By Ramona McVicker
The future of disaster risk reduction requires ongoing collaboration and coordination among various stakeholders including governments, communities, organizations, professions, and the private sector. Collective action and practiced adaptation and change are crucial for effectively reducing disaster risk over time.
The symposium calls for facilitators, conversation starters, disruptors, and innovators to foster change and make progress in disaster risk reduction. The symposium days are organized based on four priorities for action listed in Sendai, namely understanding disaster risk, strengthening disaster risk governance, investing in disaster reduction for resilience, and enhancing disaster preparedness for effective response and to “build forward better” in recovery.
The symposium aims to transfer knowledge, build relationships, and exchange best practices among participants. The high-level themes that guide the types of contributions are related to Canada’s attempt to “accelerate whole-of-society action on DRR” through the development of the Emergency Management Strategy for Canada: Towards a Resilient 2030.
We are not doing a callout for abstracts per se, but for individuals and organizations who can contribute to focused areas related to DRR and resilience building in urban, remote, rural, and Indigenous communities, targeted hazard risk management, addressing vulnerabilities resulting from gender/social inequality, disabilities, and age, advancing trans-disciplinary research and analytical tools, and climate change adaptation.
We are also interested in your problems and solutions. We can workshop challenges in a unique setting that pulls from diverse perspectives, test solutions and learn about what’s working, what isn’t and everything in between.
The symposium invites a well-rounded perspective, which comes from bringing together new and emerging professionals from all stakeholder groups in DRR. Only together can the goals of creating a more disaster-resilient Canada be achieved. Join us, won’t you?
