The Regional Innovation Forum-Asia was held in Bangkok, December 6th and 7th, 2016. IRDR is one of the organizers with ADRRN, OCHA, MoreImpact and UNDP. IRDR Executive Director Prof. Rajib Shaw attended this meeting.
The Asia-Pacific region is home to 40 per cent of all natural disasters and 84 per cent of people affected by natural disasters worldwide. With the region facing such a magnitude of humanitarian and development challenges, there is need for innovation and collaboration to ‘solve the unsolved’ . RIF-Asia is a creative forum for fostering multi-sectoral partnerships to “solve the unsolved” problems that are hindering disaster risk reduction (DRR) and humanitarian efforts in the Asia region. RIF will bring together local practitioners and thought leaders from countries across the region to identify and develop solutions to challenges from the field and show-case some of the region’ s key innovation practices. RIF-Asia will provide a facilitated space to develop innovative solutions to regional challenges through collaboration between partners from civil society, the private sector, government and academia. The goal is to generate specific innovation projects – and the partnerships that will bring them to reality.
Objectives of RIF-Asia:
– To provide annual platform to various business, science, civil societies, UN, and other stakeholders in the region for sharing of their innovative ideas to solve the ‘unsolved’ .
– To generate specific cross-sectoral innovation projects, which can provide evidence based solutions, as concrete outcomes from the forum.
– To seek linkages of these innovative solutions to local/national disaster risk reduction plan and policies.
4 Thematic Areas for RIF-Asia 2016:
– Localizing disaster risk reduction. How to maximize the ownership for more impact?
– Stay or relocate? Solutions for communities living with high recurrent risks.
– Safe water for all. Is filtering an only option? Addressing root causes.
– Alleviating malnutrition during disasters. Is reducing the need possible?
