Experience Sharing Workshop: Making Cities Sustainable and Resilient

Background and Introduction

“Making cities sustainable and resilient: implementing the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 at the local level” is a three-year initiative by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) and United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), supported by the European Commission. Under this initiative, UNISDR and its partners have been working with 20 high risk cities globally to strengthen capacities to develop and initiate the implementation of disaster risk reduction and resilience plans. The cities include: Kampala, Uganda; Dire-Dawa, Ethiopia; Kisumu, Kenya; Yaounde, Cameroon; Praia, Cape Verde; Khartoum, Republic of Sudan; Ismaliya Governorate, Egypt; Nablus, Palestine; Nouakchott, Mauritania; Honiara, Solomon Islands; Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia; Kathmandu City, Nepal; Dhaka North City Cooperation, Bangladesh; Cilacap Regency, Indonesia; Mawlamyine, Myanmar; Tegucigalpa, Honduras; Guayaquil, Ecuador; San Juan de Lurigancho, Peru; Guatemala City, Guatemala; and Santo Domingo Esto, Republica Dominicanna.

Capacity of beneficiary cities and key stakeholders is instrumental to the success of this initiative.  In January 2018, a Training of Trainers on “Making Cities Resilient: Developing and Implementing Disaster Risk Reduction Action Plans” was held in Incheon, Republic of Korea with participation of 20 beneficiary cities and implementing partners.  The workshop not only provided fundamental knowledge on disaster risk reduction (DRR) and sustainable development, but also helped equip city officials with tools in self-assessing the disaster resilience building progress and developing DRR and resilience action plans. It was recognized that networking among beneficiary cities, partners and stakeholders was strengthened and the discussion contributed to enhanced learning and commitment to disaster resilience.

During June to October 2018, a series of regional experience sharing workshops were held across the globe for participating cities to reflect the experience in the self-assessment process and in the preparation of DRR action plans and learned from peer cities in the regions. Moving towards the end of the initiative, the “Experience Sharing Workshop: Making Cities Sustainable and Resilient” is planned to be held in Incheon, Republic of Korea, on 4-8 March 2019 as a concluding workshop for cities under this initiative to share their DRR action plans and exchange lesson learned in the process throughout the project implementation.

This workshop will be a platform for cities and partners to:

• Present DRR action plans
• Share experience in applying the results of the Disaster Resilience Scorecard for Cities self-assessment in the DRR planning process, collaborating with multi-stakeholder groups to develop DRR action plans and initiating the implementation toward disaster resilience building in the cities
• Reflect and extract the lesson learned: what went well and what should be improved, what were the key factors of success and/or failure, what else is needed
• Provide inputs to the future of the Making Cities Resilient Campaign post 2020
• Strengthen regional and global network of cities and peer-to-peer learning

Expected Outcomes:

• Review of progress and outcome of the initiative
• Lessons and best practices shared and captured
• Networking among cities, partners and stakeholder strengthened