The HSRC’s Dr Wilfred Lunga attended and contributed via an online platform to the technical sessions and expert consultations held during the Technical Experts’ Meeting (13-14 October) at the International Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience in Africa. As a well-recognised expert in the climate change and disaster risk fraternity, Dr Lunga’s contributions form part of the HSRC’s broader commitment to addressing regional and continent-wide challenges through social science and human security lenses.
The experts synthesised technical consensus across four primary thematic pillars. The first focused on expanding Early Warnings for All coverage through operational protocols that integrate regional climate centres with national meteorological services, moving from hazard-only warnings to vulnerability-informed, impact-based forecasting models capable of enabling localised triggering. Standard Operating Procedures were unified for cross-border early warning dissemination and early action across transboundary basins.
The second pillar addressed disaster risk financing, developing technical frameworks for integrating national contingency reserves, contingent credit facilities, and sovereign parametric risk insurance such as the African Risk Capacity, with parameters for channelling risk transfer instruments and anticipatory action funding directly to local government authorities and community resilience funds.
The third pillar concentrated on risk-informed urban housing and water infrastructure, aligning construction codes with climate hazard mapping to address cascading flood and drought risks in rapidly urbanising zones, and advancing actionable measures under the AU 2026 thematic priority on Sustainable Water Availability and Safe Sanitation Systems. The fourth pillar secured agreement on institutional maturity scales, self-assessment metrics, and peer review methodologies to monitor Sendai Framework alignment across Member States, alongside mechanisms for formalising Indigenous Knowledge Systems alongside scientific GIS and geospatial monitoring tools.
HSRC’s contribution to regional and continental challenges
Dr Lunga’s engagement demonstrates the HSRC’s strategic role in bringing social science and human security perspectives to continental disaster risk reduction agendas. The concept of habitability is central to this contribution. Habitability refers to the ability of a place to support human life by providing protection from hazards while assuring adequate space, food, and freshwater, and enabling economic opportunities and cultural continuity. When capacities are structurally too low to respond to climate impacts due to poverty, remoteness, or other factors, areas may become uninhabitable, forcing people to move or face existential threats. This framing moves beyond simple hazard exposure to ask whether people can remain in place with dignity and security.
Closely linked is people’s science, which positions affected communities not as passive recipients of expert knowledge but as active producers of knowledge about their own environments and risks. This approach recognises that farmers, fishers, and residents hold rigorous, experience-based understanding of local conditions that complements scientific monitoring. The HSRC’s work, including its policy briefs on rural women as agents of climate resilience and women’s leadership in disaster risk reduction, reflects this commitment to centring people, particularly those disproportionately affected in both the analysis and the solutions.
When embedding habitability and people’s science within continental disaster risk reduction frameworks, the HSRC ensures that human security dimensions like vulnerability, capacity, equity, and community resilience are not treated as afterthoughts but as foundational to how Africa understands and manages risk. This aligns with the Sendai Framework’s emphasis on people-centred disaster risk reduction and its call for inclusive, accessible approaches that address vulnerability, capacity, exposure, and hazard characteristics in all their dimension.