We must proactively learn from every disaster. What reduced the impact on the lives and livelihoods of those most at-risk? What more could have been done? Read the new United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) GAR Special Report 2024: Forensic Insights for Future Resilience: Learning from Past Disasters
Every disaster is too precious to waste. We must use every disaster to draw lessons. This means conducing a deep technical analysis to understand underlying factors that led to the disaster. To build back better from disasters and ensure a resilient recovery, countries must learn from the past to inform how they invest, build, and develop for the future. Today we are launching a new report “Forensic Insights for Future Resilience: Learning from Past Disasters” – a special edition of the UN’s flagship Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction (GAR) – which explores how we can use forensic analysis to make systemic risk more traceable. It shows that we can and must learn from past disasters to better understand existing vulnerabilities and their connections to one another. The report uses ten case studies examining recent disasters from around the world, each of which analyses which factors aggravated or reduced the impacts. It offers future risk projections, and provides recommendations for enhancing resilience across three vital spheres: People, Planet, and Prosperity. The GAR 2024 report urges countries to use a forensic approach in disaster analysis, guiding preventative measures that can reduce impacts and build resilience. Policymakers should use forensic methodologies to identify entry points for action and prioritise investments for resilience that address the very root causes of risk. I encourage anyone with an interest in reducing disaster risks and building resilience to explore the GAR 2024 "Forensic Insights for Future Resilience." Find the highlights and download the full publication here: https://ow.ly/6pnh50TpMSc