Abstract: Disasters significantly impact the progress towards Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This emphasizes the importance of disaster risk reduction actions to achieve sustainable development.

Global frameworks have been designed to measure progress towards sustainability and disaster risk reduction. These frameworks have synergies and crossovers; however, goals and targets remain siloed. The integration of development data would improve the measurement of disaster risk.To bridge this gap, this research contributes to the alignment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) with the Sendai Framework for Disaster and Risk Reduction (SFDRR), by combining a selection of indicators from both frameworks in a social-ecological risk assessment for river deltas. Emilie Crémin and Sonia Binte Murshed leverage the Global Delta Risk Index (GDRI) to address this challenge. It is a multi-hazard risk assessment tool developed to support decision-making in risk reduction interventions. It is composed of multiple components to assess the risk: hazards, intermediate impacts, vulnerability, and exposure of social-ecological systems.

During this workshop organised at the CSH, they will present the results of a consultation conducted with experts, communities, and stakeholders of the Red River, the Mekong and the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna. They adopted an impact chain approach to design the interconnections of the different risk drivers, selecting 143 indicators to update the GDRI modular library. These indicators were further compared with the indicators used to assess the progress towards SDGs and SFDRR global framework. This research aims at better informing risk management and supporting delta-level interventions towards the sustainability and resilience of river deltas. The participants of the workshop organised at the CSH will be invited to reflect and debate on the implementation of Global frameworks in India.

Speakers:

Emilie Crémin is a researcher in geography, social and environmental sciences at the University of Glasgow’s School of Interdisciplinary Studies and a member of the UKRI GCRF Living Delta Research Hub, since February 2020. Her research project questions the impacts of human activities on river socio-ecological systems, from a North-South perspective. Her in the UKRI GCRF is to develop a risk assessment and the Global Delta Risk Index that characterize coastal social-ecological tipping points, especially in Mangrove related social-ecological systems.

Sonia Binte Murshed is an associate professor in the Institute of Water and Flood Management (IWFM), Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET). Her PhD is in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Utah State University, USA. Her research interests include integrated water resources management, hydro-climatology, freshwater scarcity, water conflicts, etc. Her current project is ‘Availability of fresh water at Ganges Delta of Bangladesh’. 

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