On the sidelines of the 3rd International Conference on Financing for Development in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, an €80 Mio. funding package was unveiled: “Building Disaster Resilience to Natural Hazards in Sub-Saharan African Regions, Countries and Communities”. The 5-year programme is support by European Union funds and IRDR co-sponsor UNISDR will be one of the implementing partners.
UNISDR’s Margareta Wahlström pointed out that the programme will focus on improving preparedness, early warning systems and establishing systems for understanding how disaster losses are generated, so as to help avoid them in the future. Much of these actions reflect research in line with IRDR’s research programme and will help achieve the aims set out in the Sendai Framework for DRR, adopted in March 2015.
The programme’s five areas of focus include:
- enhanced regional coordination and DRR monitoring;
- enhanced capacity of regional economic communities for coordination and planning (led by the World Bank’s Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery – GFDRR);
- improved capacity of regional climate centers for weather and climate services and real-time early warning systems;
- improved risk knowledge for future risk modelling (overseen by UNISDR); and
- enhanced financial strategies for informed decision making (run by the GFDRR).
For more information, see: UNISDR Press Release: Africa disaster reduction fund is major new step; and: UNISDR Press Release: Major EU boost for disaster risk management In Africa.
