Seminar-Forum on Disaster Risk Financing in ASEAN

Disaster Management Policyand Technology Center

Management - Cooperation - Work together

15:10:0, 22/08/2011 The Seminar-Forum on Disaster Risk Financing in ASEAN will be held on the afternoon of 31 March 2011, in Borobudur Hotel, Jakarta, Indonesia. The forum is a post-event to the International Strategy on Disaster Reduction (ISDR) Asia Partnership (IAP) Meeting to be held concurrently on 28-31 March 2011 at the same venue. The ISDR Asia Partnership (IAP), is an informal multi-stakeholder forum with the role to facilitate implementation of Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA) in the Asia region.

Why Risk Financing?

One of the AADMER Work Programme flagship projects under the Prevention and Mitigation component for implementation in Phase 1 is disaster risk financing, including microfinance, and Indonesia has been designated as the lead shepherd country for this project. Risk financing is likewise emphasized by the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA) under Priority Area Four: Reducing Underlying Risk Factors.

Since no country can completely insulate itself against major natural disasters, it becomes necessary to include disaster risk financing as an integral part of risk management strategy. In the aftermath of a disaster, ASEAN Member States may not have sufficient financial response capacity to reduce the economic and fiscal burden of a disaster. In most cases, disaster-stricken Member States rely on unpredictable international humanitarian aid flows, budget reallocation and emergency appropriations, taxation, and borrowing. However, these post-loss funding methods cannot substitute for a sustainable and cost effective disaster risk financing strategy.

The Seminar

The Seminar-Forum is organised to kick start the discussion of disaster risk financing and increase the understanding of various risk financing options and risk sharing mechanisms that are available in the market and can be developed on a national or regional basis in ASEAN.

It aims to provide answers to the following questions:

What are existing disaster risk financing programmes that have worked well in ASEAN Member States or in other countries? How were these schemes created and what problems were these designed to solve?

What are the requirements for a successful public-private partnership programme on risk financing?

A panel of resource persons composed of experts from the ASEAN Insurance Council, Asian Development Bank, and the World Bank will present case studies and share their substantial experiences in countries where they have implemented risk financing initiatives.

Co-organised by the ASEAN Secretariat and ASEAN-UNISDR Technical Cooperation in collaboration with the World Bank and the UNISDR Asia Pacific, this Seminar-Forum is the first activity in the preparatory process for the ASEAN initiative on disaster risk financing as one of the flagship projects in the AADMER Work Programme for Phase 1 with Indonesia as the lead shepherd country. This activity will pave the way for the ASEAN Workshop on Disaster Risk Financing slated to be held in the fourth quarter of 2011.