Avoiding Disasters: A Perspective from Climate Change Adaptation Effectiveness and Loss and Damage

Avoiding disasters is an interesting and helpful idea to understand where we have made progress in risk reduction and where we can make further inroads. This presentation looks at the idea of avoiding disasters deeply and discusses the needed approaches to quantify and bring evidence to the front. It proposes that while evidence on avoiding disasters may exist on the ground, the same may not come to the top when disaster data is aggregated and presented which is often referred to by the policymakers. Further, the presentation identifies two opportunities to achieve the objective of avoiding disasters in the context of climate change i.e. addressing loss and damages associated with climate change and implementing effective adaptation options (adaptation effectiveness). The presentation concludes by suggesting the need to develop evidence from the ground on how losses and damages are addressed by using effective adaptation options and for that clear definitions that can guide tools, assessments and approaches.