Cities around the world are developing strategies to enhance resilience in anticipation of climate change, natural disasters, and other potential crises. Cities in Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are particularly vulnerable due to their unique geographical features.
This article introduces the Integrated Urban Resilience in Small Island Developing States and Coastal Cities programme (IUR-SIDS), jointly developed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), to showcase how SIDS can adopt an integrated approach to enhance urban resilience and reduce urban risks.
Context: rising risks faced by SIDS
SIDS are highly exposed and vulnerable to disasters and climate risks, representing two-thirds of the countries with the highest relative annual. Their risks include displacement from rising sea levels, increased coastal flooding, saltwater intrusion, shoreline retreat, economic and social development risks, hydro-meteorological disasters, and periodic seismic events. disaster losses
Their limited revenue bases do not help, as they have scarce resources to recover from crises. Due to their geography, small size, and industry, SIDS are 35% more vulnerable to external economic and financial shocks. The reported loss of nearly 131 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) in Vanuatu due to Cyclone Nigel in 1985, the loss of almost 3.5 times its GDP in the British Virgin Islands, and nearly 200 percent of its GDP in Dominica during Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017 all highlight the vulnerability of SIDS to disasters.
Lower tax income and fewer resources could threaten critical urban infrastructure investments and thus undermine broader sustainable urban development efforts. Moreover, the resilience of critical urban systems and infrastructure, including socio-economic assets like airports, needs to be addressed due to their location in areas with high exposure and susceptibility to numerous risks. However, of the total disaster-related support to SIDS, only 10% was allocated to prevention and preparedness.
Credit: Urban Resilience Hub
The programme
The Integrated Urban Resilience in Small Island Developing States and Coastal Cities is a joint global programme by UNDP and UN-Habitat processed through a fund under the United Nations Multi-Partner Trust Fund Office for urban risk reduction and resilience-building action. It was established in April 2022 within the framework of the High-Level Meeting of the General Assembly on the implementation of the New Urban Agenda.
Ms. Maimunah Mohd Sharif
Former UN-Habitat’s Executive Director
Strong risk and resilience analysis is the first step to develop a robust framework needed for the type of evidence-based decision-making for city planners and managers to design and implement effective and efficient policies and strategies.
The programme was implemented in two phases. The first phase run from 2023 to 2025, reaching 10 cities and laying the groundwork for potential scaling-up and scaling-out in the second phase from 2026 to 2030.
Among the participating cities in the first phase, three each from the Pacific and Caribbean regions, two from the Indian Ocean region, and two coastal cities. They were:
Small, medium, and transitioning cities are a focus because they share risks and vulnerabilities, as well as more serious development challenges. Their ability to address these issues holistically is significantly limited by governance gaps, a lack of empirical risk and resilience data, and insufficient knowledge and technical capacities, as noted in UNDP’s publication: “An Analytical Review: A Decade of Urban Resilience”.
Credit: UN-Habitat
Programme objectives and approaches
The program focused on underserved regions, enhances urban governance, and addresses specific needs and vulnerabilities. It aims to support at least 100 small and medium-sized cities by 2030 in developing risk-informed urban development plans and implementing urban resilience-building interventions that cover all resilience aspects—physical, environmental, and socio-economic—while strengthening urban governance guided by systems thinking to achieve resilience development outcomes.
More specifically, the program aims to strengthen data analytics, resilience diagnostics, and risk governance capacities of small and medium-sized SIDS and coastal cities (in Least Developed Countries and Low/Middle Income Countries) with similar risk, exposure, and vulnerability contexts.
In doing so, it helps cities to:
- Assess multidimensional risks.
- Diagnose resilience needs and priorities.
- Identify pathways to foster sustainable development processes.
- Reduce risks and build a foundation for resilient human settlements and socio-economic growth in urban centers in line with the 2030 Agenda, while making sure that no one is left behind.
The programme adopts analytical and diagnostic approaches.
- Bringing together stakeholders from disaster risk reduction, climate change alliance, and socio-economic development sectors.
- Fostering engagement.
- Adopting a multi-risk lens to identify resilience-building needs as part of a bottom-up sustainability approach.
- Catalyzing action to reduce exposure and vulnerability to disasters and climate risks while enabling them to assess other types of risks.
- Implementing a comprehensive approach to risk reduction and resilience building.
- Identifying actionable resilience and sustainability-focused actions through the development of backbone projects.
- Advancing effective collaborations between national and city efforts.
- Encouraging proactive involvement from regional inter-governmental bodies to promote institutionalization and long-term sustainability.
Moreover, the programme underscored the importance of South-South cooperation for replication across other SIDS and coastal cities.
It hence identifies five key outputs.
- Data collection, analysis, risk information, and resilience diagnostics.
- Enhanced engagement of diverse stakeholders to develop city resilience plans and strengthen urban governance.
- Development of city and national urban plans to promote integration of risk and resilience considerations.
- Implementation of Integrated Disaster Risk Reduction–Climate Change Adaptation (DDR–CCA) to build resilience at the city and community levels.
- Research, documentation, and knowledge management for cross-learning and for city-to-city information sharing.
Credit: Urban Resilience Hub
Conclusion
The Integrated Urban Resilience in Small Island Developing States and Coastal Cities program emphasizes the need for a comprehensive approach to disaster risk reduction and resilience building. It also highlights the importance of data analytics, risk assessment, and intergovernmental cooperation. The program acts as a valuable guide for small and medium-sized cities aiming to boost their resilience despite limited resources.
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