Environment

The Sendai Framework for Action, in its guiding principles, underlines the need of coherence between the development, strengthening and implementation of relevant policies, plans, practices and mechanisms on one hand and across to sustainable development and growth, food security, health and safety, climate change and variability, environmental management and disaster risk reduction agendas on the other hand. To this end, IPA DRAM will seek to integrate the environmental perspective in disaster risk assessment, as an essential element for developing a comprehensive assessment for all the seven partner countries.

For risk assessment the environmental hazards will be identified either as a primary impact from natural disasters and man-made (technological) accidents but also as secondary effects of natural disasters, so called NaTechs, and thirdly as cascading effects of other primary hazards.

Consideration will also be made to services developed under Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) which encourages the interoperability of data and adheres, where relevant, to the principles included in the Shared Environmental Information System (SEIS). The approach for programme implementation also includes the methodology in the EU Seveso directive aiming to identify major hazardous chemicals risks linked to industrial activities.

Gender

Natural disasters have different impact on women, girls, boys and men. In order to respond effectively to the gender dimensions of disaster risk, a gender mainstreaming perspective must be included also in prevention. On an overall level, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction recognises the importance of gender-dimensions in disaster risk reduction and calls for “inclusiveness and engagement of all society […] to be integrated into all disaster risk management policies, plans and decision making processes, including those related to risk assessment, early warning, information management and education and training[…].” The project will also be guided by the Gender Action plan 2016-2020 (Council of the European Union) which highlights the need of systematic gender analysis in all new external actions as well as the use of sex-and age-disaggregated data.

To contribute to the gender-related targets found in the Sendai framework as well as in EU and country-specic policies and mechanisms, the programme envisages to use a number of key methods:

  • To promote an enabling environment and an active participation among all, a gender-aware pedagogy will be used in the programme events to remove barriers for participation and avoid perpetuating gender stereotypes.
  • The programme will adopt a participatory and inclusive approach to ensure the involvement of and to use the knowledge and capacities of all affected population groups, including civil society organisations working on girls’ and women’s rights, to identify gender-related vulnerabilities of natural disasters, when relevant and possible.
  • Gender and age analysis will be an integrated part of the initial country assessments, which includes to review EU- and country-specifc tools and methods.

Civil Society Involvement

Civil society plays an important role in every society. In risk assessment and data collection non-governmental organisations NGOs , with links to the communities, can be instrumental in providing both information and expertise and at the same time distribute information about the ndings of the project.

The project, while doing the stakeholder mapping as part of the assessment in each partner country, will look at all essential actors to be involved in the process. Based on existing platforms and networks, NGO:s might already be involved in disaster risk management. They might also have valuable cross-border networks to strengthen the regional aspects of risks.