Event 1
Collaborating Efforts to Strengthening Cities Resilience to Climate and Disaster Risks
9 March, 13:15 - 14:45 JST
Over the past 20 years, disasters have affected over 4 billion people, caused USD 2.97 trillion in damage, and claimed approximately 1.23 million lives (UNDRR, 2020). Globally, natural disasters often affect the most vulnerable communities, and over 95% of people killed by natural disasters are from developing countries (Extreme Weather and Natural Disasters, 2012). Urban risk also continues to increase, and according to the UNDESA Population Division, more than 55% of the world's population now lives in urban areas, a proportion that is expected to increase to 68% by 2050.
The vulnerability of cities to disasters is on the rise, especially as poor people settle in high-risk urban areas. Unfortunately, the planning and development of cities has given little consideration to the consequences of hazards such as earthquakes and hydro-meteorological risks, among others. Cities need to focus their collective energies to create a safer living environment for their inhabitants and develop a series of innovative approaches to meet this challenge. In this regard, building resilience to disasters is crucial for cities, and these efforts can benefit from integrating disaster risk reduction and adaptation with existing actions in sustainable development.
The overall aim of this virtual session is to strengthen understanding on how to make cities resilient, and to share best practices and evidence-based local resilience planning. This took place in collaboration with partners, through multi-stakeholder engagement, and in alignment with national DRR and adaptation strategies, the Sendai Framework, the Paris Agreement and SDGs at local level in Southeast Asia.
The session provided a platform to discuss the opportunities, shared experience and best practices in building capacity, and raised awareness and promote disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation through relevant systems, policies, and processes. This virtual session facilitated discussions on key challenges and issues among countries in the Asia-Pacific region on 1) mainstreaming disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation into local planning and policy development processes and 2) increasing political commitment and social demand for climate and disaster resilient development. It also contributed to learning about best practices, approaches, tools, processes and methodologies used to conduct city resilience assessments and develop resilient city action plans and strategies in the Asia-Pacific. In addition, discussions also identified opportunities for possible cooperation among countries and partners, and possible areas of capacity-building support from international and regional organizations. The session promoted inclusiveness through enhanced dialogue among local governments and stakeholders, and include recommended actions.
* The APAN Forum consists of sessions organized around four streams and five enablers, and this session was held under the Community and Local Resilience stream and the Planning and Process enabler.
Event Details
Online (Zoom)
The 7th APAN Forum Support Secretariat (IGES)
E-mail : [email protected]
Presentation Materials
Programme
Session Chair: Naoya Tsukamoto, Director of AIT RRC.AP
Welcome Speech |
Naoya Tsukamoto, Director, AIT Regional Resource Centre for Asia and the Pacific (AIT RRC.AP) |
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Keynote Speeches |
Marco Toscano-Rivalta, Chief, Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) |
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Kazuhiko Takeuchi, President, IGES |
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Panel Discussion | |||
Panel Speakers
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Inu Salike, Asst. Professor, Department of Architecture, Institute of Engineering-Nepal |
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Armen Rostomyan, SPS/Consultant, AIT RRC.AP |
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Arlene B. Arcillas, Mayor, Santa Rosa City, the Philippines |
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Binaya Raj Shivakoti, Senior Adaptation Specialist, IGES |
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Moderator
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Phurba Lhendup, Head, Climate Change and Disaster Risk reduction Cluster, AIT RRC.AP |
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Q&A Session |
Event 2
Status and challenges for linking scientific knowledge to strengthening socio-economic resilience to climate-related disasters
10 March, 16:00-17:30 JST
The risk of extreme climate-related disasters is expected to increase further due to climate change, while also threatening fiscal sustainability. But consideration of climate is still not fully incorporated into the design and implementation of disaster risk reduction efforts. Actions are required in both the public and private sectors to promote synergies between disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA) based on the latest scientific knowledge and assessments. Valuable climate-related scientific knowledge for such integration has been developed, including future climate risk assessment models and its downscaling techniques. Yet there remain various challenges and obstacles to deploying them on a wider scale in Asia and the Pacific.
In this session, speakers from academia and research institutes first shared the currently available scientific knowledge to predict future climate risks and link them with disaster risk reduction and adaptation measures. They also discussed associated uncertainties and the approaches to manage them. Next, speakers from development agencies and risk insurance companies introduced useful science-based tools to develop, monitor and evaluate adaptation projects with insights based on adaptation financing. Then, policy makers and practitioners in the Asia-Pacific region shared their experiences utilizing scientific knowledge to mainstream climate change adaptation measures into disaster risk reduction in order to achieve economic sector resilience. Finally, the speakers discussed and explore how they can work together for integration between DRR and CCA based on the latest scientific knowledge and assessments.
The objective of this session was to deepen discussions among multiple sectors and try to identify areas of cooperation, based on synergies between DRR and CCA, that can be scaled up to actual actions in the Asia-Pacific region in order to achieve inclusive socio-economic development through investments in resilience. A focus of the discussion was to identify climate-related scientific knowledge that can be utilized by various actors to ultimately transform climate risks to socio-economic development and opportunities. The takeaways for the audience were an understanding of existing climate-related science and how the information can be shared and utilized within the context of socio-economic resilience in the Asia Pacific region.
* The APAN Forum consists of sessions organized around four streams and five enablers. This session was held under the Economic Sector Resilience stream and the Science and Assessment enabler.
Event Details
Online (Zoom)
The 7th APAN Forum Support Secretariat (IGES)
E-mail : [email protected]
Programme
Session Chair: Arghya Sinha Roy, Senior Climate Change Adaptation Specialist, Asian Development Bank (ADB)
Keynote Speeches |
Kazuhiko Takemoto, Visiting Professor, the United Nations University Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability (UNU-IAS); |
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Panel Discussion | |||
Panel Speakers
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Anaa Hassan, Assistant Director, Climate Change Department, Ministry of Environment, Maldives |
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Masaaki Nagamura, Fellow, International Initiatives, Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance Co., Ltd. |
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Keiko Yoshikawa, Deputy Director, Center for Climate Change Adaptation, National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES), Japan |
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Radhika Murti, Director, Global Ecosystem Management Programme, International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) |
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Moderator
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Peter King, Senior Policy Advisor, IGES |
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Q&A Session |
Event 3
Filling the Adaptation GAP
11 March, 18:30 - 20:00 JST
Two flagship reports on adaptation were published recently. UNEP published the “Adaptation Gap Report 2020” on 14 January 2021, and GCA published the “State and Trends in Adaptation Report 2020” on 18 December 2020. Similarly, the process to develop the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), including a chapter on Asia, is underway. These efforts give a good overview of ongoing adaptation efforts, remaining gaps, and available options to fill the gaps. In response, a group of capacity-building institutions in the Asia-Pacific region has started a joint endeavor under the AP-PLAT scheme. AP-PLAT has just defined its approach and started taking collective actions to fill such GAPs through consultations at an AP-PLAT workshop convened a week before the APAN Forum.
This session first shared the latest scientific findings from the ongoing adaptation efforts, the remaining gaps, and available options to fill the gaps in the Asia-Pacific region. It then introduced the two latest, world-renowned scientific reports, and an interim summary of the literature review on adaptation options to feed into the IPCC AR6 process.
The session also introduced the AP-PLAT approach for capacity building in the Asia-Pacific to fill such gaps through collective actions by a group of institutions in the region, and invite APAN Forum participants to explore their possible participation in this process. The participants have better understanding on the “state of play” of adaptation efforts in the Asia-Pacific region and were given insights on future directions to address such gaps through collective action.
* This session was held as a side event of the APAN Forum.
Event Details
Online (Zoom)
The 7th APAN Forum Support Secretariat (IGES)
E-mail : [email protected]
Programme
Session Chair: Osamu Mizuno, Principal fellow, IGES
Opening Remarks |
Kazuaki Takahashi, Director of Climate Change Adaptation Office, Global Environment Bureau, Ministry of the Environment, Japan |
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Panel Discussion |
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Panel Speakers
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Valerie Kapos, Head of the Climate Change & Biodiversity Programme, UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre |
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Aiping Chen, Director, the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA) China Office |
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Rajarshi Dasgupta, Senior Researcher, IGES/ Lead Author of IPBES Asia-Pacific Regional Assessment / Chapter Scientist of IPCC 6th Assessment Report (WG II) |
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Moderator
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Tetsuo Kuyama, Director of the Bangkok Regional Center, IGES / AP-PLAT (Secretariat for Capacity Development) |
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Q&A Session |