The role of non-government stakeholders in implementing the Sendai Framework: A view from the voluntary commitments online platform

Abstract

One way to accelerate the implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 is through more effective management of the commitments, knowledge, experience, and resources of all non-government stakeholders supporting disaster risk reduction and resilience building. While governments have the primary responsibility to prevent and reduce risk, the Sendai Framework states that all stakeholders such as the private sector, non-government organizations, academia, civil society, etc. share this responsibility. Therefore, UNDRR promotes an all-of-society engagement and partnerships, which is materialized, for example, in the Sendai Framework Voluntary Commitments, a platform for all stakeholders to showcase and monitor their initiatives. The platform generates new datasets that were used in this article to analyze the role and types of voluntary commitments (VCs) made by non-government stakeholders. The methodology is mainly descriptive, including a sentiment analysis. Results show that non-government organizations (50%), the private sector (13%), and other networks (11%) are the largest type of stakeholders publishing VCs. These VCs are mainly covering the hazards of flood and earthquakes on themes such as risk management, capacity development, and community-based DRR. Sendai Priority for Action 1 receives the most attention from these VCs along with Target E (and indicator E2) and SDGs 11, 13, and 17. The Philippines is one of the countries benefiting from the largest number of commitments and opportunities for collaboration among those VCs as well as other VCs at the regional and global level in terms of work with local communities and inclusiveness of people with disabilities. The resilience of communities and nations is a necessary condition for reaching the goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Getting to know “who is doing what, where” can stimulate further studies analyzing a whole-of-society approach to address the systemic nature of risks and the role of non-government actors paving the way for the Sendai Framework to be implemented.