Barcarena’s communities add disability-inclusion, public health, and food security actions into local resilience strategy
Barcarena took another step towards building its local resilience and risk reduction plan by holding three participatory workshops, from 11 to 13 September, to complete the assessment of the city's disaster resilience capacities.
To this end, Barcarena completed three addenda to the Disaster Resilience Scorecard for Cities, with technical support from UNDRR, including the addendum for public health, the inclusion of people with disabilities and the resilience of food systems.
Each thematic area was addressed during a specific day of the workshops in direct consultation with the inhabitants of Barcarena. On the first day of the workshop, the city's health professionals focussed on issues related to post-pandemic recovery and biological risk management. On the second day, farmers' and fishermen's co-operatives in Barcarena shared the negative impacts of climate change that they are already observing on the city's food systems and suggested actions to mitigate food insecurity. On the final day of the workshop, people and managers with disabilities addressed the inclusion and empowerment capacities of people with disabilities in Barcarena's risk management system, promoting accessibility actions (infrastructure, language, mobility) and raising awareness.
Implementing the tools gave greater voices to the inhabitants of Barcarena and build actions with the public authorities to promote integrated and inclusive risk management. Next stage involves the Barcarena Municipal Committee for Risk Reduction and Resilience integrating these proposals into the city's local plan.
During the workshops, the deputy mayor of Barcarena, Cristina Vilaça, emphasised that "Barcarena is empowering itself to better face existing and future risks". The Mayor's Office Advisor and MCR2030 focal point, Patrícia Menezes, explained that a resilient Barcarena is a city that is able to anticipate the risks it is subject to so that it is better prepared and can recover more quickly.
UNDRR's Junior Programme Officer, Clément da Cruz, explained that Barcarena is acting as MCR2030's Resilience Hub, with a commitment to driving forward the municipal resilience and risk reduction agenda in the Amazon region.
The activities were carried out with financial support from the Finnish government.
