Preparing to act, acting to prepare: Sharing good practices ahead of the World Resilient Recovery Conference

It has become a well-known and important axiom within the field of Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) that in order to build resilience and sustainably recover from hazardous events, communities, governments, and local and international organizations alike must work together to prepare and be ready. 

With this mind, in the build-up to the World Resilient Recovery Conference (WRRC), to be held Tuesday, June 3rd in Geneva and online globally, the International Recovery Platform (IRP) and partners hosted a number of important preparatory events – including webinars, masterclasses and regional consultations – all centered around key components of 2025’s WRRC theme of “Investing in Recovery Readiness to Build Back Better”. In total, a diverse group of more than 4,000 experts representing 130 countries participated.

Enabling solutions for disaster-induced displacement 

One such webinar focused on displacement, and was co-organized by UNDRR, the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC). Officially titled “Restoring Livelihoods: Solutions for Disaster-Induced Displacement and Resilient Recovery”, the session explored sustainable strategies for livelihood restoration and resilience-building in disaster-displaced populations and their host communities. 

Key outcomes emerged in the form of five good practices and recommendations to help identify opportunities for change and inspire potential solutions:

1. Integrate livelihood restoration into disaster recovery policies: Emphasizing inclusive, locally grounded, and multi-faceted approaches, combining immediate financial support with investment in long-term resilience building, mobilizing development and climate finance;
2. Strengthen traditional safety nets and tenure security: Supporting displaced families and host communities by bolstering existing community support systems, ensuring land tenure, and fostering culturally appropriate resilience strategies;
3. Foster cross-sector collaboration: Examples from Kenya and Somalia highlight how public-private partnerships, mobile platform technologies and private sector engagement enhance displaced people's access to markets;
4. Promote community engagement and inclusive planning: Examples from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Turkey show the value of involving affected communities—particularly women—in livelihood restoration initiatives;
5. Adopt integrated governance and evidence-based planning: Coordinating pre-disaster policy frameworks, investing in risk data systems including displacement data, and supporting a whole-of-government approach to “build back better” enables long-term resilient recovery.

Meaningfully engaging with the private sector 

Focusing on the private sector (and echoing good practice 3 above), the “Driving Resilience: The Critical Role of Private Sector’s Readiness for Recovery” session addressed the critical role of private sector engagement in disaster recovery, highlighting the economic and social impacts on business operations by exploring lessons from past disasters, the links between climate change and operational resilience and public-private collaboration. It was co-organized by UNDRR, the Corporate Chief Resilience Officers (CCRO) Network, ARISE Private Sector Alliance for Disaster Resilient Societies and the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC). 

The session identified good practices for business resilience, outlined potential strategies and highlighted areas for further deliberation. It emphasized the need for enhanced collaboration between businesses, governments, NGOs and financial institutions to foster resilience and drive sustainable recovery efforts. The session highlighted the need to:

1. Develop a set of voluntary actions, synthesized as good practices in operational readiness across diverse business scales: including core elements such as comprehensive risk assessments, and clearly defined goals and roles for business continuity governance, drawing on lessons learned from past events;
2. Strengthen financial and technical support to businesses for the implementation of climate-resilient operations and recovery initiatives: integrating these efforts into national and local recovery planning mechanisms;
3. Forge consensus on a standardized framework for public-private partnerships and community engagement: including how to declare and manage them, identifying opportunities to enhance collaboration in preparedness and recovery in alignment with Sendai Framework Priority 4.

Scaling solutions with sustainable finance 

Picking up on the emphasis on collaboration between actors, the next session’s focus was “Unlocking Financial Potential: Scalable Solutions for Resilient Recovery”. This time, the Head of UNDRR and UN Special Representative of the Secretary General (SRSG) for Disaster Risk Reduction Kamal Kishore joined a session co-organized by UNDRR, the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean (CAF), the UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) and the United Nations University - Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS). 

In his opening remarks, SRSG Kishore called the webinar an important “curtain raiser” to this year’s WRRC. He noted that “if [we say that] humanitarian appeals for supporting immediate response are underfunded, then appeals for supporting recovery and reconstruction are severely underfunded”. SRSG Kishore highlighted the example of the December 2024 Vanuatu earthquake, which caused losses and damages of 200 million USD, roughly 20% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). As of March 2025, less than 20% of the recovery and reconstruction costs were secured.

SRSG Kishore then highlighted three necessary actions to resolve this issue: 

1. “National governments need to put in place national systems for funding recovery.”
2. “A more deliberate exercise of well-planned recovery [over years] to build back better.”
3. “Achieve convergence between various streams of funding." 

He further emphasized the webinar’s role in informing governments to “begin talking about finance and recovery not [only] after a disaster has already occurred, but even before…because these things are not abnormal, they happen with regular frequency, and there is no reason why we should not have a predictable system to address the financing needs of recovery."

As the discussion continued guided by an esteemed panel, five key recommendations emerged: 

1. Strengthen collaboration between public and private sectors to address recovery challenges more effectively;
2. Develop of inclusive, nationally led recovery plans that engage local governments and communities from the outset;
3. Integrate disaster and climate risk into overall financial planning to enable more resilient and effective recovery;
4. Enhance pre-arranged financial mechanisms, such as insurance and contingency loans, to improve speed and predictability of funding;
5. Improve coordination across local, national and international actors to align resources and ensure efficient, equitable recovery efforts.

The WRRC is an integral part of the Preparatory Days of this year’s Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction, or GP2025. Technical sessions will focus on the need for resilient recovery readiness. The webinars, masterclasses and regional consultations organized by IRP in the first half of this year have been a key part of that. We hope you join us in person or virtually on June 3rd!