29 September 2015
UNISDR Initiative to Increase Private Sector Engagement in DRR
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The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) and its private sector partners have called on businesses to join an initiative that aims to increase resilience to both natural and manmade hazards.

While the initiative 'ARISE: the Private Sector Alliance for Disaster Resilient Societies' will formally be launched at its first annual meeting in London, UK, in November 2015, its interim board met in New York, US, on the sidelines of the UN Sustainable Development Summit.

UNISDRS27 September 2015: The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) and its private sector partners have called on businesses to join an initiative that aims to increase resilience to both natural and manmade hazards. While the initiative, titled ‘ARISE: the Private Sector Alliance for Disaster Resilient Societies,’ will formally be launched at its first annual meeting in London, UK, in November 2015, its interim board met in New York, US, on the sidelines of the UN Sustainable Development Summit.

During the meeting, Sandra Wu, ARISE Co-Chair and UNISDR’s Private Sector Advisory Group Chair, emphasized the need for better linkages and coherence among the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), climate change and disaster risk reduction (DRR).

Noting the key role the private sector played in helping craft the Sendai Framework on DRR, Margareta Wahlström, Head of UNISDR and ARISE interim board Co-Chair, reiterated that the Framework: highlights the lack of regulation and incentives for private DRR investments as an underlying risk driver; calls on business to integrate DRR into their management practices; and emphasizes that addressing risk through disaster risk-informed public and private investments contributes to sustainable development and is more cost effective than relying on post-disaster response and recovery.

According to UNISDR, the Sendai Framework on DRR sets out targets to reduce mortality, the number of people affected by disasters, damage to infrastructure, and economic losses, which are estimated to increase from US$260 billion in 2015 to US$414 billion by 2030. In light of these numbers, ARISE interim board member Aris Papadopoulos said the SDGs cannot be achieved if hundreds of billions of dollars of assets are being destroyed every year.

ARISE consolidates two UNISDR programmes related to the private sector: the Private Sector Advisory Group, the main private sector advocacy group; and the R!SE initiative, which mainly focused on making investment more resilient. [UNISDR Press Release]

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