From local resilience to systemic risk governance
Households can prepare for floods, but they cannot decide where development happens upstream, how regional power networks are protected, or whether capital keeps flowing into hazard-prone land. Writing for International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction, Bapon Fakhruddin argues that where disaster impacts are felt should not be confused with who produces the risk. He separates risk creation, risk transmission and risk bearing, noting that those who benefit from a development decision are often not those who bear its consequences. His Local-to-Systemic Risk Governance framework proposes financed local resilience compacts, which pair local responsibility with real decision rights and predictable funding, alongside investment appraisals that make trade-offs explicit. Resilience is experienced locally, he concludes, but it is not produced locally alone.
Homes account for 43% of the direct economic disaster losses countries report through the Sendai Framework Monitor, and around half of everyone affected by disasters had their home damaged or destroyed. Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure modelling puts average annual losses to residential buildings from cyclones, floods, tsunamis and earthquakes at roughly US$228 billion, more than half of estimated losses across the world’s building stock from those hazards. Released for International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction, UNDRR’s message is that progress on cutting disaster deaths hasn’t been matched by progress on reducing the number of people affected or the economic cost. The UNDRR argues that this won’t change until homes get safer. The fix: risk-informed locations, enforced building standards, retrofits, and rebuilding to higher standards.
When El Niño hits home: Building household resilience ahead of a record-breaking climate event
As a very strong El Niño unfolds, raising the risk of severe weather into 2027, who ends up paying the disaster bill? Mostly households, argue the authors of a UN report. Post-Disaster Needs Assessments from 20 Asia-Pacific countries show that around 40% of disaster impacts fall on social and productive sectors such as housing, health, education and livelihoods. Forecasts now give at least six months’ lead time, but information only helps if families have the means to act on it. The authors set out three priorities for governments: turn forecasts into practical guidance, make home retrofits, insurance and other risk reduction affordable, and strengthen climate-responsive social protection.
Resilience starts at home: Building a safer future in Latin America and the Caribbean
With 81.2% of its population living in cities, Latin America and the Caribbean is one of the world’s most urbanised regions, and rapid, unplanned growth leaves many families building homes in places exposed to hurricanes, earthquakes and floods. The United Nations Development Programme shares three responses. In Havana, disaster risk was built into Old Havana’s housing strategy, alongside affordable designs that preserve heritage and use local materials. After Hurricane Melissa, Jamaica developed master plans for safer land use and trained local builders in resilient construction, while families received psychosocial support and help replacing lost documents. After the June 2026 earthquakes in Venezuela, engineers assessed nearly 1,000 structures to decide when families could safely return home.
Rethinking disaster reconstruction in Nepal: Building back for a changing climate
On 26 August 2026, a glacial lake outburst flood triggered by an avalanche on Mt Langtang Lirung swept through Nepal’s Bhotekoshi and Trishuli river valleys, killing more than 1,400 people. It was the third major flood to hit the region in just over a year. Kshitiz Pokharel asks whether reconstruction should simply restore what was lost or address the changing risks behind it. He argues for three principles: adaptation, with homes and public buildings on raised platforms, flood-resilient bridges and roads, and no-settlement zones near high-risk wetlands; accessibility, so warnings and support reach everyone; and acceptability, consulting communities before plans are finalised. With glaciers melting and extreme events becoming less predictable, past climate records are no longer a reliable guide to future risk.
Water reveals the limits of sustainable finance taxonomies
A taxonomy can help investors identify whether an activity is green, but it cannot determine whether anyone is able to pay for it. Writing for the Alliance for Global Water Adaptation, Bapon Fakhruddin and Kristina Anguelova use water security to illustrate where sustainable finance classifications end—and where financial design must begin. Developing countries spend around US$164.6 billion each year on water, with approximately 91% coming from governments and state-owned enterprises and less than 2% from private sources. Projects such as flood protection and catchment restoration can generate significant public benefits without producing the revenue needed to repay private investors. Cape Town offers one example of how this gap can be addressed. Clearing invasive vegetation from seven priority catchments was estimated to cost one-tenth as much per unit as alternatives such as desalination. A R2.5 billion (South African rand) performance-based bond issued in 2026 also links part of investor returns to independently verified restoration outcomes. Where there is no commercial payer, public budgets and grants remain a legitimate and necessary source of finance.
Planning for the next disaster: Household preparedness in the Houston area
Most Houston-area residents feel ready for the next disaster, but levels of preparedness vary substantially by income. Using measures from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) National Household Survey, the Kinder Institute assessed household preparedness in spring 2026 across Harris County and, for the first time, Fort Bend and Montgomery counties. The average resident has taken five of the ten preparedness actions FEMA tracks, such as signing up for weather alerts and insuring their property. Four in ten own a generator that can power their home through extended outages, but ownership varies sharply by neighbourhood and income. That matters in a city where millions lost power after Hurricane Beryl in 2024. Higher-earning households feel more prepared and take more preparedness actions, while nearly half of residents in households earning under US$25,000 a year said they would be not at all prepared or not too prepared if a disaster struck. The researchers point to community organisations to help lower-income residents prepare, alongside staying connected to alerts and local networks year-round.
World Risk Poll 2026: From alert to agency: What turns warnings into action
Four in five adults who experienced a disaster in the previous five years received at least one advance warning, but more than a third of those warned were unable to take any protective action. Drawing on more than 143,000 Gallup interviews across 140 countries and territories, Lloyd’s Register Foundation’s report examines exposure to disasters, access to warnings and the ability to act on them. Preparation at home makes a striking difference: 83% of warned adults with both a household disaster plan and a sense of personal agency took action, compared with just 27% of those with neither. Warning coverage reached 64% in low-income countries compared with 84% in upper-middle and high-income countries. At the regional level, Australia and New Zealand recorded the highest regional share of adults reporting disaster impacts, at 31%. The report calls for mobile-based warnings, stronger household preparedness and priority for highly exposed communities with poor warning access.
Strengthening climate resilience through social protection programs
When disaster strikes, the households most at risk are often those least able to absorb the shock. Adaptive social protection links social protection with disaster risk management and climate adaptation, building poor and vulnerable households’ capacity to anticipate, absorb and adapt to shocks so they don’t fall into, or become trapped in, poverty. This Asian Development Bank brief shows what that looks like in practice in Bangladesh, a low-lying deltaic country with 13% of its territory less than 2 metres above sea level. Reforms to its Employment Generation Program for the Poorest, a public works scheme supporting around 400,000 people, now match permitted works to each district’s dominant climate stress, align them with local disaster management plans, locate worksites within 3 km of homes so women can take part safely, and speed up wage payments. Community consultations surfaced barriers that desk reviews had missed. The lesson travels well: resilience can be built through existing national programmes rather than standalone interventions.
Perceiving protection: Public interpretation of institutions in managed flood settings
Why do some households prepare for floods while their neighbours, living behind the same levee, do not? This systematic review of 35 studies published between 2010 and 2024, covering levees, dams, reservoirs and drainage infrastructure across 21 countries, finds the answer often lies in how people see the institutions meant to protect them. Six dynamics emerge: infrastructure as a producer of risk, governance fragmentation and public confusion, preparedness as an interpretive practice, trust and the levee effect, fairness and timing in institutional response, and whether institutions communicate in ways people can recognise. The central finding is that preparedness is not driven solely by risk knowledge or hazard experience, but reflects how institutional action is seen, trusted or contested. For anyone designing flood protection, how it is perceived may matter as much as how well it performs.
19th Congress of the International Union of Microbiological Societies (IUMS 2026)
Microbes rarely feature in disaster risk conversations, yet they underpin food security, carbon sequestration, ecosystem restoration and public health. The 19th IUMS Congress brings together scientists working across bacteriology, virology and mycology under the theme “Beyond the Microscope: AI & Innovation in Microbiology”. Alongside microbial genetics, synthetic biology and clinical science, the programme covers applied microbiology for environmental sustainability, with a strong emphasis on preserving ecosystems and oceans. Listed by the International Science Council, the congress also aims to widen participation from both low- and high-income countries. It sits at the edge of the DRR agenda but is worth following for anyone working where ecosystem health, biological hazards and resilience meet.
Date & location: 4 – 6 November 2026 | Lisbon, Portugal
World Tsunami Awareness Day 2026
In 2011, only 5 of roughly 2,900 elementary and junior-high students in Kamaishi, Japan, died when the Great East Japan tsunami struck, an outcome credited to years of tsunami education and regular drills. This year’s World Tsunami Awareness Day picks up the same thread under the theme “Be Tsunami Ready: Resilience starts with you”. Because waves can arrive before official warnings do, the campaign focuses on recognising natural warning signs, moving immediately to high ground, knowing evacuation routes, preparing household plans, and helping those who need extra support, including children, older people, persons with disabilities and tourists. Events are being held worldwide, and UNDRR is inviting organisations to share their own #GetToHighGround activities.
Date & location: 5 November 2026 | Global
UN Climate Change Conference (COP31)
The world’s only multilateral decision-making forum on climate change will meet in Antalya. Türkiye’s Murat Kurum has been nominated as COP President, with Australia’s Chris Bowen serving as President of Negotiations. The conference follows October’s Pre-COP, which was hosted in the Pacific by Fiji, Tuvalu and Australia. Negotiators will focus on limiting warming to 1.5°C, helping vulnerable communities adapt and reaching net zero. Adaptation tracking will be under close scrutiny after COP30 in Belém adopted 59 indicators for the Global Goal on Adaptation. Business leaders, scientists, Indigenous Peoples and civil society representatives will also join official delegations. Those following the conference remotely can access a daily schedule of events on the UNFCCC website.
Date & location: 9 – 20 November 2026 | Antalya, Türkiye
OpenET Applications Conference 2026
How much water is actually leaving fields, forests and cities through evapotranspiration? OpenET uses satellite data to answer that question at field scale, and this conference brings its user community together with the science and technical teams to share how the data is being put to work. Under the theme “Science & Innovation to Support Sound Water Management”, sessions run across five tracks: accuracy, natural and urban landscapes, regional management, drought and conservation, and on-farm management. The goals are to share lessons across regions and sectors, gather feedback on what users need from the data, and spark new partnerships. Registration details are available on the conference website.
Date & location: 17 – 18 November 2026 | Hyatt Regency, Salt Lake City, USA
Reducing Drought Risk through Prevention, Early Warning and Anticipatory Action
With El Niño-related drought conditions adding pressure on water security, livelihoods and ecosystems, this UNDRR event in Abu Dhabi, held during the 2026 UN Water Conference, looks at how prevention, early warning and anticipatory action can reduce drought risk and accelerate progress on Sustainable Development Goal 6. It draws on the Sendai Framework and the 2026 Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction, which explores the links between drought, floods and food systems. Discussion will centre on partnerships between governments, UN entities, scientific institutions and development partners to strengthen risk-informed water management and drought preparedness. Ministerial representation and high-level participation are expected.
Date & location: 9 December 2026 | ADNEC Centre, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
