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Weekly
Briefing: August 6th, 2020
Cities for a
Resilient Recovery: International Lessons on recovery from COVID-19
Produced by The University of Manchester, UK
(Professor Duncan Shaw, Dr Jennifer Bealt, David Powell, and
Professor Ruth Boaden) in partnership with the Global Resilient
Cities Network (Sam Kernaghan)
What is the weekly
briefing on Cities for a Resilient Recovery?
Each week the University of Manchester brings
together relevant international practices and examples recovery from
COVID-19. The weekly briefing is curated by the Global Resilient Cities Network to
bring key lessons and examples targeted for resilience officers,
emergency planners, and other city practitioners. The structure of
the briefing follows the City Resilience Framework –
specifically the four drivers that cities have identified as
mattering the most when a city faces a wide range of chronic
problems or a sudden catastrophe - Health and Wellbeing, Economy
& Society; Infrastructure & Environment; and Leadership
& Strategy.
Highlights of the
week
In this week’s briefing we
highlight principles to embed equity in recovery; the role of
faith-based organisations in engaging vulnerable communities; how
existing communications platforms can improve transparency in
response and recovery actions; and need for pre-emptive strategies
to counter the compounded risks of COVID-19 and natural hazards.
To ensure equity is
embedded in recovery a coalition of UK health and social care
charities have identified 5 principles to guide COVID-19 response. Reinforcing the
need to confront inequality head-on, these groups argue that due to
differences in financial situations, work and living conditions,
and personal characteristics “we’re all in the same storm, we’re
not all in the same boat”.
Partnering with faith-based and civil society organisations may dispel inaccuracies about the virus and ensure the
most vulnerable are able to register for COVID-19 support and
information. Public health experts in cities like Rosario,
Argentina, have successfully worked with the Catholic Church to go
door-to-door at the community level, and enable inclusion of those
groups who may not be integrated into the system.
Transparency in communication around disaster response - whether
pandemic or natural hazard related - can be improved by ensuring
the public have an authoritative timeline of activities and
decisions
taken. In Vanuatu, a government website recording COVID-19 response
and recovery, is also providing transparency across actions and
responses related to category 5 tropical cyclone Harold hitting
land in April 2020.
And as cities like Zagreb, Croatia juggle public health, social and
economic responses to the pandemic, a magnitude 5.3 earthquake
disrupted newly introduced lockdown measures, causing an increase
in the rate of infections in the days following the earthquake.
Given the history of epidemics following natural disasters,
modelling, scenario planning, and multi-hazard exercises are just
some of the pre-emptive strategies to
counter the compounded risks of COVID-19 and natural hazards.
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