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Technical Guidance on Comprehensive Risk Assessment and Planning in the Context of Climate Change

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Climate change is increasing the magnitude, frequency, duration and severity of climate-related hazards. It has become a major driver of disaster losses and development achievement setbacks.

Climate and disaster risks arise due to compounding and cascading hazards and impacts, leading to complex and interconnected adverse consequences for various ecological and human systems. At the same time, other underlying risk drivers such as poverty, demographic development, land degradation or conflicts are aggravating exposure and vulnerability to climate-related hazards. Therefore, risk assessment and management in the context of climate change requires a comprehensive, systemic perspective on risk and its underlying drivers due to the complex and partly systemic nature of climate related risks.

The Technical Guidance on Comprehensive Risk Assessment and Planning in the Context of Climate Change provides orientation on how risks in the context of climate change can be comprehensively and systemically addressed through risk assessment. Decision-making, planning, and integrating disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA) perspectives and approaches while simultaneously linking to other goals and targets (e.g. the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)) are also discussed. The guidance deepens understanding and supports implementation of comprehensive risk management laid out by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH with a 2019 conceptual brochure, Comprehensive Climate Risk Management, and in line with the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction 2019.

The guidance targets experts, decision makers, stakeholders and practitioners operating in the fields of DRR and CCA. It provides a framework and inspiration on how to apply comprehensive risk assessment and planning. The use and application of this guidance can be made context specific and customized, based on country realities.

The guidance acknowledges that risks in the context of climate change are complex and systemic due to non-linear interactions among system components and the need for improved risk governance. The understanding of complex risks is thus a priority. The guidance is part of the Plan of Action of the Technical Expert Group on Comprehensive Risk Management and was jointly committed to by expert group members (Climate Analytics, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, and UNDRR) and a non-member (GIZ). As a federally owned enterprise, GIZ supports the German Government in achieving its objectives in the field of international cooperation for sustainable development.

This guidance was jointly developed by The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH with support by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).