| Title: | Private engagement to foster community-based flood risk management | |
| Day and time: | (28) Miercoles - Wednesday - Mercredi - 8 - 13:20 - 13:40 | |
| Presenter: | Pedro Ferradas | |
| Organization: | Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance | |
| Eje Temático: Thematic Area: |
Investing in disaster risk reduction for resilience | |
| Description: | Floods affect more people globally than any other type of natural hazard. They cause some of the largest economic, social and humanitarian losses, involving on average some 250 million people each year. While floods are natural, there is nothing ‘natural’ about their disastrous consequences: flood risks are created by inadequate practices of stakeholders, being communities, local authorities, private sector, etc. In that sense, a holistic approach is needed to address them, involving organizations with complementary skills and expertise. To address the need for a proactive approach to flood risks, Zurich Insurance Group (Zurich) launched a dedicated flood resilience program in 2013. It includes two humanitarian organizations – the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), and Practical Action – and two leading research institutions: the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania (Wharton), and the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria. The program is based on a new approach to cross-sector collaboration. It brings together flood risk research, community-based programs and risk expertise. It looks for, and shares ways that community flood resilience can be measured and improved. The program directly helps about 125,000 people through projects in flood-prone communities in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Mexico, Nepal, Peru and the U.S. The Fifth Regional Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) in the Americas is a perfect opportunity to encourage mores actors, especially from the private sector, to get engaged in DRR. We hope that presenting the experience, successes and challenges of a cross-sector collaboration such as the Zurich Flood Resilience Program will promote fruitful exchanges for a broader engagement of the private sector in DRR. |
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