GP2025 | Day 1 Reflections: From Political Commitments to Risk-Informed Systems

Today marked the official opening of the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction 2025 in Geneva. After two days of preparatory sessions, the tone shifted into high-level exchanges on governance, financing, and system design. From early warnings to legislation, the message was clear: risk is outpacing our ability to manage it, and the gaps are as political as they are technical.

Harnessing Risk Understanding: Are We Doing Enough?

The first High-Level Dialogue, moderated by Ms. Haya Al-Kubati (Youth Focal Point, Arab States), brought together voices from Palau, Bahamas, Pakistan, Tunisia, Indonesia, and UNECE. President Whipps Jr. of Palau spoke powerfully about the realities of climate change for island states: their highest point is just 2 meters above sea level. Despite Palau's high-income classification, vulnerabilities remain profound and structural.

"Risk is growing faster than our capacity to understand it, prepare for it, and reduce it," he noted.

Pakistan’s representative emphasized the role of disaster risk governance and digital finance systems in climate adaptation. Public financial management reforms and AI applications are already being explored. Tunisia’s Dr. Najla Bouden and UNECE speakers called for science-policy integration, with risk knowledge made usable for both practitioners and policymakers.

Reflection: The value of risk information is widely acknowledged—but what’s still unclear is who controls that information, how it’s governed, and how it informs actual spending. There’s an emerging recognition that GDP isn’t resilience, and eligibility criteria need reform.

Displacement, Creativity, and the Politics of Data

In a powerful session on displacement, Alexander Tripura from Caritas Bangladesh and other experts reminded the audience that recorded data only shows a fraction of actual movement. What happens when a person is displaced multiple times in a single year? What are the psychosocial and mental health dimensions?

Panelists emphasized the need for creative responses, not just technical ones. “Disasters are a terrible time to learn a new skill,” one panalist said. The Cox’s Bazar example showed how structural solutions (like lime-stabilized soil) can pair with community-rooted approaches.

Reflection: We talk a lot about anticipatory action—but who is being anticipated, and by what kind of knowledge? What’s missing is integration: between displacement, climate risk, infrastructure, and social policy. This is something to take forward in future project design.

Disaster Governance: Inclusion, Local Systems, and Impossible Trade-offs

Another session focused on risk governance for transformative outcomes. Speakers from Brazil, Germany, Philippines, Kenya, IGAD, and the Pacific brought forward diverse realities. Rhonda Robinson emphasized the constraints of tiny Pacific nations navigating regional and global demands with limited resources. Ghada Ahmedin, representing the Arab region, highlighted the structural inequality in climate impacts versus contributions—and the need for strong, inclusive local governance. Germany made an important point: “If you take money from education to fund climate action, you're simply shifting vulnerability. We must think systemically.”

Reflection: Governance cannot be separated from resource control. Civil society and local actors are often praised, but still operate without predictable, flexible financing. There is a growing call to make DRR legally mandated and to track risk-related spending in national budgets.

So What? If DRR is not legally and financially embedded into governance systems, it risks remaining a reactive and underfunded domain. Institutions must stop relying on local actors to fill gaps created by structural underinvestment.

Session on Legal & Regulatory Frameworks

The final technical session brought in budget directors, senators, disaster authority leads, and risk modelers. Kenya and India presented cases of integrating climate adaptation into budget cycles. Canada and Brazil raised critical points about cascading risk, sectoral silos, and the cost of inaction.

There was growing interest in tools like climate budget tagging, liability laws, and public-private investment incentives. But there was also caution: regulation without institutional capacity and incentives will fail.

Reflection: Many countries still lack legislation that legally mandates DRR financing. Even more lack systems to incentivize private actors to invest in resilience. Emissions trading and risk modelling were mentioned, but their relevance to fragile states remains limited without context-sensitive adaptation.

So What? Regulation must go beyond formality. Without enforcement mechanisms and aligned incentives, laws risk becoming symbolic. There is a need to pair legislative reform with clear budget lines, data systems, and implementation capacity.

There’s momentum to make risk-informed governance a structural, not project-based, goal. But the fragmentation—across ministries, budgets, and stakeholder groups—is still the elephant in the room.

Quote of the Day: “The greatest risk is failing to act. It is not the floods or the droughts.”