| Overview : Malawi Government, through the Department of Disaster Management Affairs (DoDMA), intends to develop national guidelines for conducting multi hazard risk assessment and use of risk profiles. DoDMA has secured funding from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to implement a Disaster Risk Management for Resilience Programme (DRM4R) in the country. The programme is focusing on institutionalization of DRM in urban and district local authorities, and implementation of priority risk reduction and interventions to enhance resilience in targeted disaster hotspots. Malawi is experiencing increasing hazards in temporal and spatial dimension, with urban areas becoming more vulnerable to shocks. Additionally, land use planning is not based on credible risk assessment leading to people staying in hazard prone areas and undertaking development, livelihoods or economic activities in unsafe locations. Disaster risk management interventions have been implemented, both structural and non-structural in some of the high risk areas. Most of these do not complete their life span because some designs are not based on credible risk assessments. A number of stakeholders have conducted risk assessments in the country at various scales. However, these have usually been at small-scale, aligned to projects, focus on a single hazard, done using different methodology and the usage of risk products has been limited. There is also no regular collection of data that would help track and update performance of other sectors in mainstreaming DRR. Most of these challenges stem from lack of trained and skilled local personnel to conduct risk assessment and apply risk profiles in their work. A key shortfall is lack of guidelines to guide these risk assessments and also on how to use risk profiles produced. The lack of common tools and guidelines for risk assessments and detachment of risk assessments to government planning have created coordination and implementation challenges. Regular risk assessment and risk monitoring could support regular collection of information that would help the government to have an up-to-date master risk profile, linked to government Disaster Risk Management Information System as well as monitoring and evaluation systems. To address these gaps, the DRM4R Programme will, therefore, support development of guidelines for conducting risk assessments and use of risk profiles. The Guidelines will be used in the national risk assessment that the country plans to undertake, as well as any other risk assessments done for specific projects or local authorities. The guidelines on risk assessments and use of risk profiles will assist in creating a standardized assessments methodology and approach, while ensuring that stakeholders are aware of how to use the risk profiles generated for various purposes. These guidelines will help guide stakeholders to harmonize efforts, will help DODMA track implementation of risk reduction and recovery programs that include building back better, and will also help reporting requirements to global agreement like Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. DoDMA, through UNDP, intends to engage the services of an international consultant to facilitate the development of national guidelines on risk assessments and use of risk profiles. |
