Multi-sector partnerships key in disaster risk reduction

The press release was datelined Brussels, 10 November 2016, and accompanied the publication of the ENHANCE project’s final book. It described a four-year project built around ten case studies across Europe and carried out by 24 partners from 11 countries, drawn from universities, government bodies, companies and international organisations.

Its central finding was blunt. Institutions that work in silos miss chances to exchange information, and that gap weakens disaster risk reduction. Over the course of the project, ten multi-sector partnerships were established or developed, most of them with a focus on the financial sector.

The release repeated the success stories already named in the book announcement of October 2016. The Wadden Sea Forum had decided to bring climate change impacts into its partnership work. In Rotterdam, about EUR 200,000 was committed to further analysis of climate risk in the port. The project’s partners had also fed into the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, adopted in March 2015 (see the glossary entry on the Sendai Framework).

Two people were named. Ralph Lasage appeared as the ENHANCE project manager. Riikka Pohjankoski of ARCTIK SPRL, the environmental communication firm that acted as the project’s communication partner, was listed as media contact, and a PDF copy of the release was offered alongside the text.

The release came a little more than a week before a second one, on heatwave planning in Belgium and the Netherlands, which drew on the same project’s health case study (heatwave study record).