The Sendai Declaration and the Sendai Framework, adopted by the Third United Nations World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction were subsequently endorsed by Member States in the United Nations General Assembly, providing the framework for all-of-society and all State institutions engagement in preventing and reducing disaster risks posed by both natural and anthropogenic hazards and related environmental, technological and biological hazards and risks.  

The Third United Nations World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction invited the General Assembly “to consider the possibility of including the review of the global progress in the implementation of the Sendai Framework as part of its integrated and coordinated follow-up processes to United Nations conferences and summits, aligned with the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the high-level political forum on sustainable development (HLPF) and the quadrennial comprehensive policy review cycles”. 

The overall objective of the MTR SF is to take stock of the implementation of the Sendai Framework to date, assessing progress made and challenges experienced in preventing and reducing disaster risk, identifying new and emerging issues as well as changes in context since 2015. It further aims to initiate nascent thinking on possible international arrangements for risk-informed sustainable development beyond 2030.  

In examining challenges experienced in preventing new and reducing existing disaster risk, the MTR SF explores aspects of progress in integrating risk reduction into decision-making, investment and behaviour across sectors, disciplines, geographies and scales, by countries and other stakeholders, to prompt the re-examination and redress of our relationship with risk in pursuit of sustainable and habitable pathways. 

The outcome of the MTR SF is expected to inform:  

1) Policy adjustments and new modalities for implementation of governments and other stakeholders for the second half of the duration of the Sendai Framework;  

2) The deliberations of Member States on an expression of renewed commitment to implement recommended actions emanating from the review;  

3) The follow-up processes to United Nations conferences and summits, including but not limited to the deliberations of the ECOSOC HLPF on sustainable development, the SDG Summit and the High-level Dialogue on Financing for Development, the Global Stocktake of the Paris Agreement and the twenty-eighth Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC, the Midterm Review of the Water Action Decade and the United Nations Water Conference, the Summit of the Future, the Doha Programme of Action, and the follow-up and review of the SIDS Accelerated Modalities of Action Pathway (SAMOA Pathway) and the Vienna Programme of Action, so as to strengthen policy coherence and further integrate reducing disaster risk and building resilience.  

Coordinated by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), and with the input and support of numerous United Nations entities, this substantive review was initiated at national, regional and global levels in 2021, with consultations and review to conclude by September 2022 to allow inputs to be incorporated into this report as well as the report on the main findings and recommendations of the MTR SF. Both reports are produced to support Member States’ deliberations on a political declaration that is expected to be adopted at the High-level Meeting of the United Nations General Assembly on the MTR SF (HLM) on 18 and 19 May 2023. 

This report provides a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the progress made in the implementation of the Sendai Framework, on the basis of the submissions made by Member States, and by non-State stakeholders, as well as analysis of data provided to the Sendai Framework Monitor (SFM), global and regional thematic studies, interviews, focus group discussions, a review of the Sendai Framework Voluntary Commitments, and the literature review of the MTR SF. Additional relevant literature was consulted, including but not restricted to those listed in section 5.5 of the Concept Note of the MTR SF.21  

This report is made up of two parts:  

Part I  Retrospective review – a stocktaking exercise from 2015 to 2022, inter alia appraising the progress in implementation, identifying good practice, gaps and challenges.  

Part II  Prospective review and recommendations – exploring context shifts and emerging issues and laying out some of the areas identified in the review as priorities for amplified and accelerated risk-informed decision-making and action to 2030 and beyond.  

This report’s main findings and recommendations are captured in the report published by the United Nations General Assembly on 31 January 2023, entitled the Report of the Main Findings and Recommendations of the Midterm Review of the implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 (A/77/640).  

This report was published to inform Member States’ deliberations on the political declaration in advance of the HLM, and is available via the United Nations Official Document System and the UNDRR repository. 

The Sendai Framework drives the shift from managing disasters to managing disaster risks in all decisions, investments and behaviours, and while considerable progress has been made in implementation since 2015, there is increasing recognition that as the Earth system moves from a relatively stable to a relatively unstable state – with impacts spreading at a pace, magnitude and intensity that can lead to “potentially existential consequences and system collapse” – the MTR SF and other stocktaking exercises in 2022 and 2023 present the opportunity to ask some difficult questions of ourselves and examine challenging corrections to the current course.  

COVID-19 has shown the world what climate change has yet to, that prevailing risk governance and risk management architecture, mechanisms and approaches are inadequate when dealing with systemic, interconnected drivers of risks and cascading impacts that can spread within and across human and natural systems. With threats multiplying, and human security and planetary boundaries at risk, this demands renewed drive for collective action, and a multilateral system equipped for the new risk landscape. 

Governments and stakeholders are better able to understand the risks to which they are accustomed and with which they are confronted; and with this understanding, they are better placed to bring the transformations required to prevent, reduce or manage those risks. However, the socioeconomic and ecological impact of unattended risks that have manifested as disasters, have often compromised efforts, and significantly offset progress. While evident, progress remains unequal across geographical scales and income levels.  

As populations continue to grow, and the consequences of climate breakdown manifest in socioecological and technological systems, societies are tasked with ever-increasing challenges. The interconnections and interdependencies that exist between water, energy, food, health, trade and financial systems are both displaying vulnerabilities and generating risks that when left unaddressed can manifest as shocks characterized by multi-scalar contagion, with impacts that can cascade and compound through time and space, with ramifications for current and future generations.  

Natural resources such as water, soil and energy are becoming scarcer, lands and marine ecosystems are being rapidly degraded, biodiversity is declining, and income and gender inequities are intensifying, with gaps more acute in the world’s most vulnerable countries and regions. Eight years after the adoption of the “2015 agreements”, we are not where we need to be, not least as we slowly come to terms with the existential threat of climate change. 

And yet, where there is knowledge, courage and solidarity in the face of shared threats, there is opportunity. As disaster risk is a social construct – a function of incomplete and unsustainable development processes – transdisciplinary, prospective and corrective risk reduction provides the means to reduce vulnerabilities, exposure and inequality. In seeking to define risk-informed, sustainable and regenerative pathways forward, the MTR SF – together with other stocktaking and review exercises – is broaching some of the most challenging issues of our time. The year 2023 presents a critical inflection point, a unique opportunity for States and non-State stakeholders to course-correct, to achieve the expected outcome and goal of the Sendai Framework, and encourage risk-informed decision-making, investment and behaviour to 2030 and beyond.  

Such course corrections are deeply challenging – whether in respect of the transformations to global to local risk governance, accountability and responsibility; or how risk is treated in the global financial system; or the reconfiguring of metrics of growth to be compatible with planetary boundaries and human well-being, as opposed to wealth concentration and risk accumulation; or shifting the temporal frame – from short-term to long-term thinking in decision-making. They are however, fundamental to achieving the outcomes and goals of any of the agendas, frameworks, agreements and conventions struck in 2015, or prior. 

Abstracted by Qiang Hao