SDC’s Mainstreaming DRR Training

More than 80% of country people are somewhat exposed to earthquakes, cyclones, floods and droughts live across Bangladesh. The colossal cost of these disasters poses a significant threat to achieving the Millennium Development Goals, especially the first goal of halving poverty by 2015. The ever-changing world and its impulsive nature have already publicized the capability of humanity to withstand erratic behavior. The recent past century has experienced hundreds of calamities which destructed not only valuable development but also charged abundant lives. Countries with fragile economic status like Bangladesh went through analogous development encumbrances almost once in every decade.

 

Mainstreaming DRR in different development effort has become inescapable. Accordingly development activity and DRR representing two sides of the same coin needs to be dealt with in unison, with mainstreaming DRR into development planning, policy and implementation. Till date, Government of Bangladesh has adopted notable initiatives (particularly institutional, policy, planning etc); nevertheless, there are huge breaches in mainstreaming those at sectoral level.

SDC, as one of the key development partners of Government of Bangladesh, has been playing vital role in managing adverse natural occurrences like Cyclone, Flood, Storm Surge etc. Mainstreaming DRR into the development process and planning has been integrated by all the leading organizations including SDC and its partners. SDC has incorporated Mainstreaming DRR as one of the key development approaches. Integration of DRR issues into diverse development process, planning and implementation at local and national level capacitating local partner organizations is inevitable.

Mainstreaming involves ensuring that disaster risk reduction perspectives are central to all activities - policy development, research, advocacy, legislation, resource allocation and planning, implementation and monitoring of programmes and projects (ADPC).

Mainstreaming DRR into development pathway required extensive exertion towards inclusiveness and amalgamation within and beyond sector/s planning, management and implementation. Escalating concern in mainstreaming has been fuelled by Growing understanding of disasters as unresolved problems of development, new focus of development strategies around poverty reduction and Rising disaster losses. The factors together have triggered growing realization of the need for win-win solutions for securing sustainable development, reducing poverty and strengthening hazard resilience.

DRR being operative at all levels and across sector, the concerted effort of integrating it into development activities requires consensus and active participation of decision makers and planners at the national level and all related Ministries, with equal support from the donor and development community. It is through the consolidated and concerted efforts of all stakeholders that safer and sustainable communities are to be attainted and thus mainstreaming of DRR has been rightly prioritized in the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA) adopted by 168 countries at the World Conference on Disaster Reduction (WCDR) in January 2005.

To act on this understanding, the development agencies have initiated the process of changing their policies and institutional practices to support the countries. As the key development partner of Government of Bangladesh, SDC has been giving effort to better prepare the vulnerable communities through diversified windows. In conjunction with that, SDC also substantially putting exertion to capacitate its local partners involved in rural development activities across the country. To enhance the productivity, improve knowledge and mainstream DRR into focused department like agriculture, public health, education, water etc are inevitable in poverty reduction and quality development as well.  It is realized that DRR should be integrated across and in all sectors, however practitioners has identified, agriculture, infrastructure, housing, education, health and financial services as priority areas to initiate the mainstreaming of DRR.

The broad objective is capacitating SDC partner organization’s in mainstreaming Disaster Risk Reduction at different level and strengthening collaboration among themselves. The development of the capacity of senior and mid-level staff members of SDC-supported NGOs for mainstreaming of DRR, accentuating the ‘need’ of mainstreaming DRR in crucial development sectors and familiarizing the participants with appropriate mainstreaming mechanisms and tools are the direct objective that SDC wants to achieve.

SDC believes that the participants will be familiar with SDC’s DRR Guidelines/tools, the participants will also be familiar with CDMP/GoB and 2 key sector/NGOs practices on DRR mainstreaming, DRR mainstreaming good practices are documented, Knowledge and understanding on DRR mainstreaming will be used in SDC project designing and implementation.

The articulated training programme will be followed by a participatory attainment analysis process at the partner organization level through field visit and workshop conduction. Two such programmes will focus on how DRR activists are being incorporated within the organizations and for the betterment of community.

All experts would be encouraged to select most-up-date mainstreaming tools and mechanisms available and practiced in country during the training sessions. The selection of these drivers are based on appropriateness of mainstreaming DRR in foremost sectors e.g. agriculture, fisheries, health, education etc. DRR mainstreaming tools would be discussed throughout the training program to make participants better understand the process. Targeted valuable tools practiced by different organizations would be taught by experts.