Urban Risk Reduction: City Resilience Action Planning - Tehran and Mashad, Iran

Background

Over the past 20 years disasters have affected 4.4 billion people, caused USD 2 trillion of damage and killed 1.3 million people. Natural disasters affected people living in developing countries and the most vulnerable communities within those countries. Over 95 percent of people killed by disasters are from developing countries.

Current and future challenges of mainstreaming Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) and Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) in development planning demand new approaches, mechanisms, sets of skills and competencies that need to be identified and strengthened in order to form the basis of increasing public demand and political commitment to local actions and budget allocations. Lack of appropriate knowledge on the subject, lack of government commitment and the absence of mainstreaming in current organizational and government strategy are key existing challenges.

Urban risk is continually increasing. It has been estimated that, more than 50 per cent of the world's population is living in urban areas. Urbanization is taking place at an unprecedented rate. In the next 20 years, the world’s population is predicted to increase by an additional two billion. By 2030 more than 60% of the world’s population is expected to live in cities, with record concentrations in large urban conglomerations and megacities in the developing world. Vulnerability of cities to disasters is on the rise especially as poor people settle in high-risk urban areas. Unfortunately, planning and development of cities has given little consideration to the consequences of hazards such as earthquakes, hydro-meteorological risks and others. The implication of this reality is the need for countries to focus their collective energies to create a safer world for urban dwellers and develop a series of innovative approaches to meet this challenge.

In this regard, building resilience and adapting to climate change is crucial for cities in Paraná. Efforts to build resilience in cities can benefit from integrating disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation with existing efforts in disaster risk reduction and other similar planning processes.

Outcome

The Training of Trainers (ToT) workshop on “Urban Risk reduction: City Resilience Action Planning” contributed to:

• a better understanding of the Sendai Framework for DRR 2015-2030 implementation at national and local level and the role of governments




• increase political commitment and social demand for disaster resilient development, adapted for climate change, aiming for sustainable development.




• increase engagement of national actors in the field of national development and planning with the DRR and CCA Agenda and enhance country planners and decision makers’ ability and commitment to promote DRR and CCA through relevant systems, policies and processes.




• inform participants about the Making Cities Resilient Global Campaign and how its assessment and planning tools, materials and approaches may be used to build local resilience to disasters.




• provide participants with new skills and capacities on City Resilience Action Plans development and implementation, based on MCR Campaign 10 Essentials to make their cities resilient to disasters.

The workshops main outcomes and agreed next steps included:

1. Translating into farsi and adapting Iranian version of the UNISDR ONEA-GETI “Urban Risk Reduction: Cities Resilience Action Planning” Training Course to Iranian context and adding relevant national case studies for all MCR Campaign 10 Essentials.

   It has been agreed that Mashad city Disaster Risk Reduction Department will prepare a Roadmap for scaling up and will report on a proposed approach and way forward for further translating, adapting and scaling up the UNISDR trainnig course in all cities and LG’s located in Maschad region. It will present them both to the Mayor of Mashhad city, the Governor and the National Department of DRR & Emergency Situation as well as to the Head of Mashhad State Universities and Training Centers to ensure greater understanding and support from high level Ministry officials on the importance of adaptation and scaling up of the joint Training Programme for national and local governmnet officials and academia and DRR experts in Russia based on UNISDR ONEA-GETI Trainnig course Modules and tools.

2. Convening in April 2016 a follow up Training of Trainers (ToT) Workshop for Iran National Government officials, Mashhad city Trainers and University of Mashhad professors on the adapted version of the UNISDR ONEA-GETI “Urban Risk Reduction: Cities Resilience Action Planning” Training Course at UNISDR ONEA-GETI office in Incheon, republic of Korea.

   It has been agreed to send a delegation of trainers from Iran National DRR Department , City of Mashhad goernmnet and Mashhad State University professors to participate at the special training of Trainers (ToT) workshop at the UNISDR ONEA-GETI office in Incheon, Republic of Korea on April 2016.