UNISDR aims at building disaster resilient communities by promoting increased awareness of the importance of disaster reduction as an integral component of sustainable development, with the goal of reducing human, social, economic and environmental losses due to natural hazards and related technological and environmental disasters.

The UNISDR Secretariat’s activities on climate change adaptation aim to:

1. Achieve recognition, understanding and specific policies at the international level on the synergies between reducing disaster risk and responding to climate change.
2. Mobilize, guide and facilitate action at national and regional levels to integrate disaster reduction and climate change policies and practice.
3. Strengthen the capacities of ISDR System partners to support the integration of disaster reduction and climate change by all actors.

It supports the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) System in implementing the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015: Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities to Disasters and in building a culture of prevention in society as part of sustainable development.

This action pledge commits the ISDR Secretariat to share the ISDR System’s knowledge in reducing risk to adapt to climate change and responds to several Calls for Action.  It pledges numerous activities under the following areas of the Nairobi work programme:

Climate related risks and extreme events
- To support UNFCCC Parties’ understanding of the link between disaster risk reduction and adaptation and build capacity
- To assess the costs and benefits of adaptation options
- To advance the use of insurance-related instruments for coping with climate variability and change

Socio-economic information
- To analyze impact and adaptation studies and document good practices

Adaptation planning and practices (at various levels and within and across sectors)
- To support development of legal and institutional frameworks to enhance cross-sectoral collaboration on adaptation, using existing platforms to bring together sectoral stakeholders
- To reduce vulnerability in urban areas

Methods and tools
To support activities at regional meetings in Americas-region to share disaster risk reduction methods and tools with climate change adaptation practitioners and climate change methods and tools with disaster risk reduction practitioners, in collaboration with ISDR System partners

Action pledge (135 kB)

UN/ISDR provided updated information on their activities as a contribution to the Nairobi work programme publication "Action Pledges: Making a difference on the ground. A synthesis of the outcomes, good practices, lessons learned, and future challenges and opportunities".  The information can be found in Chapter 7 "Reducing risks of extreme events and climate-related disasters"