UN disaster chief urges integrating risk reduction in development finance

Kamal Kishore says crisis-response funding isn’t enough — resilience and risk reduction need to underpin all development finance.

The United Nations’ top official for disaster risk reduction is calling on governments, lenders, and the private sector to ensure that risk reduction is fully embedded in every aspect of development finance, warning that crisis-response funding alone will not prevent mounting losses.

Kamal Kishore, the U.N. secretary-general’s special representative for disaster risk reduction and head of UNDRR, told Devex that while countries know more than ever about the risks they face, that knowledge still fails to shape mainstream planning and investment.

“I think our understanding of disaster risk is at an all-time high. We have a better way of modeling different kinds of hazards. We have a better way of keeping track of exposure.... But all of that understanding is not underpinning our development thinking, unfortunately,” he said on Monday during an interview at Casa Devex in Sevilla, Spain, on the sidelines of the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development, or FFD4.

At FFD4, he said, negotiators should ensure that risk reduction is no longer treated as an afterthought. Kishore laid out three priorities he hopes will emerge from the meeting: embedding risk reduction in all development financing so new infrastructure can handle emerging hazards; dedicating resources to retrofit vulnerable facilities like schools, hospitals, and energy systems; and adopting a “full-spectrum approach” using national budgets, private capital, climate finance, insurance, and official development assistance in a coordinated way.

He urged FFD4 attendees to reflect on their surroundings: “We are here in Sevilla and in the middle of a very hot time of the year. If you have to build resilience to extreme heat, you cannot air condition your way out of it. You have to transform the way buildings are built, the cities are built, the infrastructure is built.”

Kishore underscored the critical role of the private sector in resilience building, arguing that private finance is essential for driving innovation and investing in technologies that benefit everyone. He pointed to the rapid shift from tungsten to LED bulbs as an example of market transformation led by private investment, and highlighted cool roofs — simple reflective coatings or materials that lower indoor temperatures — as a promising, low-cost adaptation still underused in many heat-prone regions.

“We know that cool roofs in poor settlements, for example, can reduce the temperature inside by three to four degrees centigrade. Yet we do not have a functioning market for cool roofs. How do we make that happen? What is the kind of imagination we can bring into our development thinking to spur the market for those kinds of solutions?” he said.

Governments, he added, could encourage local production and adoption through incentives such as advance purchase commitments.

Taking a broader look at what he hoped to see from this week’s FFD talks, Kishore called for clear, shared commitments.

“On disaster risk reduction, we know that a dollar invested, a euro invested, a yen invested or a rupee invested in resilience has great returns — four times, seven times, 14 times,” he said. “I would like to see more commitments from national governments, international development finance institutions, as well as the insurance industry and the private sector to really advance that, turn those words into action.”