Cross-border risk assessment (Webinar)

Presentation by Junko Mochizuki (IIASA)

Disaster risk knows no national boundaries, as movements of goods, people and finances are intricately linked across borders. While most disasters observed globally are geographically confined incidents occurring on a subnational scale, disasters routinely displace millions of people within and across borders (IDMC 2016). Around the world, over 270 rivers cross the borders of two or more countries. Ten per cent floods reported globally in periods between 1985 and 2005 were transboundary incidents, which affected approximately 60 per cent of the population (Bakker 2009). Transboundary resources such as rivers may act as a mechanism for the spread of contamination, as in the Sandoz chemical spill of 1986, when the river Rhine conveyed toxic chemicals through Europe after a fire at a Sandoz factory in Switzerland (Boos-Hersberger 1997).

In principle, cross-border risk assessment and transboundary coordination take place based on mutual respect for national sovereignty and require broad political support of national leaders and domestic stakeholders (Edwards 2009). Transboundary consideration for DRR – bilaterally or multilaterally – may be incorporated in a variety of forms such as joint risk assessment, contingency planning and exercises, financing and risk pooling arrangements, and technical cooperation.