BACKGROUND

  • Rapid economic development and urbanization requires massive new investments that account to estimated USD6 trillion annual infrastructure investment until 2030. If those investments are undertaken without consideration of disaster risk reduction, these investments could lead to the accumulation of vulnerabilities.

  • At the same time, climate continue to change with devastating effects which is further exacerbated by rapid urbanization. As we learned from COVID-19 pandemic, safe and secure urban environment is the foundation that a city can thrive. The current magnitude of investment could be a great opportunity for governments and stakeholders to mitigate the impacts of future risks by building resilient infrastructure for sustainable urban development.

  • With this as backdrop, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) of the Government of Japan and the UN-Habitat Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (ROAP) held the Spatial Planning Platform (SPP) Meeting in February 2022* focusing on the importance of sustainable urban development. The Meeting highlighted the need to encourage countries to formulate and promote national and regional/urban development plans that incorporate disaster risk reduction (DRR) perspectives through building resilient infrastructure.

  • Building on the outcomes of the SPP Meeting, this session will take a deeper dive on discussing the essential elements of building resilient infrastructure to provide practical guidance for policymakers and practitioners who are aiming to promote the New Urban Agenda, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, the 2030 Agenda, the Paris Agreement, and other international agreements facilitating sustainable urban development.

OBJECTIVES

While recent international conferences, including the SPP Meeting, have created a common understanding of the importance of resilient cities and their underlying infrastructure, the challenge is how to translate this into practice. This event will focus on the opportunities and challenges of promoting resilient infrastructure for sustainable urban development and to explore pathways for sustainable urban development from the following perspectives. These points are also expected to contribute to sharing knowledge on better reconstruction (Build Back Better) regardless of whether it is due to conflict or disaster.

Understanding of resilient infrastructure
What does resilient infrastructure mean? What are the essentials of building a resilient infrastructure?
Economic dividend
What are the economic benefits of resilient infrastructure to the region?
Implementation approaches
What are the essential sets of risk knowledge and capacities that cities must develop to identify risks, including future risks, in order to implement resilient infrastructure projects? What DRR strategies, in implementing resilient infrastructure, can cities adopt to reduce the integrated impacts of climate change and disasters?
Financing
How to finance a resilient infrastructure? What is the cost-effective approach of building a resilient infrastructure?
Exemplary practices
How do some cities design and implement their respective resilient infrastructure strategies? How to scale-up exemplary practices of building resilient infrastructure to other cities in the region?
Residual challenges
What are the remaining challenges in cities that need to be addressed to achieve their goals for resilient infrastructure? Is standardization of resilient infrastructure a way forward of achieving their goals?

FORMAT & SCHEDULES

The session is organized by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) of the government of Japan as follows:

12:30-14:00, June 28th
ICC Multifunction Hall: Room9
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Opening

Mr. FUKASAWA Yoshinobu
Advisor to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism of the Government of Japan

Introduction

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Mr. NAKAGAWA Masaaki
Executive Director of Asian Disaster Reduction Center

Speaker 1

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Dr. Annalisa PRIMI
Head, Economic Transformation and Development Division, OECD Development Centre

Speaker 2

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Mr. YAMASHITA Nozomu
Director, Office of Peacebuilding, Governance and Peacebuilding Department, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA)

Speaker 3

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Dr. Sameh Wahba
Regional Director, Sustainable Development, Europe and Central Asia, World Bank

Discussions

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