Report for the Mid-Term Review of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction

The report identifies achievements in disaster risk reduction (DRR) since 2015 under the Sendai Framework and highlights key implementation gaps. The report provides guidance to policy-makers, funders, researchers, international organizations and other stakeholders who shape the way we assess, value, manage and monitor risks, with the goal of helping the development of a governance framework beyond 2030 that integrates risk reduction as a key factor in sustainable development.

Report for the Mid-Term Review of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction

2023 marks the midpoint in the implementation period of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, providing a major opportunity to review and bolster implementation of the Framework moving towards 2030, and importantly, strengthen the integration with other international agreements.

The Report for the Mid-Term Review of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction looks at progress to date, the changing context – including in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic and other global crises – and at opportunities to tackle underlying root causes of disasters and risk creation processes that span across sectors and scales.

Ultimately, its goal is to support the building of a post-2030 governance framework, which integrates risk reduction as a key determinant of sustainable development and accelerates the implementation of the Sendai Framework as well as embedding risk reduction and resilience in other global agendas such as the SDGs, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the Global Biodiversity Framework.

Report for the Mid-Term Review of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction

International Science Council. 2023. Report for the Mid-term Review of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. Paris, France. International Science Council. DOI: 10.24948/2023.01.

Executive Summary of the Report for the Mid-Term Review of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction

The Executive Summary is available in multiple languages:

ENGLISH >

FRENCH >

SPANISH >

CHINESE >

ARABIC >

RUSSIAN >

A multi-disciplinary expert group established by the ISC developed the report to contribute to the Mid-Term Review (MTR) process led by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR). This ISC report will serve as a valuable input from the Science and Technology Community Major Group in the drafting of the UNDRR MTR.

Findings from the report will contribute to informing a negotiated political declaration that will be adopted at the High-level meeting of the UN General Assembly on the Sendai Framework Mid-Term Review in May 2023. It will also feed into the 2023 High-level Political Forum, the SDG Summit and the High-level Dialogue on Financing for Development at the 78th Session of the UN General Assembly.

Key messages

  1. Nature-based solutions can help address environmental degradation and climate change while enhancing disaster resilience and delivering development co-benefits.
  2. Displacement due to climate change must be anticipated and managed to avoid damages and losses.
  3. Mental health issues caused by disasters must be addressed through health systems that include mental health solutions.
  4. Current development paradigms undervalue nature, externalize risks, and undermine sustainable development.
  5. Disaster and risk governance must be redesigned into a multi-sectoral and multi-level model with a stronger focus on territorial risk governance.
  6. Financing for ex-ante risk reduction must reach the most vulnerable to avoid rising costs of post-disaster recovery.
  7. Better multi-hazard early warning systems are essential to provide targeted support to the most vulnerable.
  8. Improvements in the quality and availability of risk data are crucial.
  9. Comprehensive monitoring of vulnerability is needed to address the drivers of risk creation and accumulation.
  10. Risk communication must be improved to better inform decision-making and prevent risk creation.
  11. Transdisciplinary collaborations can play a major role in building understanding and trust.

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Key recommendations

  1. Strengthen territorial level risk governance in regions and at the local level that addresses the drivers of risk across sectors.
  2. De-fragment finance to align investment with risk reduction goals at global, regional and local scales.
  3. Develop community-led nature-based solutions to enhance the protection of natural buffers that reduce risks and achieve co-benefits for sustainability.
  4. Develop multi hazard early-warning systems to anticipate and reduce the impacts of disasters and cascading risks across timescales.
  5. Develop integrated information systems to monitor the depletion of natural resources ahead of dangerous thresholds to support anticipatory action and prospective risk reduction.
  6. Evolve traditional risk assessment and improve methods for risk identification, mapping and reporting as to increase transparency, and as key inputs for early warning, risk management and infrastructure siting and design.
  7. Pilot new ways of communicating risk information and its implications for risk management and sustainable development.
  8. Develop a cadre of genuinely transdisciplinary professionals to expand the interface between science, policy and practice.

Our other Disaster Risk Reduction publications

Hazard Definition & Classification Review: Technical Report

International Science Council and United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, 2020.

Go to publication page >

Hazard Information Profiles: Supplement to UNDRR-ISC Hazard Definition & Classification Review – Technical Report

International Science Council and United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, 2021.

Go to publication page >

Policy Brief: Using UNDRR/ISC Hazard Information Profiles to manage risk and implement the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction

International Science Council, 2022.

Go to publication page >

Closing the Gap Between Science and Practice at Local Levels to Accelerate Disaster Risk Reduction

International Science Council, 2022.

Go to publication page >

Systemic risk briefing note cover

Systemic Risk Briefing Note

International Science Council, United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, Knowledge Action Network for Emergent Risks and Extreme Events, 2022.

Go to publication page >

A Framework for Global Science

International Science Council, United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, Integrated Research for Disaster Risk programme, 2021

Go to publication page >

The report Expert Group

  • Roger Pulwarty (Co-chair), Senior Scientist, US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), USA
  • Rathana Peou Norbert-Munns (Co-chair), Climate Foresight and Scenarios Development Expert at FAO and former Southeast Asia Scenarios Coordinator at CCAFS, Cambodia
  • Kristiann Allen, Executive Secretary, International Network for Government Science Advice, New Zealand
  • Angela Bednarek, Director, evidence project, the Pew Charitable Trusts, USA
  • Charlotte Benson, Principal Disaster Risk Management Specialist, Asian Development Bank, Philippines
  • Alonso Brenes, Coordinator of the Network for Social Studies on Disaster Risk Prevention in Latin America and the Caribbean (LA RED), Costa Rica
  • Maria del Pilar Cornejo, Director, the Pacific International Center for Disaster Risk Reduction, Ecuador
  • Oliver Costello, Project Manager – Traditional Knowledge (Conservation Futures), Bush Heritage Australia, Team Leader – Indigenous Cultural Intellectual Property (ICIP) Aboriginal Strategy and Outcomes, NSW Department of Planning and Environment, Australia
  • Susan Cutter, Distinguished Professor, University of South Carolina and Co-Director, Hazards Vulnerability & Resilience Institute Director, IRDR International Center of Excellence (ICoE-VaRM), USA
  • Bapon Fakhruddin, Water Sector Lead, Division of Mitigation and Adaptation, Green Climate Fund, New Zealand
  • Victor Galaz, Deputy director, Stockholm Resilience Center, Sweden
  • Franziska Gaupp, Director, Food Systems Economics Commission, Germany
  • Satoru Nishikawa, Professor, Disaster Mitigation Research Center, Nagoya University, Japan
  • Aromar Revi, Indian Institute for Human Settlements, India
  • Albert Salamanca, Senior Research Fellow, Stockholm Environment Institute Asia Center, Thailand
  • Pauline Scheelbeek, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Director – WHO Collaborating Centre, Netherlands
  • Renato Solidum, Undersecretary for Disaster Risk Reduction – Climate Change Adaptation, Department of Science and Technology and Officer-In-Charge, Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, Philippines

Image: Marcel Crozet / ILO 18-11-2013

  • Disclaimer: The translations are automatically generated by Google Translate and may contain errors. The ISC is not liable for any damage or issues that may arise from these translations. You can provide your feedback by emailing us at webmaster@council.science
    Note: Please note that the ‘Science Summit at the UN General Assembly’ in September 2023 is not an event of the International Science Council. The International Science Council has no association with this event nor with the organizer of the event.
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