Faced with the impacts of increasing global shocks, such as environmental degradation, climate change and armed conflict, disaster risk reduction (DRR) in vulnerable partner countries must be at the heart of the EU’s external policy, according to draft EU Council conclusions agreed on 20 October in the Development and International Partnerships working group.
Among the many recommendations that were made, the EU Council should, if the draft is adopted, invite the Commission, the European External Action Service and the EU Member States:
- to recognise the contributions and complementarity of DRR, climate change mitigation and adaptation measures, and other relevant approaches to avoid, minimise and address loss and damage to developing countries;
- ensure that EU actions in relation to development, peace, climate and humanitarian aid are risk-sensitive in order to strengthen partner countries’ capacity to prepare for, and address, underlying factors, to be able to cope with future shocks and to take measures to prevent disasters and respond adequately when they cannot be avoided;
- to ensure that disaster preparedness and DRR are integrated into humanitarian and development policy and action and to promote joint funding responsibility between development, humanitarian, climate and peace actors, taking into account the specificity of each context and the available resources to ensure the use of the most effective and appropriate funding tools;
- to move from reactive crisis response to greater proactive and anticipatory action, funding and risk management and to strengthen coordination, coherence and complementarity between humanitarian, development and peace (HDP) actions and actors – all building on the pilot experience of strengthening the links between these three strands (a ‘triple nexus’ in humanitarian jargon) – a priority of the Czech Presidency of the EU Council (see EUROPE 13002/15, 12993/15);
- to strengthen cooperation in the areas of DRR and climate change, taking into account the ‘Team Europe’ initiative (EU, its Member States and financial institutions) on the topic of climate change, adaptation and resilience in Africa.
The text also calls for strengthening governance for global climate and environmental disaster risk management at all levels and in all sectors, raising awareness of disaster risks and promoting training and exercises.
It also emphasises that local solutions should be encouraged, in line with the principles for locally-driven adaptation that were agreed at the Glasgow COP26 climate conference.
See the text: https://aeur.eu/f/3td (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)