Asia-Pacific Launch of Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction
"The 2011 Global Assessment Report (GAR) on Disaster Risk Reduction provides a framework for addressing twin challenges of disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation within a broad framework of sustainable development and poverty reduction," said Nescha Teckle, CPR Team Leader at the regional launch of Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction in Bangkok on 23 May 2011. Andrew Maskrey, coordinator and lead author shared the highlights of the 2011 GAR with representatives of regional and international organizations, including UN agencies. The regional CPR team at APRC has supported disaster loss databases in 7 countries of Asia that have made significant contribution to the analysis and findings in GAR in 2009 and 2011. These databases are owned by governments, with information on damages and losses at the sub national level, which also allows for comparability of analysis of disaster trends across countries.
UNDP Opens Office in Tonga
The Pacific Island Kingdom of Tonga has become the newest country to host the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and join a network of countries spanning the globe. The UNDP Office in Tonga was jointly opened by the Prime Minister of Tonga Lord Tu’ivakanō and the United Nations Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative, Knut Ostby on May 25. Government ministers, senior government officials, members of the diplomatic corps, development partners and civil society organizations attended the opening ceremony. Read more
APRC's Support to Regional Partnership in Disaster Risk Reduction
An official delegation from the Ministry of Civil Affairs of the People's Republic of China (MCA) was received on May 26th by the Deputy Regional Director Nicholas Rosellini along with members of the Crisis Prevention and Recovery Team. UNDP China and the MCA are jointly working to upscale community based disaster risk management approaches (CBDRM) in five provinces as a result of UNDPs successful demonstration of such approach in the Sichuan Province, which was affected by the deadliest earthquake of this century. During the meeting, the role of the APRC CPR team as provider of technical and policy advisory services through the Country Office was further clarified. Cooperation in promoting regional partnership in disaster risk reduction and the important role that the Chinese government can perform was also discussed and agreed.In Focus: Climate Change
The first Resource Group meeting of the future Solution Exchange Climate and Disaster Risk Reduction Community in Bangladesh discussed how to reach to ground-level practitioners and bring conceptual clarity about the linkages between Climate Change Adaptation/Disaster Risk Reduction in order to maintain a meaningful dialogue with all parties and engage specifically with top level government representatives to ensure knowledge networking taps into the best resources and leads to influencing policy and reaching impact.
The APRC cross-practice Task Team on Climate Change discussed latest activities and emerging issues focusing on climate finance and national coordination.
The session included a debriefing on the recent cross-practice (EE/CD/DG) mission to Lao PDR on climate fiscal framework and direct access to climate funds. Joined by UNDP colleagues from Headquarters, the Task Team reviewed a draft paper on the evolution of climate change national coordination mechanisms in 18 Asia-Pacific countries as well as lessons learned from the performance-based and MRV- focused institutional frameworks under the Montreal Protocol that could be applied to the governance of climate funds.
Hosted by APRC:
The Steering Committee meeting of JUNIMA (the Joint UN Initiative on Mobility and HIV/AIDS in South East Asia) discussed scope and future activities, received information from partners, assessed results from the survey on JUNIMA's communication strategy and reviewed early results and on-going work in key 2011 priorities: the dialogue between Malaysia and Indonesia on migrant workers issues, the participation of JUNIMA partners in the Colombo process, the involvement with the Asia Development Bank in HIV and infrastructure amongst others. Visit JUNIMA's web-site for updates.
The special guest for the Brown Bag discussion series at APRC - Nigel Coulson, advisor from the Capacity Development Group, NY, presented examples of UNDP's assistance in capacity development for national systems and emphasized the needs to adapt methodologies to sectoral initiatives as well as the importance of measuring the results of developing the institutional capabilities of national partners and institutions.