Disaster Risk Reduction Expert Forum 2015
Disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA) communities have separate missions with overlapping objectives though they operate at different time scales. They share the overarching goal of creating resilient societies in the face of changing climate and environmental conditions. By bridging, better yet blending, their overlapping activities they can help to reinforce each other by improving the efficiency and effectiveness more quickly and more sustainably of the outcomes of their projects and programs. Such benefits can be gained by sharing their methodologies and lessons and by working to integrate their activities at the different time and space scales at which they operate.
Various studies of hazards and disasters undertaken over decades contain direct or indirect references to lessons that had previously been identified but had apparently not yet been implemented, only to be “re-discovered” following the next disaster. Why do we so often not learn from past experiences? Where do lessons come from and does that make a difference with regard to their potential “re-usability” by future decision makers? Can organizations learn?
Questions such as these must be addressed, if collecting lessons from experience is to continue to be considered valuable to the DRR and the CCA decision-making processes. Have we been looking in the right direction when it comes to DRR “lessons learned”? Is the missing aspect a focus on the need for management of “lessons identified”? Lessons not stored, re-used or shared, one could argue runs the risk of producing nothing of value for the long term.
This Forum is convened to look at lessons learned about lessons learned about hydro-meteorological DRR and CCA. The conference is not a scientific conference about the science of hydro-meteorological hazards. It is fundamentally about the usability of the lessons identified from scientific and societal findings related to disaster risk reduction and a changing climate.
For more information please contact Michael.glantz@colorado.edu