Safeguarding development achievements through risk-informed development

Project description

Title: Global Initiative on Disaster Risk Management (GIDRM) III
Commissioned by: German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ)
Country: Global programme; Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, Southern Africa; with country packages in Botswana, Colombia, Georgia, India and Lesotho; Southern African Development Community, SADC
Coalition on Disaster Resilient Infrastructure, CDRI; Network of National Public Investment Systems of Latin America and the Caribbean, Red SNIP
Overall term: 2020 to 2023

Context

Disasters wipe out many years of development achievements and reduce the development opportunities of the affected countries. Around the globe, complex risks endanger human lives and basic infrastructure services such as health care or the water supply. Nevertheless, development decisions do not always take adequate account of these risks. Consecutive and cascading disasters undermine resilience. Current approaches often address just one threat at a time – usually a natural hazard – rather than looking at several simultaneously occurring or new global hazards. Climate change, urbanisation, insufficient health care, state fragility and violent conflicts further exacerbate the risks.

Objective

Selected decision-makers along with regional organisations and initiatives are enabled to promote risk-informed development under consideration of context-specific fragility aspects.

Approach

Risk-informed development incorporates diverse, interdependent, dynamic, cross-border and simultaneous risks into the planning and implementation of development measures. To this end, it is necessary to elaborate (worst-case) scenarios, take account of a changing risk landscape at all times, factor in uncertainties and design and adapt development processes to be correspondingly flexible. This requires coordinated cooperation between various government departments and national, regional and local institutions.

Aiming to strengthen the capacities for dealing with multiple, systemic and unknown risks, the project cooperates with regional networks in Africa, Latin America and Asia and selected member states. It promotes exchange between state, civil society and private sector decision-makers and experts from the scientific and research communities in order to foster the transfer of knowledge regarding risk-informed development at international level.

Last update: November 2021