Preparations for the 2021 German Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction are in full swing. Exactly the right time to take a look back at last year’s conference. In 2020, the German Red Cross, sponsored by the German Federal Foreign Office and supported by the BBK, the DKKV and the KatNet, organized the first virtual German DRR Converence due to the covid-19 pandemic. The virtual format increased the outreach to 450 participants, a threefold increase from previous years.
The increased interest in the German DRR conference certainly has to do with the covid-19 pandemic and its impact on society, combined with the question: how can we strengthen our preparedness and the related capacities at different levels? This year, we are looking back not only at the covid-19 pandemic, but also at the extreme weather events of this summer. Under the overarching theme of "early warning" and with reference to climate change, exciting events already took place during the 2020 German DRR conference that set important impulses for the current discussion on DRR and disaster preparedness.
While we wait for this year’s conference, all these highly relevant panels, workshops and interviews can be re-viewed under the menu item "Relive". To name just a few:
- Panel with WMO and WHO: When COVID-19 & climate change collide: Potentials and challenges of (multi-hazard) Early Warning Systems
- Workshop with Umweltbundesamt (UBA): „Wandel durch Krisen: Vorsorge vs. Lernen auf die harte Tour“
- Interview with Frank Jörres, DRK, about „Nationales Krisenmanagement - Labor 5000“
- Interview with Dr. Petra van Rüth, UBA, about „Monitoring des Klimawandels in Deutschland – Handlungsnotwendigkeiten für Klimaanpassung“