From Sendai, to Paris, to Geneva: Global Platform 2025 Unites Climate and Disaster Risk Reduction

By Jamie Cummings, Associate, Stakeholder Forum, 11 June 2025 first published on Stakeholder Forum for a Sustainable Future pgae here.

The Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction 2025 (GP2025) in Geneva has concluded on the eve of the UNFCCC Subsidiary Body meetings (SBs) for climate in Bonn. Participants of both sessions are entering the SBs with a renewed sense of urgency and a clear roadmap for breaking down the silos that have long separated climate action from disaster risk reduction. Over five intensive days at GP2025 (June 2-6), representatives from across the globe gathered to bridge the critical gap between the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.

Mr. Anderson Banda, Director of SHOC at the Southern African Development Community, delivered a memorable line at the conference, based on Professor Virginia Murray’s original work: “Disasters are not natural. They are products of the decisions we make. And better decisions are informed by data.” This fundamental truth echoed throughout the preparatory Stakeholder Forum sessions, where access to disaggregated data was a hot topic.

During the meeting, grassroots organizations engaged directly with UN entities including UNFCCC and UNDRR alongside country-level participants. Mr. Kamal Kishore, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for UNDRR, further emphasized the changing landscape of risk: “At the outset, when UNDRR first released the Global Assessment on DRR (GAR), hazards were considered a constant. This is no longer the case. Hazards are now intensifying in frequency and intensity and completely changing geographies.”

Based on personal experience, I can attest that disasters are wholly reshaping communities. I grew up in Asheville, North Carolina, where Hurricane Helene left an entirely new landscape in her wake last September.

In the closing Stakeholder Forum session, I shared a story from my own experience that illustrated the power of community-centered disaster response. When Hurricane Helene devastated my hometown and traditional emergency services couldn’t reach isolated families due to washed-out roads, I witnessed a local Appalachian mule ranch step in with an extraordinary solution. They organized a mule brigade that could traverse the impassable terrain to deliver life-saving supplies like insulin to families in desperate need.

This wasn’t just a disaster response; it was a testament to what I learned firsthand—that the communities who have known their land best for centuries often hold the solutions for our most modern crises. It perfectly encapsulated what was emphasized throughout the Forum: resilience cannot be built from the top down alone, but it must be scaled up through inclusive, people-centered anticipatory action.

One of the most significant outcomes of GP2025 was the clear mandate to integrate disaster risk reduction with climate adaptation, as demonstrated by the response to Hurricane Helene in the Southeastern United States. The sessions consistently emphasized that coherence between frameworks isn’t just efficient—it’s essential. Whether aligning the Santiago Network for Loss and Damage with local needs or ensuring complementarity between UNFCCC and Sendai Gender Action Plans, the message was clear: our frameworks must speak to each other, not past each other.

The discussions revealed several key priorities for moving forward:

Technology and Innovation: The future belongs to fast, flexible, and open-source digital infrastructures that empower grassroots volunteers, often the true first responders when traditional systems fail. Early warning systems must be localized, making them not just accessible but trusted and actionable at the community level.

Urban Resilience: Cities must embrace “building forward better,” not just building back better. This means innovating beyond simply reconstructing vulnerabilities and ensuring accessibility enhancements benefit everyone, particularly persons with disabilities.

Youth and Intergenerational Engagement: Bottom-up approaches and youth engagement emerged as fundamental requirements, not optional add-ons. The energy and insights of young voices must be institutionalized in leadership structures and decision-making processes.

Inclusion of Gender, Disability, Local Knowledge, and Marginalized Voices: Women-led organizations were recognized as being at the forefront of implementing Gender Action Plans, innovating practical solutions, and building communication channels in areas with limited technology access. The sessions reaffirmed that greater coherence across climate, DRR, and gender agendas is non-negotiable, with intersectional data and inclusive participation moving from aspiration to standard practice. The disability rights community’s message was particularly powerful: not just “nothing about us, without us,” but more broadly “nothing without us”—emphasizing meaningful inclusion of persons with disabilities in every stage of planning and implementation.

Underlying all discussions was the critical need for scaled finance. With persisting gaps in traditional funding, innovative mechanisms, including fintech, digital assets, and private sector investments, emerged as potential game-changers. The upshot: resilience is an investable and attractive target, but only if we get the data and transparency aspects right to demonstrate clear returns on investment.

Looking Toward 2030: An Immediate Call to Action

As we stand at this intersection of the Sendai Framework and Paris Agreement, the 2030 deadline is not a distant target but an immediate call to action—2025 marks 10 years of Paris and Sendai. The Global Platform 2025 has provided us with the tools, knowledge, and most importantly, the partnerships needed to ensure that by 2030, no community faces disaster alone, unprepared, or unheard.

The path forward requires bold political action that tackles the root causes of why hazards become disasters. It demands that we embed DRR within existing cultural frameworks rather than imposing external solutions, honoring the wisdom and knowledge systems that communities have developed over generations.

The mule brigade in Asheville shows us that when we combine community knowledge with modern frameworks, when we break down silos between climate and disaster risk reduction, and when we center marginalized voices in our planning, we not only survive disasters but we build truly resilient communities.

The work continues, but the foundation laid at GP2025 gives us reason for greater integrated action and a renewed energy to move these altruistic agendas forward.

You can watch Jamie’s comments during the closing session of the 3rd Stakeholder Forum 2025 | UNDRR here.

Stakeholder Forum Associate Jamie Cummings is a vulnerability project manager of a Belmont Forum-funded grant, Re-Energize Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience. She serves as the climate change focal point for Sendai Stakeholder Engagement Mechanism at the UNFCCC Bonn Climate Conferences and COPs in both Sharm el Sheikh (2022) and Dubai (2023).