 So one of the very first things I could say is learn everything you can about what's happening. There's plenty of information available. Don't be blind to what we're seeing with climate change. Don't be blind to the decisions that your government is making about how to address the climate emergency and use your agency, use your voice to take a stance, to take a position on where you want your country, your community to be, not just next year, but in the next 10 years or 20 years or 50 years if you're a young person and worried about the future of your children. Understand the risks, learn about them, use your agency, take a position. And I think that become a player in the future because that's really what's going to make the change that we need to see. As my guest on this episode of Inside Ideas brought to you by 1.5 Media Innovators Magazine and the Aloha's Regenerative Foundation. Lori is the chief of the risk knowledge monitoring and capacity development branch covering risk information and analytics, climate change, disaster loss and monitoring, data and capacity building for the UNDRR. That's the United Nations Disaster Risk Reduction and she does this on a global scale. Previously she served as chief of the UNDRR Asia Pacific regional office covering 38 of the world's most disaster prone countries. Lori served in various management positions at OCHA for over a decade before joining UNDRR including overseeing the global cluster coordination mechanism and having responsibility for IASC mechanisms on coordinated humanitarian needs assessments. She also has a background in public health and worked for the World Health Organization in various capacities. Her experience in emergency context spans more than 25 years and she is the author of several publications including Lifeline Media, Reaching Populations and Crisis which promotes greater accountability to people affected by disasters. Her academic background includes fellowships and degrees from the Harvard School of Public Health and University of Paris ASAS. We are here today to speak specifically about the GAR Special Report 2023, the Global Assessment Report called Mapping Resilience for the Sustainable Development Goals. Lori is one of the experts obviously in this and the whole SENDI framework for disaster risk reduction and the Sustainable Development Goals. And so we really wanna dive deep into this new report just launched, just released so that you can have it and hear about it here first, why it's so important. Lori, welcome, welcome to the show. I'm so glad you could come and make it and we made it through all the technical issues within the UN system and my system to make it work. Thank you, it's a great pleasure to be your guest. I'm so glad that we could make it and that you're here and this is a really special report not only titled that but the title more specifically about Mapping Resilience for the Sustainable Development Goals. I just would like to first and foremost ask you, how does this report set itself aside from all the other thousands of reports that the UN and different agencies are releasing every single day? Well, thank you for the question. I think what we're trying to emphasize is that I think everybody as you rightly point out have read about the SDGs, the Sustainable Development Goals. This ambition of the world to improve our planet, people and prosperity for all. But what we're really trying to emphasize is that as countries strive to achieve the system, there are multiple challenges that we're facing, threats that we're facing that are impeding progress on the Sustainable Development Goals. Whether it's climate change or we certainly saw with COVID, we believe that we really need to be more sensitive to the risks that are occurring and put in place measures to build resilience so that we're able to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. And we know that every time there is a crisis, every time that there is a major disaster, it is a setback for the Sustainable Development Goals and this is what this report is really trying to point out. We need to become much more risk-informed. That means we need to understand the risks that we face and we have to put in place measures to mitigate these risks. And we don't always see this happening. We don't see enough investment in this. So the report is pointing out some of the areas where we need to make better progress and also giving some examples of where countries have had solutions that are working that others can also try. Thank you so much. I wanna dive a little bit deeper, but what we wanna do is start out real basic. So we've already thrown out some terms that might not, everybody might not be well aware of or understand. Maybe you can just touch a little bit first on these, if it's okay on the Sendai framework for disaster risk reduction, what does that mean? And then I'll go into the other two questions that are kind of already buzzwords that we've thrown out that need a little bit of more definition. Absolutely. So the Sendai framework is this global blueprint, if you will, to help guide countries to better manage disaster risks. It was established in 2015 at the same time as the Paris Agreement, which is guiding work on climate change, as well as the sustainable development goals. Now, sometimes it's the lesser, I would say, understood global framework, but it's actually the global framework that is helping countries achieve the others in the SDGs in particular and Paris. So it really is looking at achieving certain targets. Targets is to decrease the number of people that lose their lives or are otherwise affected from disasters, but also to decrease the economic losses that are occurring because of disaster events, as well as to increase the number of national and local strategies on disaster risk reduction and to increase global cooperation. So we're trying to really ensure that we are helping countries put in place disaster risk management strategies. And it's not just disasters that are emanating from natural hazards, which our audience will be very familiar with, whether it's floods or drought or earthquakes, but also biological hazards. COVID, for example, was a disaster that emanated from a biological hazard, technological hazards as well. The risk of cyber, for example, events could have a devastating impact on the world and then also environmental hazards. So it really is looking at the broad range of disaster potentials that could occur from biological, natural, technological and environmental hazards and making sure that countries are able to better manage these. Now there's lots of challenges that we're seeing with this and one of the very first challenge is that we tend to understand disasters risk in a very siloed way. And so one of the key messages UNDRR and partners have been trying to share with countries is that understanding risk means understanding that these risks are interconnected. They're more systemic in nature. And so we really need holistic approaches at the country level. So the Sendai framework provides this guiding framework for us to work around. And I might just mention that we just held the midterm review of the Sendai framework this year. We're halfway to achieving the goals and perhaps not too surprisingly, we have a long way to go. And that's maybe the second point that I would like to raise about the Sendai framework is that there hasn't been sufficient investment by governments in disaster risk reduction. We are still seeing far more resources expended on responding to disasters than preventing them from occurring. And so subsequently one of our really big goals is to make countries aware of the Sendai framework, but really to increase the resources and capacities that are going into the management of risk in countries, especially those that are on the frontline of the climate crisis, for example. So I work with the UNFCCC and resilience frontiers, the adaptation mitigation area with Professor Dr. Yusuf Nassif. And it's really interesting how this second term or word that we're hearing a lot of is one that you mentioned, it's also in the report is resilience. So there are numerous different definitions of resilience, whether we can get resilience through sustainable development or if we need to first get an infrastructure of sustainable development and then build resilience. And so I would like to kind of get a little bit definitions in what the thought process is, not only from the UNDRR, but also on resilience, but also what the message is and how resilience is working into this report and what the thought processes are there just for a little bit more clarity. Right, so resilience is absolutely woven throughout this report. And it's interesting to me, when we think about resilience, we think about it in many different ways. And if I can just tell a very brief anecdote, during the COVID crisis, for example, my son was at University of Edinburgh and for many students, it came as a real shock to them. And I remember my son asking me, how can I become more resilient? How can I become more resilient to the fact that my university has closed down, that I've had to leave my friends? So this notion of becoming almost stronger to these events that you cannot manage yourself, that you're not responsible for them, but you need to be able to really adapt to them. And so resilience can happen at a personal level, I would say, it could happen at a planetary level, it could happen at a population level. The type of definition that we're using for this report, and I'm even gonna read it just so that we're clear, it's the ability of a system, a community or a society exposed to hazards regardless of what they may be to resist it, to absorb, to accommodate, to adapt to it, to transform and recover from the effects of a hazard in a timely and an efficient manner. So for my son, being resilient meant being able to withstand the fact that his university was shutting down and he was gonna have to adapt to it and then pick up again a few months later, that's on a very minor level. For an entire society, it meant that we had to recover from the impacts of COVID and to withstand the economic shocks that have occurred, obviously, but also make sure that we're able to transform our society so that if a similar type of phenomena occurs in the future, we are better prepared to withstand the impacts of it. So it's quite a broad reaching definition, but it really goes to the heart of what we're trying to say in this report is that threats will occur, shocks will occur, stresses will occur, it's how we react to these that will determine how resilient a society we are. I appreciate that and that's a lot of the clarity we're looking at. I mean, there's so many definitions of resilience as well as sustainability floating around out there and it's really good to know, are we talking about the resilience of our own emotions, our mental, physical, our body resilience? Can we bounce back if someone hurts us or swears at us or hits us or some kind of a mental or physical shock to ourselves? But then there's that dystopian resilience where we still live and survive as humanity, but we're in spacesuits or oxygen mass or gas mass because the atmosphere and the world around us is so bad that we have some kind of a sci-fi or very dystopian version of resilience in the future. Or there's that resilient infrastructure or desirable resilience that, not I wouldn't say utopian, but that really desirable resilience that we have in the future where we still enjoy clean water, sanitation, electricity, renewable energy. We have food and we have things in place that even one hour after a hurricane or a tornado or flood or drought that we have resilient infrastructures in place that can kind of bounce back. And we discussed this before our meeting and kind of reading the report. And I also spoke to Ray about this at length a little bit. What happens is sustainable development, the plan, the goals, the actions, the targets, the indicators that we're moving forward on that are fabulous. But if we build that up in an area, sustainable development is development of cities, regions, residential, commercial countries on and on. If we do sustainable development in areas that are high risk prone or areas that don't have that resilient infrastructure, if there are areas that are prone to floods or prone to climate activities or change or already suffering because some effect of global warming or climate change that we see in the future, then that doesn't matter how much sustainable development we have if then all of a sudden the flood comes or a hurricane that wipes that out. And so I think that the smart aspect of sustainable development is that as we're going forward to do that we feel the pressure, we feel the race to achieve the sustainable development goals that we think hard about where we're doing that if it's an area that is just a wasted cause of building up sustainable development because a shock could come, some kind of a risk could come and affect that immediately. And I see that in this report addressed a lot and it ties strictly to that resilience. And so I wanted if you had any extra things to kind of explain about what you're seeing with that how that ties in and if I'm understanding that correctly as well. Well, you absolutely are understanding it correctly. What we're seeing is development that is simply not sustainable because it's not resilient. It's not designed in a way to actually withstand future impacts. We call it risk blind development if you will. And a perfect example of that is building along coastal areas that are exposed to sea level rise for example, due to climate change or building along river banks that are prone to flooding. Essentially what we're seeing is development without really looking into the fact that this development will not be able to withstand shocks and stresses that are coming. And this is becoming extremely critical because of climate change. And we all know that the climate impacts are being felt increasingly more so than we had even thought previously. The amount of, you know, torrential rains, flooding, droughts, heatwaves, all of these impacts are becoming more and more untenable for countries. So therefore the types of development decisions that are made, especially in areas that are very prone to disasters can either lead to sustainable development or it can lead to unsustainable development. And this is very much goes to the heart of this report. In order to make decisions about development, you need to have an understanding of the risks that are being faced. Now we have seen, and there's lots of research about this, that often infrastructure is built without a basic risk assessment without necessarily taking into account future climate impacts, for example. So we're very much pushing for initiatives such as the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure that was set up a few years ago by the Indian government that had at its really heart and its core mandate the idea that all infrastructure, all new infrastructure, there will be a tremendous amount of new infrastructure built in the next decades, must be resilient, must be based on the thorough understanding of risk and especially climate risk, must be built to withstand whatever the climate is going to throw at it so that it remains for future generations and so that the investment that's being made in infrastructure is not lost. Because that's the other challenge, of course, you see a tremendous amount of money going into infrastructure especially in the developing world right now. If it is not made to withstand disaster impacts and that money is not a good investment and ultimately that will hurt the economies of these countries. So your point is very well taken. I absolutely love that and I in the report is fabulously done and it's really tied closely to the sustainable development goals and how the information, the data, the reports, the maps that we have, you actually use. So you're actually saying, what are we seeing with current data, with current maps? What are we seeing on the progress on the sustainable development goals and how can we do that to kind of do that survey, that risk assessment and that survey of the site and the sustainable development we do before we begin that to make sure we've taken into account that resilience aspect. And I'd like you to kind of tell us what do you use, what data are you using and what are kind of the aha moments or what are you seeing as you've gone through that and the examples you've given in the report that are really saying, wow, this is a tool that can help us to kind of be proactive, preventative and build that resilience factor in it as we go forward with the sustainable development goals. Right, so the report is really broken down into 10 different areas where we see what we call resilience gaps, where we feel that these elements are what really need a great focus if we're going to achieve the sustainable development goal. And as mentioned before, there are some actions that the world could take to ensure that countries are more resilient and especially to the impacts of climate change. And I think that this is something that we cannot stress enough. Climate change is not just a risk, it's an existential risk for countries and the impact of climate change is felt through disasters. So what we're seeing in many countries is an increase in disaster events. Now, there are not always the type of disasters that capture the front pages of newspapers. There are often what we call more high frequency but low intensity, so localized extreme weather events. But cumulatively, this really has a great impact on a country and a community socioeconomic wellbeing. So some of the things that we're promoting right now, where we know you can have a very direct impact for the better for countries is for example, improved early warning systems. And this is the very first resilience gap that we're pointing to. Far too few countries have an effective early warning system in place, meaning that populations living in a flood zone or living in an area prone to cyclones or typhoons or other types of extreme weather event are not alerted in time to take measures to save their lives or to preserve their livelihoods. This is probably one of the most effective and cost effective adaptation measures that could be put in place. And yet up to two thirds of countries in the developing world and one in six Africans only are protected by early warnings. That means we have to double down and triple down our efforts to really make sure that early warning systems are put in place. So for each of the resilience gaps, there are measures that are being put into place and by the UN and by partners. Now, early warning I'll emphasize for just a moment because it's a tremendous priority of the UN Secretary General who has launched an early warning for all initiative that aims to protect all people with early warning systems in the next five years. So we at UNDRR, along with the World Meteorological Organization, the ITU, that's the International Telecommunications Union and the Red Cross, along with a slew of partners are really trying to support countries to improve their early warning systems. And we're starting to see progress. We're starting to see a little bit more political momentum. But this is the type of action that is within our reach. There are things we can do, provided the investment is there, provided the political will is there because we know early warning works and it works to save lives. But there are other measures as well. And some of the other issues that we've been looking at, for example, is how do we improve our management of drought? Now an estimated 55 million people per year are impacted by drought. And this has just a tremendous consequences when it comes to food insecurity. We know that we can do a far better job on prospective drought management. So taking measures before a drought occurs. And so in the report, we're trying to show examples of where better drought management can really reduce the impacts on people, as well as the impacts of people who are suffering from food insecurity, which is a growing and very, very concerning issue for the UN and obviously for the world over. Two examples. Yeah, those are fabulous examples. There's, you mentioned kind of this poly crisis, these compounding disasters and extreme events that we're seeing all over that are kind of hampering the progress on sustainable development. Not only does this year mark the midterm reviews, as you mentioned in the Sendai framework of the SDGs, both SDGs and the Sendai framework, but it's really important, the Secretary of General warned that we're really, the SDGs are disappearing in the rear view mirror. We need clear benchmarks to tackle poverty in these things that you just talked about, not only the gaps, but how are we addressing these things in advance? And not necessarily what I'm hearing is you haven't really developed anything new. You're just saying, here's the framework of the SDGs and the roadmap. How do we make sure that resilience is placed deeply into that progress to reach the SDGs so that we're not building something in a risk area that is immediately affected? And how do we use the tools that we have already in place at hand effectively to start implementing those properly? Because so many risk adverse or countries that are affected highly by this are hampered to work on the sustainable development goals because they're so busy putting out the fires and the catastrophes and the issues that are happening around that, that they don't even get to the point where they say, hey, we're still dealing with all these issues before we can even start to build in that resilience to get into that aspect of the work that needs to be done that we're suffering with. At COP 27, we came up with the, basically the loss and damage. Does that tie anything into this? Or is that total separate? Is that after it's already occurred? Is there anything in this at all that we're seeing that kind of plays off one another? Or is that a total separate issue on the loss and damage? Well, you are absolutely right. Loss and damage is fully integrated into all of this because what is loss and damage? It's actually the impacts that we're seeing of climate change. Now, the whole loss and damage issue, which is going to be absolutely front and center at COP 28, is very much about how do we avert, minimize, and address loss and damage? So the loss and damage is what occurs even after your efforts at adaptation have taken place. And we know that despite our best efforts, there are still irreversible impacts of climate change. So loss and damage can range from what we call the extreme events to slow onset processes, sea level rise is one of them, obviously. Countries are facing irreversible loss and damage. And one of the big issues at COP is how do we stop that or how do we minimize these losses and damages from occurring? And then secondly, who is going to pay for it? Who is going to support countries that are on the frontline of the climate crisis? And we all know that these are the small island developing states in particular, but least developed countries to ensure that their populations are able to withstand the impacts of climate change. Suffering from right now are addressed and that they can come up with solutions to manage their lives and their livelihoods in the midst of a climate crisis and climate emergency. A couple of different things will happen at COP 28. One of them is that the Santiago network, which was agreed a few years ago and is a mechanism that has been established to catalyze technical support to LDCs and SIDS as we call them, so these least developed country contexts of small island developing states to receive the type of technical support that they require to avert, minimize and address loss and damage. So there will be the host decided for this initiative and I might just mention that UNDRR due to our mandate on disaster risk management has offered is bidding to host the Santiago network. So that's one important outcome of COP 28 where we're hoping for. And then the other is of course, the idea of a fund to address loss and damage to help countries deal with the impacts of climate change. The climate change is really woven throughout this report whether it's about drought risk, whether it's about the increasing water stress that we're seeing in countries. Climate change manifests itself with too much or too little water. That's typically what it is. It's flooding, it's torrential rains or it's drought, it's heat waves, but we're also seeing the impact in terms of how it's leading to displacement of populations. And of course this brings all sorts of socioeconomic consequences. So it's definitely woven throughout and to the heart of the report is the idea that countries are suffering from irreversible losses and damages due to climate change. And they must build resilience to this if they are to survive and to thrive in the future. So there's obviously the SDG resilience and the climate change nexus. There's kind of many nexuses and cause they're all systemically tied together. There's a lot of interrelation to all of this. Just for those who aren't at the UN, aren't at the World Economic Forum, aren't at the European Union, just the average person who's, over the past pandemic, the last four years or so has really said, well I need to pay more attention to climate and resilience like your son. He was affected at school and says, how can I get more resilience? How can I move in that? And that awareness gets raised and people ask, how can those people listening to our conversation say, how does this report help me? What can I use? What tools are there? Why is this important for me? And what are the kind of learning lessons and takeaways to know that it's there and how can I nudge those people in my circles to kind of say, wow, this is really to take notice of. What would your suggestions or your ideas be for those people? Well, it's interesting because as you rightly pointed out, resilience goes from the personal level, like my son to the community to countries, in fact, and into the world essentially, it's a global issue. And there are things that can be done at the individual level, the community level. And of course, we are pushing hard for governments to take strong positions on resilience building and on climate change. But some of the things that we always try to encourage is for communities to understand that the risks that they face, what are their threats? Now, I guess one of the good outcomes, if you can say there were any good outcomes from COVID was that it brought home to people the idea that few people are really excluded from the impacts of some of these global risks. Countries, obviously there were different coping mechanisms if you were in a ritual or a poor settings, but hardly anybody was spared. Same thing for climate change. Yes, the impacts are felt greater in poor countries because they don't necessarily have the means to withstand the impacts, but there's not a country on earth that's not seeing the effects of climate change. Just look at the heat waves that we've had in July. The hottest month in 120,000 years, it's fairly extraordinary when we think about it, but this was North America with Southern Europe that was impacted. So we're all feeling the impacts of these phenomena, these global phenomena, the poly crises that we're talking about. And I think understanding that and then looking at what your own contribution can be is really something that I very much encourage. And the good news is I certainly see young people very invested in the climate change issue. They are pushing their governments to take action. Look at the disruptors that you see on the streets sometimes of London and other places. Now, one can maybe argue with the methods that they're using, but they're aware and that awareness is so critical. They're aware that their futures are at risk. And I sometimes hear my kids who are in their 20s and my friends' children talk about whether they will even have a planet for their children to live on because of where we're going with climate change. So one of the very first things I could say is learn everything you can about what's happening. There's plenty of information available. Don't be blind to what we're seeing with climate change. Don't be blind to the decisions that your government is making about how to address the climate emergency and use your agency, use your voice to take a stance, to take a position on where you want your country, your community to be, not just next year, but in the next 10 years or 20 years or 50 years if you're a young person and worried about the future of your children. Understand the risks, learn about them, use your agency, take a position. And I think that become a player in the future because that's really what's going to make the change that we need to see. Yeah, I like that. I frame it a lot in a little bit different way that we're all crew members of Spaceship Earth so we can all guide the steering wheel, the direction of where we want to go. And especially if we know what a resilient, desirable future would look like for us, then we can start to take those actions to move forward in that direction. So I really like how you frame that. I also see the report as pointing out the tools that are already there for cities and countries and delegations and negotiators to use as they're trying to achieve the sustainable development goals and the plans and mapping those things out that they can actually, like the report says, mapping resilience for the sustainable development goals, they can use it to progress towards positive undertakings to increase resilience. I'm glad you talked about the heat waves and we could talk about all the polycrisis besides the heat waves that are going on around the world. That's really not why we're here to shake our fingers and say, what's going on? Are you aware of the heat waves? Are you aware of these issues on coastal places? But what are the tools that we're seeing to build in that resilience so that we don't talk about it after it's occurred that we actually in that sustainable development progress already say, hey, we looked at that as we were getting ready to build that and we realized that's a coastal area or that's prone to flooding or other issues and we averted that, which then also was the kind of a preventative step and the tools were already there. And so that's really what I got out of the report and I liked, but in there, there are several examples. So one of the examples was Fiji. There's another one in Africa, but there's tons of examples where you show the map, you show what's going on, you break down the resilience. Tell us a little bit more about that and why you think that's important to point out how that works, what you feel about that. All right, so I think one of the points we're really trying to make in this report is that these consequences of increasing water stress or increasing heat waves or even some of the climatic shocks that we're seeing in terms of torrential rain and others, there is not, they're not impossible to address. Like we're not, we don't have to stand by and wait until these consequences decimate our communities. There are lots of things that we can be doing to better understand the risks and to take measures to actually address them and to mitigate them to reduce these risks. So you asked about some very simple tools. One of the most simple ones is to do a risk assessment. Countries should understand what are the risks that they face. And then when it comes time to actually putting in place the measures to reduce these risks, there is a slew of different examples out there, whether it's about making infrastructure more resilient by the way that you actually build it or whether it's about making cities, developing cities in a way that make it less prone to the impacts of heat. We have plenty of examples of that. We talked about Fiji and in the case of Fiji, it was about understanding which populations would be living in coastal areas and putting in place inclusive measures to move the populations out of harm's ways. There's a slew of different options that are available to communities and to countries to reduce the impact, the negative impact of these poly crises. Now, what's missing? Political will and sometimes the investment needed to make them happen. And this is maybe a very key message that we need to give is that we need to put the issue of resilience building and disaster risk reduction really at the forefront of all of our discussions on development, on economic wellbeing of countries. And we need to see more investment in this area. And I think you pointed out in the beginning, we spend far more money on responding to disasters than actually preventing them. There's just not a lot of investment in this area and it really needs to be better prioritized. The tools are there. Many, many, many of the tools are there. And there are great examples coming from around the world of innovative approaches that are being used. Technology makes cities far more resilient, for example, to flooding, to put in place plans to better address heatwaves. We saw this in India where heatwaves were becoming very intolerable and leading to high levels of mortality and impacts. And just having a good, solid, robust plan helped really bring down those mortality rates. This isn't very cost extensive, but you need the political, you need the leadership to make this happen. Putting in place plans, for example, where we don't have workers working at the hottest times of day. I just came back from Thailand where I used to live and you see construction happening overnight rather than during the day. These are the types of measures that help us adapt to help make our societies more resilient. So I really think we need to do a better job of sharing innovation, of knowledge exchange, learning what's working, learning what's cost effective, technology transfer from the North to the South, but also South collaboration, peer learning. We just need to invest more in this area of work altogether to have a greater impact because unfortunately, the way the world is moving now, we simply are going to bypass the 1.5 degree temperature rise from climate change. It seems unfortunately inevitable. We're keeping hoping, we're advocating for a decrease in carbon emissions, but we have to prepare for a future in which climate change will lead to greater temperature rise and subsequently the consequences are there. So let's double up on our learning, let's double up on our exchange and above all, let's really start investing in this area of work. Yeah, that's really so true. Just a few days ago, the secretary general, Antonio Gutierrez said, it's no longer global warming, it's global boiling. Yes. Things are truly heating up and also discussed how the executives at Shell think that we need more oil and fossil fuels and gas and things and that that's just not true. It's really interesting what you said because it really gets us into, and this was my terminology, it's not the UN's, you know, I said proactive, preventative. It's instead of being reactive after the crisis, a poly crisis has occurred that then makes policy makers find the band-aids or the repair, which is wrong type of preventative or futuristic policies. We need policies and tools there that keep pace with the warming world, that keep pace with our world in general, good, bad or ugly. And I see not only the tools that you discuss in this report, but that you really are pushing for that built-in resilience before you begin the sustainable development, that you think about the trends that amplify vulnerabilities and distract us or could distract us from addressing the real root causes behind these risks. And that's what I see in this report. And there's, like I said, one of the examples is Fiji, but there's numerous examples that you list which is nice to see and that you're giving these proactive tools available for policy makers, for countries, for the individual, but also mainly for those within the United Nations. One thing that we see and at the beginning of Secretary General's time in office, he says, we really need to reform the United Nations a little bit. There was big discussion. Get everybody on the same page, talking about the same thing, understanding sustainable development and where we wanna go with these different crises. There was even right before the pandemic hit kind of a mandate given out for all countries by the Secretary General to get the SDG primer. How do you understand internally the SDGs and things? And then the pandemic came into kind of through everything, topsy-turvy, to deal with the health and the pandemic and other things. It's because we're always playing catch-up. There's no preventative things in there. And so where I'm going is how do we get all the United Nations agencies, everybody on the same page, how do we get them aware that you've kind of brought out this report and some of the tools and everybody's starting to talk about resiliency, resilience in their grips. We have the Resilience Hub, we have Resilience Lab, we have the UNDRR talking specifically about resilience in this report and other things. It's definitely a topic, but how do we get everybody on kind of the same page so that not everybody has that different definition of that? What are your thoughts or ideas? I don't expect you to have the solution for the entire United Nations. I just kind of wanna see what your tools or ideas are, how we can get everybody on that same page moving forward collectively. Well, I think the good news is that the UN has definitely moved much more towards understanding risk as a key impediment to achieving the SDGs, like the lack of focus on risk reduction. And so I see a couple of different things happening which are really encouraging. And just starting off from the big policy lens, the Secretary General has made the climate emergency just such a key focus of his tenure as Secretary General and he is very vocal and he speaks out against coal and he's pushing countries to really reduce the carbon emissions and he's quite vocal on that. And he's vocal on issues such as Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which we know now with the collapse of the Black Sea grain initiative is going to have a huge impact on food insecurity and he hasn't shied away from talking about the really devastating impact of this war in Ukraine and how you see this cascading impact down to food security in the Sahel or the Horn of Africa. So, being vocal and advocating for attention to the poly crisis has been really a hallmark of the Secretary General's tenure. But there's some other issues that are also really raising attention and one is the need to have better foresight in the UN to work more collectively to understand what will the future look like and to make sure that the UN system is working in that direction. Now, the Secretary General has worked with member states to develop a common agenda and part of that kind of common agenda is to develop a risk report that is going to really help analyze risks and the impact on the UN's overall agenda, which is of course very much built on the achievement of the SDGs. So, this is just in the last few years and I think climate change and COVID has been a real wake up call not only for countries but the UN in general and so we're really seeing some good movement there. More specifically about how do we get the UN system working collaboratively, I can point to some things that UNDRR is doing, our own organization and one of this is to help countries do better planning by having a better analysis of the risks that they face and so we have been developing a suite of tools that is designed to risk inform if you want planning. What does this mean? It means to carry out an analysis of risks before UN country teams do their own, what we call common country analysis and sustainable development frameworks. These are the plans that the UN system developed to support countries to achieve the SDGs and so we're doing a lot of work to really bring a risk lens to UN planning processes not only in development context but also in humanitarian context. We as the UN system support a number of protracted humanitarian settings where you see sometimes active conflict or long-term social instability that requires a humanitarian presence. So helping to bring more of a risk lens there as well. So we are using different tools to enhance the understanding of risk but also the impact of disasters. And here I would point to a tool that we have called dissimilar but it's essentially a disaster loss and damage tracking system and many countries still do not have a full understanding of the impact of disasters in their countries where they're occurring and what's happening when they are occurring, how many people's lives may unfortunately be lost or affected or economic losses. So this tracking tool is also generating data that are really helping to tell the story of what are the risks that countries face and this will then guide them to put in place the plans and strategies to mitigate these risks using examples from other countries of what works. So you're in Geneva, you're by the ITU which is also a great source for knowledge and data collection and the technology aspect of things. I was just there for the AI for good, summit that they had just recently which was fabulous and the things that are coming on how we can properly use the data and AI for good and things like that. You tickled on two things that are really interesting. One is kind of the secretary general on how he's talked about different things moving forward but next year, 2024 is the summit of the futures for the United Nations. I believe it'll happen in September but there are some events leading up to that before that time which is also fully in line with what you've discussed kind of moving forward and so there are some things you mentioned specifically foresight thinking about the future, pre-planning, risk assessments. When just the normal crowds of people when you talk about futurism or foresight and things that are like you're talking about the space or side bias is kind of hocus pocus but it's really when I ask you later in our podcast in a few minutes I'll ask you the big question about the future and have you answer that for yourself but it really plays a big role in everything that we do to have not only the foresight tools but to think about the future and what is the path in the roadmap we're going on. So even though the development sustainable development goals started in 2015 they're taking us to the future of December 2030 of what could possibly happen if we do the right actions, targets, monies and things to get that development in place. So I think that is one key thing that I just wanted to touch upon kind of to tie in that foresight and the future that you discuss. And the next thing, and I don't know if you can kind of give us a little teaser or what you know or what's been developed. I know that as the report came out and that the secretary general's office the secretary kind of reached out to you with a little bit of interest on the report and what it could do. I don't know if you can tickle and tease us if there's going to be a statement from the secretary general's office or how they feel about it, how it's being accepted and how they're going to help you promote it as well besides just mark on inside ideas. Are there any things that you can tell us there that are kind of coming out? Right, so yeah, thanks for mentioning the UN Summit of the Future. I think it really, even the name of the summit, Summit of the Future, really marks a shift. And part of the challenge I think we see in many contexts is the short termism. We make decisions based on what is, you know, to our benefit in the short term. And that's maybe part of the challenge with democracies because obviously politicians are looking to get elected so they want to see impact of their decisions immediately. But we live in a world of short termisms where we're not looking at the long term impact of the decisions we're making, the plans we're making, the infrastructure we're developing, et cetera. And the idea of the Summit of the Future is to start looking at that longer term. And I think it really goes hand in hand also with the secretary general's real interest in youth and promoting youth. And starting to really share this idea that what we're doing today, we're doing it for the benefit of future generations, of generations to come. Our children's children's children, that's the decisions we're making. That's what we should be making our decisions for that future generation. And so a lot of the work that we're doing right now is saying that if you follow an approach that is about understanding risks and putting in place measures that will reduce the risks of disaster events, reduce the risks of calamities occurring to populations, often those who have little to do with the genesis of these calamities, such as climate change, then you're really safeguarding the future for generations to come. And the report, you're asking about the report that we have developed. It's a modest contribution to a UN global effort to really start thinking differently and to start pivoting towards actions that will preserve, I would say the planet for generations to come. And we hope to share more of the case studies that we have, but this will also contribute to other work that we'll be doing. For example, our next scar, our big report that we'll be putting out in two years' time we'll be looking at the financing aspects of disaster risk and climate risk and how much more we could and should be doing to bring the proper financing to this. So yes, I mean, we're very happy that this report has been well received because it shows potential, it shows promise. It gives examples of what can work. And often it doesn't cost a lot of money, it just requires somebody, some leader somewhere to take that initiative. So we're helping that this report will inspire people to build resilience and through their decision-making. Okay, so, but there's no official ticklings from the secretary general yet on this special report of the GAAR, any interest that they've said or how? Well, they have. I mean, the deputy secretary general has been involved with the launch of this and it has been promoted through the UN system. So, and we've shared it broadly with our constituents. It was a broad number of UN agencies that were involved in developing it because many of the maps that have come that are produced in the report come from different UN agencies. So we will continue to promote it and we will continue to ensure that it's disseminated widely and we very much appreciate the work of the New York team, our team in New York, working with the deputy secretary general's office in particular, but we're pleased with it. So, yeah. Great, great. Yeah, we'll promote it as well and I'm sure it'll get a really nice wide reach. I wanna go a little bit more into the personal with you. If that's okay. You know, you have a long background working with the UN and also before with the World Health Organization, but you've been in some unique places, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sub-Saharan Africa. And I was wondering if there is any of those experiences that you would really stands out in your mind of those on the ground locations where you say, boy, that has really prepared me, helped me. It was a good experience for me to still remain grounded to the work that I do today that I still think of often. And it also helps me when I participate in these reports, when I participate in these things to have had that experience to not forget who working for and what we're doing, the bigger picture of where we're going. Right. Well, you mentioned the World Health Organization, but I spent much of my career in OCHA. You mentioned it as OCHA, but that stands for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. And much of my life has been spent in humanitarian context, disaster context. And Afghanistan certainly was probably one of the most difficult, but most rewarding experiences. I was there in fact with the World Health Organization just after 9-11. And it was very much an example of a country that was stood just 20 years of war, war, 30 years of war, country that had been decimated by conflict, but also recurrent naturally, natural hazards induced disasters, floods, droughts, earthquakes as well. And yet what I found pretty remarkable were the people, and they were a very resilient people at the end of the day. Now they suffered tremendously, but there was a tremendous amount of solidarity in the population as well. So I would have to say Afghanistan, also my husband is an expert in Afghanistan has written extensively about it. So I think that's probably the country experience which has influenced me the most. But in terms of the work I'm doing today, I think the earthquake in Haiti in 2010, I was one of the first responders there with Ocha. And that was such a preventable disaster that it was hard not to be permanently changed by that. When you see bodies under rubble from buildings that should have been built to code, but were not largely because of corruption in some areas. And the devastation of the entire communities there, it's hard not to want to work on prevention. And it was probably at that moment that I decided I would eventually get out of humanitarian response and go into disaster prevention. Because I knew far more could have been done to save the lives of the over 250,000 that died in Haiti. And I had been in Haiti just a few weeks before and had been staying at a hotel, Hotel Montana. And I went back in January after the earthquake and the entire hotel had been destroyed, collapsed and killed everybody in it. And obviously that hotel had not been built to code. And subsequently it was just led to the needless deaths of hundreds of people who had been working there. So these events working in humanitarian disasters for your life obviously lead you to the conclusion that the only way we're ever going to get out of this vicious cycle is to focus more on prevention. And prevention is not just about climate change hazards. It's about reducing the vulnerability of populations and the exposure of populations to disaster events and reducing vulnerability in particular something I feel very strongly about. We're not investing enough in reducing vulnerability. And it's still the same population groups, women, children, older people who whether it's the COVID crisis or whether it's a disaster caused by extreme weather induced by climate change. It's still these population groups that suffer the most because they are highly vulnerable and we're not investing enough in reducing their vulnerability. So these are some of the experiences that have led me to where I am today. Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing that with us. And really you can tell your passion and also what you've seen that's had a profound effect for you to kind of change your way of operating and your way of working to kind of do the prevention to do the risk reduction and before the deaths occur, before the climate change and issues show up on scene. So I really love that. The biggest and most difficult question that I have for you today and I've prepared you a little bit in our call is one that kind of we've answered overall. What does a world that works for everyone look specifically like for you? You know, I think that any parent, I speak now as a parent rather than as a you beneficial if you will, what I would want for my children is what probably every parent in the world wants for their children. And that is that they can live in a world where they are not afraid for their wellbeing in terms of their health, that they're not going to be exposed to war, to conflict, that decisions are made that is not going to put them in harm's way. So obviously a peaceful future is absolutely critical but also one in which they have the ability to try to achieve their goals and their objectives. And this for me is really kind of at the core of what I see as a just world, a world in which people can aspire to achieve their dreams. And it is not because of decisions that are made by politicians or by others that stand in the way of that. So equal access to opportunity, to learning, to education and to withstand, to be able to withstand the impacts of what may come their way. I mean, everybody wants to have children that are strong, mentally strong, that are resilient and that are really able to achieve their dreams. And that may sound a little bit idealistic but I've traveled around the world and that's a commonality I have seen everywhere is that parents really want their children to thrive and not be stopped by impediments that are thrown their way by the wrong decisions made by people who are, as I said before, blinded by short-termism, blinded by economic greed and really did not think about what's good for the planet in the long term. So we should be all able to live on a planet where pollution isn't choking us to death, where we have access to clean water, where there's enough food for all. Even if that means that some of us have to stop eating things that we're eating right now that is upsetting the food chain but also where there's equality and that boys and girls are given the same opportunities and people are essentially paid a fair wage for the work that they achieve. And at the end of the day, as I speak, I recognize that what I'm actually talking about is a world in which the sustainable development goals are achieved because it's all in there. It is all in there. Inequality, decent work, food security, access to clean water, health, all of that. So I guess that's what I'm talking about, a world in which our children live in which the sustainable development goals have been achieved or are being achieved. That's so beautiful. Thank you so much. That's one of the main reasons I wrote the sustainable development goal manifesto for the United Nations to give us a vision of what would it feel like if we achieved them all? What would that world look like? A lot of people have gotten confused over since 2015 who the goals are for if they're for countries or cities or corporations or politicians. And they're actually just for our basic needs, our basic livelihood for a better future for us as individuals. And I appreciate you mentioning that. And I'm totally in alignment and agreement with you. Throughout your journey up to this point in your life, looking back, would there be anything that you would do differently now that you've had this experience that you could maybe share with us with all the knowledge that you've received? Most people when I ask them this question, I say, I wish I would have started sooner or no, I've enjoyed the journey. I needed to learn everything. But I personally, for me, is I wish I would have started sooner. I've wasted so much time debating, discussing or not acting that I just wish I would have started sooner. Cause as I did, then my life went better. So that's the question I ask you. I started as a journalist actually. So I was very much aware and seized of these issues early on. But when I look back on my career, I think the one thing I might have wished to have done differently would have been to spend more time in countries. I spent quite a bit of time in headquarters. I traveled a huge amount to countries. But because of family reasons and where my husband was based, I probably wish I would have spent more time living in crisis areas with my family. I think that really living amongst people who are experiencing many of the issues that I work on on a more daily basis would have been very enriching. And that's probably one thing I would have liked to have done. And one thing I always encourage young people who are starting a career in the UN, please don't try to come to Geneva, New York or Bangkok first, go to DRC, Sudan, these countries and live there. And live amongst the people. And my daughter, who is working in a similar field as me, she went when she graduated from university, she went and lived six months in Nicaragua without running water and electricity. And I think that that really helped shape her vision of how she wanted to conduct her career in her life. So that would be my kind of thing. Spent too much time at headquarters would have liked to have spent more time in countries. When you mentioned that about your daughter, it's really interesting because a lot of us have to travel to places in the world to go have that experience what it was like to be without warm water or running water or sanitation and the basic needs. It's interesting just in the past few years, we've experienced that in the Western world, in Europe where people were displaced, as climate refugees, because of the floods and because of things like that. So in the future, if we don't take action, if we don't build resilience into our systems, if we don't do these things, then believe it or not, these Western worlds and Europe and the places that we thought are super are also going to be affected. And so we really need to get on the forefront of things. Lori, this has been absolutely fabulous. I thank you so much for letting us all inside of your ideas and to this discussion. The last thing that I have for you is there anything that we didn't get a touch upon or talk about about the report that you would like us to know before we say goodbye, something we missed out? That's absolutely your message to our listeners. Well, I encourage listeners to read the report and to contact us because what we're really looking for are more examples of what's working out there. What can we learn from you, listeners, about what's happening that's replicable in other contexts that can be adapted to other contexts? Like I mentioned before, sharing learning right now is just so important. We're all grappling with this. You mentioned that maybe one day in Europe we'll see displacement. Well, we saw a high level of mortality from floods in Germany. Who would have thought that a few years ago? So there is no part of the planet that is immune from climate impacts. There's no part of the world that isn't going to be impacted when you have a global pandemic. We need to share lessons. We need to show solidarity with each other in our knowledge management. So it's all about doing this together. And so really, I really encourage people to get in contact with us and tell us your stories, tell us how you're coping or how countries and communities you're aware of are coping. And that's really what I would encourage. So thank you. Thank you. Mapping resilience for the sustainable development goals, the Gar Special Report of 2023. Loretta Hibir, Jira Day, thank you so much for letting us inside of your ideas. That's all I have for you today. And I appreciate it. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Mark. It was a pleasure. Bye-bye. Bye.