Building urban resilience in the Arab region: Implementing the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 at the local level
The impact of climate change on urban livelihoods and natural biodiversity systems has long been observed worldwide. Shaped by the type of hazards and the degree of exposure, ‘extensive disaster risks’ derived from urbanisation, environmental degradation, socio-economic inequality and poor urban governance have resulted in larger mortality rates, economic losses and physical damage. With a current population over 359 million, the Arab Region is expected to have 598 million inhabitants by 2050, and 60 million people exposed to severe hydro-geological hazards in the coastal cities. Causing the increase in extreme weather events’ severity and frequency, the number of human and infrastructure losses caused by climate change at the city level are exacerbating, especially among the urban poor, settling in the most high-risk vulnerable areas.
The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR) was endorsed in 2015 by the UN General Assembly as a 15-year voluntary, non-binding agreement. It lists four priorities for action and seven global targets. This agreement recognizes the State as the primary actor to reduce disaster risk, but it acknowledges that responsibility should be shared with other stakeholders, including local government and the private sector.
Aimed at learning lessons from its predecessor document, the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA) 2005-2015, and to build urban resilience in the Arab Region, the present study provides an outline on a series of local consultations that took place in 25 Arab cities in 2017 and 2018. These consultations provided a platform for addressing the gaps, challenges and achievements made with the implementation of the HFA by 2010 Making Cities Resilient Campaign partners, and provided a set of recommendations that shall allow local governments to monitor and review progress in the implementation of the SFDRR. To do so, the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) introduced a revised and updated Disaster Resilience Scorecard (2017), that serves as the reporting mechanism for local governments on the SFDRR global targets.
This paper is a contribution to the 2019 edition of the Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction (GAR 2019).
To cite this paper:
Eltinay, N. and Harvey, M. Building urban resilience in the Arab region: Implementing the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 at the local level. Contributing Paper to GAR 2019
