-of-society approaches is recommended. The report also emphasises the importance of developing innovations in systemic risk modelling to better anticipate and respond to risk. Worth noting is the recommendation for a drastic increase in investment in adaptation and resilience, particularly to close the early warning gap within five years.
The report indicates the increased occurrence and intensity of disasters, making it essential to transform current governance systems. In an age of complex risk and cascading impacts, the report calls for the dismantling of siloed thinking and replacement with all-of-society approaches. The need for financial systems to account for risk, with adequate financing for disaster prevention and reduction, is necessary to limit global heating to 1.5°C and reduce emissions to 45% below 2010 levels by 2030.
The report recommends rethinking current risk reduction approaches, primarily focusing on valuing immediate, short-term impacts, and failing to measure other factors such as biodiversity loss, deforestation, and unpaid care. Accordingly, the report proposes measuring and valuing what matters, linking understanding risk to reworking of financial and governance systems to account for the actual costs of current actions.
The COVID-19 pandemic highlights the need to better understand and act on the face of systemic risk. Immediate actions to address systemic risk include measuring what we value, factoring how human minds make decisions about risk into system design, and reconfiguring governance and financial systems to work across silos and engage with affected people.
The report demonstrates that a transforming approach is essential to address systemic risk for sustainable development. The report explores how designing systems to address the interconnected value of people, planet, and prosperity, changing what is measured to consider sustainability, ecosystems’ value and future climate change impacts, can have a significant effect. Furthermore, the report outlines the role of governance and financial systems in realigning incentives away from short-term gains towards long-term sustainable development, with a focus on collective and integrated approaches.
Building resilience is fundamental to climate action and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Expert processes such as IPCC have demonstrated the extent of the challenge involved in addressing this issue. The report recommends that societies worldwide deserve governance systems that consider people, the planet, and prosperity’s holistic interactions. Furthermore, understanding that one cannot settle on a single trajectory, the report recommends that planners consider “baskets” of possible outcomes while developing system design, focused on learning from mistakes, and reassessing how to communicate around trends and uncertainty.
MENTORS & CONTRIBUTORS
Things to learn
Actions to take
ESG issues
SDGs
SASB Sustainability Sector
Finance relevance
RELEVANT LOCATIONS
- Africa
- Asia
- Asia-Pacific
- Bangladesh
- Dominican Republic
- Ecuador
- El Savador
- Europe (EU)
- Guatemala
- Haiti
- Honduras
- India
- Indonesia
- Iran, Islamic Rep.
- Kenya
- Latin America & Caribbean
- Myanmar
- Nepal
- Nicaragua
- North America
- Pakistan
- Papua New Guinea
- Philippines
- Saudi Arabia
- Somalia
- Syrian Arab Republic
- United Arab Emirates
- Vietnam