IPCC_Managing Risks of Extreme Events.pdf - Climate Access

Chapter 7Managing the Risks: International Level and Integration across Scalesknowledge and experience in a mutually supportive and synergistic way. Climate change adaptation could be factoredinto all disaster risk management, and weather-related disasters are becoming an essential component of the adaptationagenda. [7.4]Opportunities exist to create synergies in international finance for disaster risk management and adaptationto climate change, but these have not yet been fully realized (high confidence). International funding fordisaster risk reduction remains relatively low as compared to the scale of spending on international humanitarianresponse. [7.4.2] Governments have committed to mobilize greater amounts of funding for climate change adaptationand this may also help to support the longer-term investments necessary for disaster risk reduction. [7.4.2]Expanded international financial support for climate change adaptation as specified in the CancunAgreements of 2010 and the Climate Change Green Fund will facilitate and strengthen disaster riskmanagement (medium confidence). The agreements to provide substantial additional finance at the internationallevel for adaptation to climate change have been formulated to include climate- and weather-related disaster riskreduction. There is therefore some prospect that projects and planning for disaster risk reduction and climate changeadaptation can increasingly be combined and integrated at the national level (high confidence). [7.3.2.2, 7.4]Technology transfer and cooperation under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Changehas until recently focused more on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions than on adaptation (highconfidence). Technology for disaster risk management, especially to advance and strengthen forecasting and warningsystems and emergency response, is promoted through the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA), but is widely dispersedamong many international and national-level organizations and is not closely linked to the UNISDR. Technology transferand cooperation to advance disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation are important. Coordination ontechnology transfer and cooperation between these two fields has been lacking, which has led to fragmentedimplementation (high confidence). [7.4]International financial institutions, bilateral donors, and other international actors have played a catalytic role in thedevelopment of catastrophic risk transfer and other risk-sharing instruments in the more vulnerable countries.Stronger products and methods for risk sharing and risk transfer are being developed as a relatively newand expanding area of international cooperation to help achieve climate change adaptation and disasterrisk reduction (high confidence). [7.4] Established mechanisms include remittances, post-disaster credit, andinsurance and reinsurance. Partly in response to concerns about climate change, additional insurance instruments arein various stages of development and expansion including international risk pools and weather index micro-insurance.These processes and products are being developed by international financial institutions as well as by nongovernmentalorganizations and the private sector. [7.4.4.2]One lesson from disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation is that stronger efforts at theinternational level do not necessarily lead to substantive and rapid results on the ground and at the locallevel. There is room for improved integration across scales from international to local (high confidence).[7.6] The expansion of disaster risk reduction through the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction(1990-1999), and the establishment of the UNISDR and the creation and adoption of the HFA have had results thatare difficult to specify or to quantify – but which may have contributed to some reduction in morbidity and mortality,while enjoying much less success in the area of economic and property losses. The problems of disaster risk havecontinued to grow due in large part to the relentless expansion in exposure and vulnerability even as the internationalmanagement capacity has expanded (medium confidence). [7.5, 7.6]397