ADB and UNDRR Making Cities Resilient 2030 (MCR 2030) City-to-City Learning Forum on Developing Urban Disaster Resilience

Cities and urban communities around Asia and the Pacific are facing an era of unprecedented uncertainty, with climate-induced disasters becoming more frequent, intense, and unpredictable. Over the past three decades, extreme weather events have accounted for 90% of all disasters, posing significant threats to urban areas through intensified storms, coastal flooding, deadly heatwaves, water shortages, and prolonged droughts. At the same time, local authorities face other systems-wide crises, in terms of water, food, and energy security. The Political Declaration of the midterm review of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in May 2023 reiterates the extreme challenges to hand and conveys a deep concern that the pace of implementation is not sufficient or equal. The gaps at the local and urban level are particularly large.

In response to these challenges, municipalities across Asia Pacific are scaling up their ambitions and actions on disaster resilience to protect their citizens and local infrastructure assets and systems. The Political Declaration of the midterm review of the Sendai Framework calls for scaled up support and action at the local level, urging countries to:

• Support and enable all local authorities to have disaster risk reduction strategies and local platforms for disaster risk reduction, or similar mechanisms, in place;
• Ensure the provision of financial assistance, technical support, and capacity development to strengthen local multi-hazard risk governance and local government leadership on disaster risk reduction;
• Promote local ownership through community-based disaster risk management approaches and whole-of-society engagement; and
• Promote exchanges and peer learning between cities through increased participation in the Making Cities Resilient 2030 (MCR2030) initiative.