The Asian Development Bank convened a webinar to explore practical approaches for disaster-resilient infrastructure in Asia and the Pacific.

Vivid Economics and the Asian DisasterPreparedness Centre presented their key findings.

A panel of leading thinkers also shared their perspectives, followed by a Question and Answer session.

As part of ADB’s Gender Month celebrations, the Gender Equality, Climate Change, and Environment thematic groups hosted a session entitled, “What will it take to tackle climate change?”. SDCC Director General Bruno Carrasco, in his opening remarks, reiterated that as Asia and the Pacific’s climate bank, ADB is working across the region to support developing member countries to achieve an inclusive, resilient, and green future.

The webinar discussed how public development banks (PDBs) can support the post-2020 global biodiversity framework and make a positive contribution to biodiversity. ​

The session unpacked the ‘financing green’ concept and how PDB’s invest in nature. It also tackled how PDBs can support in-country enabling conditions and policy environments to facilitate private finance and investments that generate biodiversity co-benefits and help align funds with climate objectives.

SDCD held a virtual Resilience Learning Month 2021 capacity development course in November and December which targeted national staff from ADB resident missions and country offices in the South and Southeast Asia Departments. The course is comprised of six short, highly interactive workshops that integrate training on climate and disaster resilience, climate finance, climate change mitigation, and disaster risk financing.

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​The Systematic Observations Financing Facility (SOFF) established at COP26 in Glasgow, aims to mobilize $200 million in grant funds to support LDCs and SIDS improve their weather observation infrastructure. The support includes (i) TA resources to undertake initial assessments; (ii) grant resources to establish observation infrastructure, and (iii) results-based financing to support the maintenance of observation infrastructure.

Drawing from a forthcoming SDCC publication on the “state of play” on disaster-resilient infrastructure in Asia and the Pacific, a risk assessment framework for infrastructure will be presented. The methodology includes the importance of a risk narrative, the role of risk modeling, and how this informs integrated findings for decision making will be explored. An illustrative case of critical roads in Pakistan will be presented.

SDCC-URG, Climate Change and Disaster Risk Management Division (SDCD), and the urban divisions of Operations Departments (ODs) jointly organized a deep dive FGD for the urban sector staff on ADB’s procedures for working on the Paris Agreement (PA) alignment and tracking of climate finance (mitigation and adaptation) at the project level.

With a gross domestic product share of 38.6% in 2020, the country’s digital economy is considered to play a key role in achieving this carbon neutrality target. This initiative is supportive of ADB’s recent announcement of an increased ambition of $100 billion in climate finance by 2019-2030, as well as UNFCCC COP26's call on scaling up the investments in climate change adaptation and achieving carbon neutrality.