Recovery, Renewal, Resilience

The Sendai Framework Voluntary Commitment (VC) initiative calls for enhancing governance, including local governance, for disaster response, rehabilitation and reconstruction. A recent commitment on the Sendai VC ‘Strengthening inclusive Resilience to Disasters, boosting sustainable Development’, by the Province of Potenza (PPZ), Italy, is focused on re-assessing, monitoring and reviewing the level of resilience of its 100 Municipalities Network. Consider the following objectives and actions in the PPZ commitment:

• Encourage communication between local governments by maximizing on the ‘Making Cities Resilient (MCR) Campaign’
• “Share on the development and implementation of comprehensive urban disaster risk reduction plans”
• Showcase the value that the Human Security approach adds when implementing the Sendai Framework for disaster risk reduction at local levels
• Highlight local activities that are working to identify and implement innovative measures for disaster risk reduction and are striving to achieve SDGs
• Identify and introduce creative approaches to cooperation on different topics at local levels
• Implement the project using the new Resilience Scorecard through a “city-to-city peer review, based on a multi-stakeholder and holistic approach to disaster risk reduction”
• Collect data for a review and evaluation process of the Sendai Framework at the local level through strategic alignment to local indicators
• Share learning based on cities’ disaster risk assessments, and design a Resilience strategy
• This project is said to have achieved an “inclusive approach to strong community involvement” and developed “a governance-accountability system as a powerful mean for creating the conditions that contribute to change towards resilience”.

You can contact the team working on this project to find out more here

This could include:

• Retrofitting programmes to make buildings more energy-efficient
• Mass tree planting
• Investment in solar and wind power
• Building infrastructure required for increased consumption and use of electric cars such as improved electricity networks, and public and personal capacity for charging stations

Additionally, due to lockdown these measures may not be as disruptive to people's daily lives compared to, for example, offices being retrofitted while in constant use.

This lesson was conributed to by Chief Resilience Officers in Italy and Australia during project data collection, along with the source link below.

Cities such as Milan, Italy are developing strategies to retain street space from cars, providing 35km (22 miles) of transformed streets to accommodate an experimental citywide expansion of cycling and walking space to protect residents as COVID-19 restrictions are lifted. The Strade Aperte plan includes low-cost temporary cycle lanes, new and widened pavements, 30kph (20mph) speed limits, and pedestrian and cyclist priority streets. The locations include a low traffic neighbourhood on the site of the former Lazzaretto.

Similar plans for investments in bicycle-friendly infrastructure is being considered in the Netherlands, with a focus on expansion of the programme in cities and suburbs.

Reference: Chief Resilience Officer, Netherlands

Local government should develop a strategy to reimagine the use of green spaces so that they are accessible to all and accommodate social distancing for the foreseeable future.

Reference: Chief Resilience Officer, Italy