Journal: Essays & Field Notes

Every year on 13 October, the International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction (IDDRR) marks progress toward the Sendai Framework and calls the world to reduce disaster losses. In 2026, the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) centers the day on a deceptively simple proposition: Resilience Starts at Home.

Home is where risk becomes personal — where floodwater enters, where heat concentrates, where an evacuation decision is made at 2 a.m. by someone who is tired, caregiving, and under-informed. It is also where resilience is first practiced: through household preparedness plans, retrofits, insurance literacy, neighborhood mutual aid, and the difficult conversations families have about staying, moving, or rebuilding.

A Resilience Starts at Home advocacy campaign should translate the Sendai Framework and Early Warnings for All (EW4All) into the vocabulary of the household — plain-language risk communication, culturally responsive preparedness, and municipal policy that treats housing as first-line infrastructure for climate adaptation.

If your organization, agency, ministry, or community group is planning IDDRR programming — or wants to build a year-round campaign that outlasts the day — the invitation above is open.

If we provide one individual with safety and security, they confidently care more about their future. If we provide a population with safety and security, then suddenly you have a movement of people that care more about their future.

Do you want to plan for the inevitable? Think through risks, scenarios, and possible outcomes. Do you want to — better yet, need to — collaborate to make this possible? Our practice would argue that providing your population with safety and security is a necessary precursor for highly effective, long-term DRR, adaptation, and resilience. When you do, the problems of right now are not so burdensome. Suddenly future problems can be conceptualized. That is a gift. That is a privilege.

Disaster Risk Reduction is a gift because your necessary needs are being addressed while proactively preparing for the worst. I was able to think about this perspective when reading The Last Forest: The Amazon in the Age of Globalization (2007) by Mark London. I have also been reading Whole Earth Discipline: An EcoPragmatic Approach by Stewart Brand, which has broadened my perspective on how we think globally about planetary boundaries, Earth's carrying capacity, and how we solve problems within our natural and artificial systems.

My question is this: is being safe and secure a prerequisite for effective disaster risk reduction (DRR) implementation? Is practicing effective DRR a privilege? Let us know your thoughts by responding to this blogpost. All comments, optimisms, cautions, and concerns are most welcome.