Document / Publication
United Nations - Headquarters (UN)
This brief was issued by the UN Technical Support Team (TST) in preparation for the seventh session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) Open Working Group (OWG) on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It emphasizes the close relationship between climate change and disaster risk reduction (DRR) in the context of the development agenda. At the global level, it highlights work under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Hyogo Framework of Action 2005-2015 (HFA), while noting uneven efforts at national and sub-national levels in terms of implementation. On current proposals regarding the SDGs, the brief notes that climate change is mostly proposed to be integrated into more than one goal.
For DRR, proposals include: a stand-alone goal on DRR supported by a limited number of targets on social, economic and environmental issues; DRR targets being integrated under other development goals; or a resilience goal, in which disaster resilience would be one of several targets. The brief emphasizes that the resilience concept provides an opportunity for the development agenda to overcome the current compartmentalization of topics and focus on a common, cross-cutting and coherent outcome. The brief argues that a multi-stakeholder and multi-sector approach is necessary to address the underlying causes of climate change and disaster risk.