Training of Trainers (ToT) Workshops on “Urban Risk Reduction: Implementing Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 at Local Level” - Russian Federation

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 natural 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, 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. 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.

The Training of Trainers (ToT) workshop provided an opportunity to participants and contributed to:

• Better understanding of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 implementation and national and local level and role of governments
• Enhanced knowledge and skills in designing and delivering training for cities/local governments on DRR, specifically to undertake self-assessment of resilience, using the LGSAT, City Resilience Scorecard and new Sendai Framework Local Urban Indicators tools and to develop or update of city disaster risk management plan (or City Resilience Action Plan)
• Increased political commitment and social demand for disaster resilient development, adapted for climate change, aiming for sustainable development.
• Mapping out the strategies and road-maps for follow up in other cities and municipalities of the country.
• Increased 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.
• Participants learned about the Making Cities Resilient (MCR) Global Campaign and how its assessment and planning tools, materials and approaches may be used to build local resilience to disasters.
• Participants acquired 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.