This event is a pre-event to be held on 29 August 2014, but because we could not find any online form for pre-events, we used this form for partnership. The participants of this event will be senior officials of government, private sector, academia and civil society. The expected outcome with be an agreement for creating a partnership to implement broadband for facilitating disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. This pre-event will examine possible partnership for reducing disaster risk using information and communication technology (ICT) and in particular broadband for developing national emergency telecommunication plans for disaster risks, and climate change adaptation for SIDS.The objective of this event is to strengthen information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure to facilitate effective collection and systematic use of population data, baseline data, and economic, environment and social data to better understand vulnerabilities and risks. In this regard, ITU being the United Nations specialized agency promotes ICTs and in particular broadband to increase efforts in reducing disaster risks and climate change adaptation. The importance of broadband for sustainable development was recognized by the United Nations that led into establishing the Broadband Commission. The Commission includes some of the world’s most prominent leaders from the tech sector, government, academia and UN agencies. The 9th meeting of the Broadband commission was held in March 2014 where 30 Commissioners discussed with top leaders in ICTs industry and policy makers the role of broadband /ICTs in the post 2015 agenda with regards to the successor framework of the MDGs. Commissioners exchanged views and new ideas on what is next and which are the priorities for the sustainable development agenda. In the context of remaining challenges for broadband ubiquity, the Commissioners revisited the broadband networks development and funding models in the rural areas. The expected outcome of this dialogue is to seek synergies between existing regional climate change partnerships and UN agencies with a focus on establishing a genuine and durable partnership to implement actions that have been highlighted by the UN Broadband Commission to be addressed in the post-2015 development agenda.

The first action for this partnership is to do a study on how various existing partnerships can be integrated using broadband ensuring various existing partnership work together instead of working in silos to achieve maximum outcomes.

Capacity building is the key component of this partnership to ensure existing partnerships have the ability to understand and use broadband as the key driver for reducing disaster risks, and climate change adaptation.

Since the focus of the this possible partnership is on utilizing broadband to address disaster risks and climate adaptation, ITU will take the lead on this front. Further mechanisms will be identified during this event.

ITU with possible partners to be confirmed including WMO, UNISDR, UNEP, UNDP and existing partnerships including The Nairobi Work Programme; in which ITU is a member of, LoCAL funded by UNCDF, a partner of ITU; Caribbean Risk Management (CRM) among others.