Risk and resilience in practice: vulnerabilities, displaced people, local communities and heritages: guest editorial

Abstract

The global assessment report published in 2019, evaluating the lessons from the implementation of the Sendai Report (UNDRR, 2019), directly challenge existing risk assessment approaches to deal with complexity and incorporate surprise as the new normal. The new approaches to risk assessment must also give us tools to tackle and implement the objectives and goals set in the international risk governance instruments, as the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030, the Transforming our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Paris Agreement, the Addis Ababa Action Agenda and the New Urban Agenda (NUA). The world faces the emergence of a new climatic regime connected to the increased possibility of natural and human-made hazards, extreme events and massive people displacements. In this new Anthropocene era (Blok and Jensen, 2019), research and analytic approaches must be multi-disciplinary and multi-scalar, incorporating communities and affected population in truly participatory and changing processes. This special issue results from a first selection of papers presented in the 8th International Conference on Building Resilience that took place in Lisbon on November 2018, under the general theme Risk and Resilience in practice: Vulnerabilities, Displaced People, Local Communities and Heritages.