UNDRR Insights on Addressing Climate Change

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Mr. Marco Toscano-Rivalta (Photo by ADPC).

Mr. Marco Toscano-Rivalta is Chief of the Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR).

What critical steps should countries and governments take to address climate risks?

Countries need to understand better the climate and disaster risks they face by coupling together hazard, vulnerability, and exposure information and capacities that each local government or community may have.

As the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR) 2015-2030 outlines: awareness and understanding are critical first steps.

Furthermore, governments can add to existing early warning information to comprehensively understand risks in their fundamental dimensions. Another important point is that fundamentally, countries and governments need to continue taking the warnings issued by the UN and other authorities seriously when it comes to climate change.

For example, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) launched its Working Group 1 in 2021, the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called it ‘Code Red for Humanity!’

Furthermore, sea level rise will last centuries, if not thousands of years. It poses an existential threat, worsening the potential impacts of storm surges, constraining arable soils, and is pushing more people to migrate further inland.

Echoing the words of the Former President of Kiribati, Anote Tong, we need to ‘migrate with dignity,’ as millions of people will be displaced by 2050, according to the World Bank. Apart from that, there will also be millions more people in need of humanitarian aid every year.

Countries and governments need to continue taking the warnings issued by the UN and other authorities seriously when it comes to climate change.

What kind of systems can be put in place by governments to mitigate climate change impacts and make data more comprehensive?

Many things can be done. However, at the global level, we must work harder to reduce emissions and limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels.

We also need to provide meet the US $100 billion per year commitments to developing countries. We know their needs may be quadrupling by the decade’s end.

We must also balance investment in climate action, particularly mitigation and adaptation. Adaptation funds currently account for around 25 percent of overall climate financing, and that’s why the UN Secretary-General calls for 50 percent of total climate finance to be spent on building resilience and adaptation.

We know that risk is local by nature. Therefore, we need governments to keep empowering local governments for action so they can better understand the risks they face and devise strategies and plans, and be supported financially to implement those strategies.

In that sense, we are delighted to have the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC) as part of our Regional Coordinating Committee for Making Cities Resilient 2030, which fundamentally aims at helping local governments to achieve a better understanding of disaster risk, devising plans and policies, defining the investments, and then swing into action in partnership with the local community.

Mr. Marco Toscano-Rivalta spoke with ADPC in its ‘Climate Talks’ panel discussion.

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Critical Steps for Governments to Address Climate Change: Insights from UNDRR

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homolata

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