Better together: regional capacity building for national disaster risk management

This desk review, based on desk research, surveys literature on the work of regional and national disaster management organizations (NDMOs) in disaster risk management (DRM) and draws out some of the themes that may be useful for further examination of the relationship between regional bodies and national organizations in disaster risk management. It asserts that much of the literature on NDMOs focuses on their abilities and shortcomings in disaster risk reduction or often on simply providing information about the various actors involved in disaster risk reduction (DRR), and that both DRR and climate change global initiatives have worked through regional platforms, providing further support for regional initiatives and for their national members.

It calls on synthesizing the various lessons learned on disaster risk management from these and other studies to come up with a framework for national disaster risk management organizations, which would include a set of benchmarks that might be helpful to governments seeking to strengthen their DRM agencies and that could also incorporate the existing frameworks for disaster risk reduction. It concludes by asserting that, while international actors have developed impressive expertise in both disaster response and disaster risk reduction, there is a case to be made that regional bodies are particularly well-placed to develop culturally-appropriate ways of building capacities of organizations ‘in their neighborhoods’ which often face similar risks from natural hazards and share historical and cultural experiences.