Climate change and natural hazards: What advantages for building resilience?

Climate change is increasing the risk of extreme weather events, including droughts, flooding, hurricanes, earthquakes and wildfires. In 2017, costs were estimated to be $306 billion, which is almost double 2016’s loss of $188 billion (and also much higher than the 10-year-average of $190 billion). 

Building resilience to withstand disaster events, including preventive measures and contingency planning, unfortunately remains the exception to the rule – only 13% of spending goes into pre-event resilience and risk reduction, whereas 87% is spent on post-event relief. This is not very sustainable, given that research shows that every EUR 1 spent on building resilience saves EUR 5 in post-event expenses. 

The Zurich Post-Event Review Capability (PERC) is a systematic framework for the analysis of a disaster event, focusing on how a specific hazard event became a disaster. The PERC process evaluates the successes and failures in the management of pre-event disaster risk, disaster response and post-disaster recovery. Recently-conducted PERCs in the US, UK, Germany and Austria all point to the importance of sustainable investment. 

EURACTIV organised this high-level stakeholder debate to discuss how to mitigate the risk of natural disasters through resilience planning. 

Questions included: 

What specific role should different stakeholders play - EU policymakers, investors, insurers, NGOs?
What are best practice examples of urban resilience planning In Europe? What are the economic benefits?
How is the EU's Copernicus programme 'Emergency Management Services' contributing to better monitoring and management of environmental disasters?
How can resilience building become better investable for sustainable investors and improve supply of sustainable investments, while at the same time contributing to financing resilience?

[HenrijsEglitis]

These videos are great, but it's like listening to article headlines... hope in future there will be access to videos where is actual discussion / presentation of wider game plan how to address such issues... it's simply observation, if you want reach better conclusion it's needed to make also discussion in public domain. Not only that might help spread information around, but also gain public response, which can guide to better results.

[MariliaTavares]

Talk talk talk SHOW the hazard natural disasters increased in power? Yes, do you know WHY? NO