Riding the Resilience Wave All-hands-on-deck for Urban Resilience in Small Island Developing States and Coastal Cities

Globally, cities face mounting environmental, socio-economic and sustainability challenges. With concentration of people, economic activities, development assets, critical infrastructure and risks in cities, addressing multi-faceted vulnerabilities and resilience dimensions viz. physical, environmental and socio-economic, in tandem has assumed renewed urgency.

Cities in SIDS and coastal areas face heightened yet shared risks, vulnerabilities and development challenges while being least equipped to address/mitigate them holistically -- – as resilience of critical urban systems and infrastructure such as the airports, hotels, seaports, health and socio-economic development assets etc., has become vulnerable. With city-centric growth trajectory and a narrow GDP bandwidth dependent on tourism, agriculture, blue economy etc., the SIDS’ socio-economic resilience and local development has come under stress. Their small size, geography and relative insularity makes SIDS 35 percent more vulnerable to external economic and financial shocks.

At the local level, the resilience of people, socio-economic assets, development sectors, social networks, local economic development and community livelihoods is under strain. In this sense, investments in urban and community resilience complemented by advancing local economic development has the potential to be an effective strategy for fostering the resilience of local economies.

Supporting cities on the frontlines of climate challenge in SIDS and coastal areas, UNDP, UNDRR and UN-Habitat are collaborating to provide policy, programmatic, technical, knowledge and tools and methodologies to advance urban/local risk reduction and resilience action. One of the key initiatives in this regard has been the global program on ‘Integrated Urban Resilience’ seeking to strengthen data analytics, resilience diagnostics and risk governance capacities in SIDS and coastal cities --- to develop risk-informed urban development plans while strengthening urban and local governance to secure resilient development outcomes in line with the resilience and sustainability objectives of the New Urban Agenda and the SDGs.

Contributing to Pilalr-3 of the NUA and Goal-11 of the SDGs, the One UN Event will mobilize partnerships for coordinated resilience action to turn the challenge posed by climate and disaster risks into opportunities to redefine the sustainability dimensions of local socio-economic development trajectory. It will help bolster the agency of local authorities, communities and non-governmental stakeholders for resilient local development by leveraging knowledge, technology, finance to build the agency of SIDS and their local communities to address contextual resilience, local socio-economic development and sustainability requirements.

Building resilience in SIDS and coastal cities will help localize the SDGs while augmenting the outcomes of the Summit of the Future, the COPs and other global processes.