Sanjaya Bhatia, UNISDR and Manuel Valdes, Barcelona City Council, speaking at the opening of Barcelona Resilience Week

By Jeanette Elsworth

Barcelona, 13 November 2018 – Barcelona Resilience Week, a week of events and debates dedicated to sharing and advancing resilience best practice, has kicked off with speakers highlighting a shift in thinking in recent years about how to approach the question of resilience.

Manuel Valdes, Deputy Manager of Infrastructure and Urban Coordination at host city Barcelona’s City Council, explained that resilience was no longer a political decision but the right way forward.

“It used to be that we carried out dedicated resilience programmes,” he said, speaking at the opening ceremony. “But we have moved into a new phase [in which] any transformational project that we do must include resilience.”

Mr Valdes’ comments illustrate a trend in which development practitioners are increasingly recognising the link between the best practice guidance of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction – the global roadmap for reducing disaster loss – and achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.