Resilience Dialogue

Building disaster resilience: The road from Sendai

Resilience Dialogue - watch online April 16, www.gfdrr.org

Barely a month has passed since the World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction where the international community agreed on the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, which will guide global efforts to prevent new and reduce existing disaster risk through 2030. As leaders from our 188 member countries arrive in Washington, D.C., this week for the 2015 Spring Meetings of the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund, we have an excellent opportunity to take stock of how to best achieve the ambitious goals set forth in Sendai.

By Francis Ghesquiere and Olivier Mahul

This week, the Resilience Dialogue, bringing together representatives from developing countries, donor agencies and multilateral development banks, will focus on financing to build resilience to natural disasters.

There is growing recognition that resilience is critical to preserving hard won development gains. The share of development assistance supporting resilience has grown dramatically in recent years. New instruments have emerged in particular to help client countries deal with the economic shock of natural disasters. In this context, an important question is which financial instruments best serve the needs of vulnerable countries? Only by customizing instruments and tools to the unique circumstances of our clients, will we maximize development return on investments. Clearly, low-income countries with limited capacity may not be able to use financial instruments the same way middle-income countries can. Small island developing states subject to financial shocks where loss can exceed their annual GDP face vastly different challenges than large middle-income countries trying to smooth public expenditures over time or safeguard low-income populations against disasters.