27 April 2012: Donor and developing country officials convened during the World Bank/International Monetary Fund (IMF) Spring Meetings to reaffirm commitments to mainstreaming disaster resilience in development planning and the link between disaster reduction and climate change adaptation.

The meeting, which was convened by the EU, Japan and the World Bank/Global Facility of Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), was guided by the Special Report on Managing the Risk of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The SREX highlights in particular the importance of integrating sustainable development, disaster risk management and climate change adaptation in order to improve resilience. European Commissioner for Development Andris Piebalgs underscored that disaster losses reached US$264 billion globally in 2011, which was twice the amount of official development assistance (ODA) the same year. Participants discussed means of increasing resilience through, inter alia: cooperation; the coordination of humanitarian and development programmes; integrated approaches; and the reversal of the reaction versus prevention paradigm.

Rachel Kyte, Vice President of Sustainable Development, World Bank, indicated that two-thirds of country assistance provided by the World Bank now incorporates disaster risk management and that climate change must be integrated into all the activities of the Bank. A main theme of the October 2012 IMF-World Bank Annual Meeting, which will take place in Sendai, Japan, an area affected by the 2011 tsunami, will be developing consensus on advancing the mainstreaming of disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation in development. [World Bank Press Release]