Asia is one of the most disaster prone regions in the world, exposed to a variety of natural and man-made hazards which are further exacerbated by climate change impacts. An increase in severe weather events shows climate change is affecting climate-sensitive sectors such as agriculture and natural resources, which will affect livelihoods and food security. This reflects a need to ensure resilient and sustainable development for the selected sectors by integrating disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation considerations into the overall development planning and implementation processes of environment, livelihoods, and food security.
 

These three sectors are intrinsically linked and cannot be viewed as separate entities. Rather, a holistic approach should be employed to ensure decisions affecting one sector do not detrimentally affect another. This is crucial considering these sectors are imperative to policy development and planning to create effective risk management strategies.

Oxfam and the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC) have organized a three-day regional knowledge-sharing event entitled “Pan-Asian Regional Policy Forum on Mainstreaming Disaster Risk Reduction and Integration of Climate Change Adaptation into the Environment, Livelihoods, and Food Security Sectors,” with a focus on sharing best practices, highlighting key issues and challenges, and identifying actions for implementation under the three identified themes of environment, livelihood, and food security.

The policy recommendations from this Forum will be fed into the forthcoming Conference of the Parties (COP21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in December 2015 in Paris, SAARC summit in the first quarter of 2016 in Islamabad, the 13th meeting of the Regional Consultative Committee (RCC) and Asia’s Inter-governmental platform on disaster management in 2016 in Islamabad, the next Asian Ministerial Conference on DRR in New Delhi in November 2016 and other regional conference/platforms.