Mitigating transboundary risks by integrating risk reduction frameworks of health and DRR:A perspective from COVID-19 pandemic

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has emerged as one of the most severe and significant health disasters during recent times. The impacts of the COVID-19 have spanned across the globe and rightly qualify to be a transboundary disaster. When looked through the lens of transboundary risks, COVID-19 is not the first of its kind. Health and nonhealth transboundary risks are on the rise during recent years due to the integration of socioeconomic and development processes at the regional and global scales. The paper presents various past experiences of transboundary disasters, their impacts, and important lessons related to risk reduction. It highlights the need for recognition of transboundary risks and advocates putting in place an integrated risk reduction framework from international to the regional, national, and local levels and across multiple sectors, which entails building the capacity of institutions and revamping of information and decision support systems. The paper suggests that the current risk management frameworks are not adequate in addressing the transboundary risks. There is a need for risk assessments to take into consideration the new and emerging risks and move to stochastic risk assessments from deterministic risk assessments. Transparent and timely sharing of the risk information is of paramount importance in addressing systemic risks spanning across borders. The paper further argues that countries such as India and Japan have the potential to lead the formulation and implementation of a risk reduction framework that can effectively address transboundary risks given their emerging role in the Asia region and beyond.