A Multi-Stakeholder Collaborative Approach to Nature Triggered Emergency Management: Reflections from the Field

The scale and impact of nature-triggered events such as climate and weather-related floods and storm surges, hurricanes and tornadoes, forest fires, avalanches, and similar events have increased manifold in Canada in recent decades. Although an “all agencies approach” is best suited to deal with such a phenomenon, the armed forces-developed and developing nations alike-are often asked to respond as a last resort to aid civil administrations.
Since the late 90s, the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) have actively supported local administrations in mitigating the impacts of natural disasters. Although such collaborative efforts of multiple stakeholders last for a short period, the knowledge gained in resource management, disaster recovery, command, communication, and coordination (C3) is of immense importance for the future of disaster management.

This workshop explores several thematic areas, such as i) What are the local and sub-regional institutional capacities and arrangements to prepare for, respond to, and recover from largescale extreme events? ii) What can we learn about the role of the armed forces of other comparable countries by studying recent emergency cases? iii) how can Canada develop a sustainable framework for effective disaster response?
The envisaged outputs of the workshop are: i) integrated network building through knowledge generation among the CAF, civil society actors, and provincial and municipal governments; and ii) preparing future generations to deal with future challenges (youth-focused).