Additonal Content for Global Consultation on Risk-Informed Development

Over the past decade, important progress has been made on poverty reduction, disease control and access to healthcare, education and services. However, these gains are fragile, and are undermined by new and emerging threats, including climate change, economic and financial instability, antibiotic resistance, transnational criminal networks and terrorism, cyber fragility, geopolitical volatility and conflict. These threats are interconnected, they cross national borders and they are occurring simultaneously.

Growing awareness of these challenges is leading to calls by governments, the international development community and donors for an approach to development that takes account of these complex risks: that is risk-informed. Risk-informed development is a risk-based decision process that enables development to become more sustainable and resilient. It pushes development decision-makers to understand and acknowledge that all development choices involve the creation of uncertain risks, as well as opportunities.

This report highlights the need for:

• a move away from single hazard risk analysis to an explicit acknowledgement of the interactions between multiple threats, including economic and financial instability, geopolitical volatility, natural hazards and climate change
• systematic assessments of complex threats and risks, opportunities, uncertainties, risk tolerances, perceptions and options to ensure that development is sustainable and  resilient
• identifying who has responsibility to act upon risk management, with what resources, by when and how those actions are to be monitored
• analysis of the potential trade-offs of development policies and investment actions, including social and environmental impacts, feasibility and cultural and ethical outcomes
• the provision to policy-makers of a robust evidence base around the role that unsustainable development plays in creating risk
• understanding and acknowledging that all development and investment choices involve trade-offs.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that risk has become increasingly interconnected and systemic. This requires comprehensive and joined-up efforts to build resilience that can transcend a range of sectors, risks, and stakeholders. The UN System has a key role as a convener of multiple actors working together to reduce the systemic risks that have become deeply ingrained in the functionality of our societies. This requires bold and transformative action that will bring the world onto a more sustainable path. Resilience is a common thread across the three United Nations pillars of development, human rights, and peace and security– and is reflected in many important global policy agendas and frameworks that acknowledge that risks and their manifestation can hinder the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustaining Peace Agenda.

The UN Common Guidance on Resilience aims to strengthen coherence in UN resilience-building efforts at country level in support of Governments’ sustainable development objectives. It shows a way towards joined-up solutions and collective outcomes that build on the comparative advantages of humanitarian, peace and security, development, and human rights interventions. It also provides a timely reference for the implementation of the UN socio-economic, health and humanitarian response framework to COVID-19 to ensure that a comprehensive and multi-dimensional approach to risk and resilience appropriately informs the ‘new normal’ during and after the COVID crisis. It aims to integrate a resilience lens into the decisions, programmes and interventions and existing UN policy and programming processes at country level, rather than establish new or stand-alone UN policy or action plans for resilience.

The Guidance offers a flexible approach that can be tailored to country contexts and needs. It is not a blueprint but aims to complements ongoing resilience building efforts at country level by helping to address gaps and bottlenecks towards a more comprehensive and joined-up endeavour. It is an operational guidance for practical application at country level that promotes a common understanding of resilience based on shared principles, and unpacks the process for building resilience together for the UN System and its partners, including a rich annex of practical tools and methodologies. The primary audience of the guidance are UN Teams to help them better equip governments at national and subnational levels to lead on resilience-building, by bringing the UN together around a common understanding and operational approach on risk-informed programming across sectors. The Guidance is also a useful reference for government and partners at country, regional and global levels.

This advance version of the Guidance was approved by the Director’s level interagency drafting team and will be submitted to the UN Sustainable Development Group for endorsement.