A few thoughts from...
Naeem Iqbal, FAO Pakistan
“The Asia-Pacific Dialogue Platform’s third and final day started with interactive dialogues on disaster risk financing with the donors: ECHO, GCF and ADB. It helped to develop a mutual consideration for promoting anticipatory actions to address the challenges countries face due to climate risks. The dialogue resulted in some good takeaways, which clearly define the needs for ex-ante risk financing.
“Country-specific exercises followed, to develop a roadmap based on analysis of why and what sort of anticipatory actions they require, which stakeholders will implement them, and how these activities will be carried out. In this session, the participating countries set priority goals and anticipatory plans for the next two to three years, including country-level institutional capacity development initiatives and strengthening regional cooperation.
“For us, the participants from Pakistan, the major takeaways are bringing diverse groups to one platform to act on our agreed roadmap at the country level, and to develop multi-hazard protocols for anticipatory action, with improved impact-based forecasting and prearranged financing. Another takeaway is to work on strengthening regional cooperation at the South Asia level, using the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) as a platform.”