It can come in the shape of a scheme to upgrade their neighborhood by putting in an asphalt road, building a safe school, equipping and staffing a health centre, providing street lighting, or erecting a community centre.

Low-income groups do not have a natural predilection to live in flimsy shacks in rat-infested, crime-ridden neighborhoods bereft of basic services such as safe drinking water and sanitation.

Many local governments make the all too familiar mistake of increasing disaster risk by ignoring the basic needs of low-income groups. Some add insult to injury by bulldozing their homes and providing them with no alternative but to move on to another disaster-prone location exposed to hazards such as flooding, storms, earthquakes, pandemics and pollution.

One can only hope that with the almost universal adoption of the key frameworks that make up the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and their clear focus on social inclusion, that there is now sufficient political commitment to bring this behaviour to an end in favour of a more enlightened approach to governance and risk management.

By next year, UNISDR expects to see a substantial increase in the number of national and local strategies for disaster risk reduction, as agreed by U.N. member States when they adopted the global plan for reducing disaster losses, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, in 2015.

Reducing disaster risk and supporting climate change adaptation for low-income groups are essential to the success of these strategies and to achieving the action-oriented New Urban Agenda with its potential to transform the urban landscape.

The World Urban Forum will be an opportunity to assess the momentum for change and how likely it is that we will see concerted action over the next 12 years to achieve sustainable cities populated with thriving communities and people newly liberated from the slum conditions which hinder them from living life to its full potential. *Robert Glasser is the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction and head of the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction.

Date:

7 Feb 2018

Sources:

United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR)

Themes:

Urban Risk & Planning, Governance

Hazards:

Wild Fire

Countries:

Kenya