About the Campaign
What is the “Making Cities Resilient" Campaign about?
Throughout 2010-2020 and beyond, the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) Making Cities Resilient Campaign (MCRC), together with partners, aim to support sustainable urban development by promoting resilience activities and increasing local level understanding of disaster risk. A ten-point checklist of essentials for making cities resilient serves as a guide for a city’s commitment toward improving their resilience and is the organizing principle for reporting and monitoring during the campaign.
Why a campaign on “Making Cities Resilient”?
Cities are the lifelines of today’s society. They serve as a nations’ economic engine, being centres of technology and innovation, and are living evidence of our cultural heritage. However, cities can also become generators of new risks: failed infrastructure and services, environmental urban degradation, along with influencing the increasing of informal settlements with almost a billion slum dwellers around the world today despite all efforts. This makes many urban citizens more vulnerable to natural hazards.
Why focus on local governments?
Local governments are the institutional and politically responsible body at the local level. They are often the first responders to citizens’ needs (and complaints), provide basic services and oversight, engage in urban development and manage emergencies and disaster risk. Thus they need knowledge, tools, capacities and resources to act on these responsibilities. They need to understand how making cities resilient can help them deliver better on their many responsibilities. Local governments are often forgotten as targets by national and international community when policies are set and resources become available.
Who is organizing the campaign?
The UNISDR secretariat is the overall coordinator of the Making Cities Resilient Campaign. However, participating city and local governments along with local, regional and international partners are the main drivers and owners of the campaign.
How can we measure success?
From 2010 to 2011, success was measured through the number of mayors and local governments joining and committing to the cause. As of 2012, the campaign’s success has also been measured by the number of partnerships and alliances developed by different stakeholders at the local level, as well as the actual progress made by participating cities and local governments in each of the Ten Essentials through the Local Government Self-Assessment Tool (LG-SAT). To date, over 1,000 cities have reported their actions on disaster risk reduction through the LG-SAT. Following the LG-SAT's release in 2012, a more advanced assessment tool known as City Resilience Scorecard was developed and released in 2014, providing a more in depth analysis of local actions corresponding to level of risks, assisting cities to identify gaps and create action plans. Now, post-adoption of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015-2030), the Ten Essentials for Making Cities Resilient have been revised by partners to correspond with implementing the framework at the local level, learning from both the LG-SAT and City Resilience Scorecard.
The Ten Essentials for Making Cities Resilient assessment tool builds upon the previous, providing an in-depth and comprehensive assessment tool, that is both applicable to all, and most importantly, actionable allowing for cities to create effective and implementable local resilience action plans.
