The Capacity-building seminar on "Collaborative Approaches and Solutions to Disasters Management Challenges for SIDS Municipalities in the Context of Sustainable Development" was organized by DESA/Division for Sustainable Development (DSD), in cooperation with OHLLRS and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Singapore, in Singapore from 10 to 12 November 2014 to address SIDS’ Disasters Risk Reduction (DRR) management as these countries are located amongst the world’s most vulnerable regions, facing intense and frequent natural and environmental disasters including severe regular seasonal flash flooding inflicting significant damage on islands' infrastructure. Moreover, the increasing impact of disasters is having a disproportionately high economic, social and environmental Small island developing states islands: according to UNISDR, six of the top ten countries with the highest proportion of annual average losses against their yearly production of gross capital are SIDS.

Twenty years after the Earth Summit, the outcome document of the Rio+20 Conference highlighted the fact that not only the sustainable development of the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) but even their survival and viability are intimately linked to their capacity to reduce the risks and the vulnerability and to enhance the resilience of their communities, buildings and infrastructure to, natural and anthropogenic disasters, sea-level rise and other impacts of climate change, not to mention their capacity to limit environmental degradation.

The Conference firmly placed disaster risk reduction on the sustainable development agenda and Governments called for "disaster risk reduction and building of resilience to disasters to be addressed with a renewed sense of urgency in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication…."

More recently, in September 2014, at the Third International Conference on Small Island Developing States, held in Apia, Samoa, it was recognized that sustainable development will not be achieved without sound, efficient disaster risk management in particular for SIDS’ municipalities. Member states also recognized that small island developing states continue to grapple with the effects of disasters.

It mentioned that the complexity and daunting nature of building resilience of municipalities and local communities in SIDS require a deeper collaboration among different stakeholders.
Local governments/public utilities facing enormous resource challenges in building resilience and protecting their communities are increasingly looking towards collaboration.