IDRLF Incheon 2022

Overview

The Role of Cities in Reducing Complex Risk

The inaugural Forum was convened amid a climate emergency and a global pandemic, focusing on the role of cities and local governments in reducing disaster risk. It set out from the evidence that the biggest dividend in avoided future disaster losses can be reaped at the level of municipalities, and that governments that invest to better understand, communicate and manage their climate and disaster risk most effectively protect the lives and livelihoods of their citizens as well as their urban infrastructure.

More than 90% of all disasters today are related to climate change and extreme weather events, and their losses are increasingly concentrated in urban areas. The Ministry of the Interior and Safety and Incheon Metropolitan City — a Resilience Hub of the UN-convened Making Cities Resilient 2030 (MCR2030) initiative — reached out to leaders across Northeast Asia and ASEAN to scale up action on climate and disaster risk reduction.

The Forum aimed to capture and share practical experience of ‘disaster resilience in action’, including technology; to consolidate policy recommendations to scale up the number of local governments taking effective action; and to ensure the region’s experience positively influences the global development policy agenda. It was hosted by Incheon Metropolitan City, the Incheon Institute and UNDRR ONEA, with the support of the Ministry of the Interior and Safety and in cooperation with the Trilateral Cooperation Secretariat (TCS) and ASEAN.