opportunity because half of the infra- structure that emerging economies will have by 2050 has not yet been built. And in advanced economies infrastructure needs to be renovated or rebuilt. We all need to get it right. Third, we need to take a systemic view. Climate change is altering hazard patterns and our global economic system is entirely interdependent. The resilience of your business depends on the weakest port through which your goods move. What happens somewhere else is, sooner or later, going to be at your doorstep. However, our capabilities for assess- ing and monitoring the performance of our systems are enormous, compared to just 10 years ago. How are you working to improve things? One priority of the G20 Working Group on Disaster Risk Reduction, since it was established during India’s 2023 pres- idency, is making a strong case for accelerated financing of disaster risk reduction. It’s about having the right kind of money at the right place to do the right things. It’s also about having national, subnational and local systems for using that money effectively for tan- gible reductions in losses. Second, we need to understand where risk is at the national, subnational and local levels. We help with measur- ing and quantifying risk, and making sure that information and analytics are usable for making investment decisions. Third, we focus on locally led adapta- tion and disaster risk reduction. In the last 15 years many countries have new legislation and institutions for disaster risk reduction: over 130 countries now have a national strategy. But things are not percolating down to the local level. So we work with governments in creat- ing legal or financial conditions so more resources, authority and capacity are available subnationally. Fourth, we have to do a much better job of recovering and rebuilding – in the physical sense and also social and eco- nomic systems, so livelihoods need to be more diversified, resilient and equi- table. The UN secretary general’s initiative on early warning for all has a very ambi- tious target to achieve 100% coverage for principal hazards. We are making
swift progress. In July, after the earth- quake in eastern Russia, the system informed communities as far away as North America about the resulting tsu- nami. That is a global good created out of multilateral action on early warning. Extreme heat is also a major issue, for human health and for economic systems. It has implications for water resources and energy systems. We cannot air condition our way out of this problem: it requires economies to be more responsive to extreme heat con- ditions. How much progress do you see having been made so far? We’ll have momentum if we can agree on high-level principles for financing disaster risk reduction and a collaborative narra- tive that starts at the national level rather than global contestations about who pays for disaster resilience. Similarly we need to plan reconstruction and recovery pro- grammes in advance rather than figuring out institutional and financial arrange- ments after an event. On early warning systems, we can learn from the 50 countries with cell broadcast technology, so that disseminating warn- ings becomes efficient across the world. A lot can happen here in the G20. In some countries, responsibility for disaster preparedness lies with the envi- ronment ministry, or infrastructure development, or the leader’s office. That diversity is a strength: it brings many dif-
ferent perspectives to the table and the issue does not become siloed. Disaster risk reduction is everyone’s business. The G20’s power here is that it works on multiple issues. The finance track has a working group on sustainable finance and one on infrastructure. The sherpa track has working groups on tourism, the future of work, environment sustainability and so on, so there can be discussions across working groups.
// KAMAL KISHORE Kamal Kishore is the special rep- resentative of the United Nations Secretary General for Disaster Risk Reduction, and head of the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. Prior to joining UNDRR, he was head of India’s Department of the National Disaster Manage- ment Authority, where he led the G20 Working Group on Disaster Risk Reduction and helped develop the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infra- structure. He previously spent 13 years with the United Nations Devel- opment Programme after serving at the Asian Disaster Preparedness Centre and the Action Research Unit for Development in New Delhi.
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