Attachments
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Global warming will surpass 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels during the next decade, due to greenhouse gas emissions. The constant rise in temperatures and related impacts combine with other pressures, thus increasing risk and undermining resilience. The increasing interconnectedness of people and human systems increases the risk of compound and cascading crises.
The maps in this report highlight how factors such as the rapid deterioration of biodiversity, the degradation of land and stress on water resources, lower the capacity of human systems to withstand hazards that are occurring more frequently and with greater intensity.
Currently, only 50 per cent of countries have operational early-warning systems and even fewer have legislation in place to connect these systems to preparedness and response plans that can ensure prevention and anticipatory action, as well as response. Humanitarian needs are also rising, as disasters and conflict continue to create enormous human suffering.
While progress continues to be made towards increasing access to electricity, water, healthcare and education, progress towards reducing extreme poverty has been challenged by COVID-19 climate change and other factors (World Bank, 2022a). This has led to growing inequities and pressures on the planet, which are reversing other hard-won development gains. This is particularly the case for lower-income countries, who contribute the least to the causes of climate change and where the most vulnerable populations reside. These adverse impacts occur because the pursuit of human development has not adequately considered the inadvertent effects on ecosystems and livelihoods. Building in resilience-thinking can accelerate the required paradigm shift for the benefit of people, the planet and prosperity, and future generations.
However, interventions and investments in resilience must become more targeted, more systems-oriented and more capable of scaling-up. Systems must not only be able to recover from disasters but need to be adaptive and transformative to build a more sustainable, prosperous and equitable future.
Developed to cover the period 2015-2030, the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) framework has agreed targets and indicators and a data-gathering system that has been accepted and is being applied by United Nations Member States across the globe1. Figure 1 shows the existing web of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) targets and indicators, that covers key interconnected progress across people, planet and prosperity. However, all too often, the progress data is collected independently in silos. When this same data is looked at holistically from the perspective of resiliencebuilding, key resilience deficits that are holding back sustainable development become evident.
The maps in this report highlight a number of these resilience deficits that are holding back achievement of key sustainable development goals. At the same time, the report’s action case examples show that this is not inevitable, and how action is possible on every continent to stop the worsening spiral of risk and disasters and to accelerate SDG target achievement.
Addressing resilience gaps will require the unprecedented scaling-up from with both resilience investment and adaptation action both from within the public and private sectors, particularly for the most vulnerable countries. As these investments take time to mobilize and prepare, delay will increase the inevitable costs. Action is needed now. Disaster risk reduction sits at the nexus between development, humanitarian and climate change action, and can help foster more-sustainable resilient action in each.
Readjusting development pathways requires a reexamination of how prosperity is measured, and a greater emphasis on resilience as key element of sustainable development today and in the future.