Event

13 April 2022

On the 7th of April 2022 the GLOFCA Project was presented at the Regional Forum on sustainable development for the UNECE Region, where partnerships to address climate change, extreme events and disaster risk reduction towards sustainable development goals have been discussed.

https://regionalforum.unece.org/events/regional-forum-2022

The event was organized by the Regional Office for Europe of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Distaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia. Contributors came from UNICEF, UNDP, UNECE, UNESCO and other members of the Task Team on Climate Change and DRR of the Issue Based Coalition on Environment and Climate.

Amongst the five panelist, Alessandro Cicoira, a scientist from the University of Zurich, discussed the GLOFCA project and its philosophy. During his presentation, he addressed the strategy to reduce the vulnerabilities of communities affected by Glacier Lake Outburst Floods. Special attention was payed to the regional scale of the Project and to the integrated approach in the design of Early Warning Systems. An important discussion point has also been the financial and operational sustainability of the mitigation measures developed under the project. With this regard, capacity building and knowledge transfer have been highlighted as some of the fundamental components of GLOFCA.

Other panelists presented their experience related to resilience journey for cities (https://mcr2030.undrr.org/), the  National Platform of the Kyrgyz Republic for Disaster Risk Reduction, the joint expert group on water and industrial accidents (https://unece.org/joint-expert-group-water-and-industrial-accidents), and finally the Strategic Partnership for the South-East European Multi-Hazard Early Warning Advisory Syste.
The event has been concluded by a vivid discussion with many questions and suggestions for further partnerships and cooperation. Cyrille Honoré, in his role of moderator, summarized the event by stressing that you cannot simply declare cooperation. This needs time, energy and commitment. It is important that science advances are translated in practical results and sustained over time by policies and governance. He reminded that the secretary general just called for a wide effort to ensure that EWS are always more applied to protect vulnerable communities on our planet. With this important message, we concluded the event proud to contribute to a common effort.