Nur-Sultan moves to resilient, and healthy future, with the support of UNDRR and the EU

On September 28, the City of Nur-Sultan with the support of the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia (UNDRR ROECA) conducted the first preliminary scorecard assessment workshop which is part of a series of workshops developing the city’s resilience strategy. 

During the interactive workshop, 40 representatives of the local and national government as well as risk analysis institutions and partners involved in developing the City Strategy and Action Plan for Disaster Risk Reduction for Nur-Sultan discussed 47 indicators using the preliminary disaster resilience scorecard. Through the discussion, the participants exchanged on the main resilience challenges and mapped current and future risks to assess actions to be taken to reduce the negative impact of all disasters. As a result, the participants exchanged detailed information on the city’s resilience status against the ten essentials for the ‘Making Cities Resilient 2030’ Platform. This will be the basis for developing the resilience agenda specifically for Nur-Sultan.

The Strategy and Action Plan will be based on multi-hazard approach, addressing amongst other pandemics and biological hazards. Experience from past epidemics and the current COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates the importance of coordination and cooperation between disaster managers, health workers and other sectors.  

Mr. Elnar Bazyken, the Head of the Center of Urbanism of Nur-Sultan, stressed: “The matter of the city resilience is very important. Today we face many hazards and the highly populated cities are under a lot of pressure. We have adopted the city development strategy for the next 10 year where we emphasize three main goals. Our city must be comfortable, resilient, and healthy. Today’s assessment will be a great tool make specific steps forward to these goals.”

Mr. Abdurahim Muhidov, ROECA Program Manager, said: “The city of Nur-Sultan is expanding and developing fast, and like all parts of the world, is also exposed to increasing disaster risk. These steps towards building the city’s resilience strategy are therefore important for reducing future risks.”

Ms. Gulnar Dussupova, representative of the European Union, noted: “European Union initiated this four-year programme to improve disaster resilience and disaster risk reduction which are high priorities for the region of Central Asia. We support the development and adoption of the disaster strategies, and we foresee that these programme components will support the local governments in the systematic approach to the developments. We applaud the commitment of the administration of the city of Nur-Sultan to the resilient future of its citizens.”

UNDRR will continue to support the city administration of Nur-Sultan, local institutions and DRR experts in working together on the city’s resilience agenda through a range of workshops on the public health sector. This work is part of the long-standing efforts in strengthening disaster resilience and accelerating implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction in Central Asia, implemented by UNDRR and funded by the European Union.

Background information

The EU-funded project “Strengthening disaster resilience and accelerating the implementation of Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction in Central Asia”, implemented by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), supports countries of the region in implementing the Sendai Framework priorities.  The project supports strengthening regional coordination, development of regional DRR strategy, national disaster loss accounting systems, and community-level disaster risk reduction. On the local level, the project supports the development of disaster resilience strategies of capital cities. For this project, the EU committed EUR 3,750,000 for the three-year implementation.

MCR2030 is a global partnership of key partners with expertise and networks across urban resilience, DRR, climate change and the Sustainable Development Goals to bring synergized collaboration. The MCR2030 initiative builds on a decade-long of advocacy and capacity-building work that reached more than 4,000 cities across the globe within the network of the Making Cities Resilient Campaign. The initiative seeks to provide guidance and support to enhance understanding of risk reduction and resilience, to improve strategic planning and build resilience, as well as to take actions. It supports, connects, and facilitates resilience-building, offering a range of tools and services including peer-learning and knowledge exchange amongst cities.

Ms. Yerkezhan Amriyeva, Communications specialist, EU Delegation to Kazakhstan, at: [email protected]      

Mr. Abdurahim Muhidov, UNDRR Regional Programme Coordinator, at: [email protected]