Highlights and images for 23 October 2024

Early warning is essential for preventing loss and damage from disasters. It enables both the authorities and the impacted communities to take proactive measures and reduce vulnerabilities, thereby saving lives and minimizing the impact of disasters.

Women and girls are at the forefront of disasters and often suffer the worst impacts, but are typically sidelined from disaster-related decision-making processes. During the discussions on the second day of the Ninth Session of the African Regional Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction (AfRP-9), speakers and participants alike called for gender-inclusive disaster risk management (DRM). They stressed the importance of integrating gender considerations in disaster risk processes, including risk profiles, in order to enhance understanding of how disasters will impact all members of society. Participants subsequently heard a presentation on the Sendai Framework Gender Action Plan, which aims to substantially increase resource allocations, activities, and impacts of gender-responsive disaster risk reduction (DRR) and substantially reduce gender-related disaster risks.

The importance of urgent and early action to minimize loss and damage from disasters was a recurring theme during Wednesday’s discussions. This urgent action requires financing, technology transfer, collaboration, and expertise to provide effective early warning to communities. However, speakers in a number of the day’s sessions emphasized the growing financing gap.

During the session on “Reducing Loss and Damage: Saving Lives and Protecting Investments,” while applauding the creation of the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage, several participants highlighted the need for simplified access procedures to ensure the most vulnerable can access the needed resources. Speakers also addressed the role of the Santiago Network in providing technical assistance and capacity building to developing countries to help avert, minimize, and address loss and damage.

The importance of collaboration and cooperation on DRM cannot be overstated and several sessions during the day provided examples of the roles of different sectors and levels of society in both proactively warning against predicted disasters and dealing with the aftermath. The session on “Taking the Africa Multi-Hazard Early Warning and Early Action System (AMHEWAS) from Continental to National” explored AMHEWAS implementation. Presentations by Tanzania about its National Emergency Operation and Communication Centre (EOCC) Situation Room and by the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) about the ECCAS Situation Room demonstrated AMHEWAS implementation at the national and regional levels, respectively.

The cooperation required to manage disaster risk requires the active participation of the private sector, including through investments in resilience-building. The session on “The Role of Private Business and Finance in Creating or Reducing Risk” encouraged businesses to abandon the traditional model of focusing solely on profit and, instead, to align their pursuit of economic growth with a focus on social and environmental impacts. Speakers also highlighted the contribution of the private sector, for instance, through the provision of jobs and support to local communities, which enables them to ‘bounce back’ after disasters.

Towards the end of the day, participants began to consider the draft Windhoek Declaration, which builds on the Nairobi Declaration from AfRP-8. It will be considered and adopted by Ministers and Heads of Delegation on Thursday, 24 October.