Empowering Local Governments for Better Disaster Risk Reduction
Participants of Stakeholder Consultation Session Organised by UCLG ASPAC at AMCDRR 2018.
UCLG ASPAC participated in the Asian Ministerial Conference for Disaster Risk Reduction 2018 (AMCDRR), organised by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) and the Government of Mongolia from 3 to 6 July 2018. AMCDRR is held biennially and is an important establishment to address global and regional disaster challenges. The theme of the AMCDRR 2018 was “Preventing Disaster Risk, Protecting Sustainable Development� and the meeting sought to provide a unique platform for governments and stakeholders to build on past progress and limit current and future threats to development by prioritising stronger disaster risk management by all sectors and at all levels.
During the conference, UCLG ASPAC organised one stakeholder consultation on July 3, 2018 and one side event which was attended by more than 25 representatives of local authority from Asian cities. The stakeholder consultation session produced local authority declaration and the Statement of Action of Local Authorities. It was a fruitful discussion wherein participants went through the draft point by point and gave their inputs. On July 5, 2018, UCLG ASPAC also organised a side event entitled “Localising SFDRR: City-to-City Sharing on AMCDRR Statement of Action and Making Cities Resilient Campaign (MCR) in Asia.” This was a one-hour session attended by mayors and local DRR practitioners and featured four presentations from distinguished speakers. Dr. Bernadia Irawati Tjandradewi, Secretary General of UCLG ASPAC, emphasised the importance of the multi-stakeholder partnership to strengthen the evidence-based policy development and implementation, and to promote data sharing and collection among cities. Whilst it has been three years into the implementation of the Sendai Framework, this side event emphasised the scorecard results and survey that could be used to plan way forward and monitoring, and stress the importance of localisation as the way to implement SFDRR. Mayor Madeline Alfelor of Iriga City, the Philippines, presented lessons learnt from AMCDRR 2016 and commitments undertaken on DRR based on the city’s experience on dealing with disaster. She stressed that local leaders’ primary role was to protect their citizens and the role of women leadership at local level. During the closing ceremony, Mayor of Kakonhat Municipality (Bangladesh), Md. Abdul Mozid represented the local authority and delivered the declaration and statement of action at the plenary session of the MCDRR 2018. The key outcomes of the AMCDRR 2018 is the Action Plan 2018-2020 of the Asia Regional Plan for SFDRR Implementation and highlights the achievement of target ‘’e’’ by 2020 (target e: increasing the number of countries and cities/local authorities with DRR plans and strategies).