On July 22, 2025, the governments of Japan and Thailand, along with Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), United Nation Development Programme (UNDP), and UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), held a special event highlighting the growing urgency of integrating disaster risk reduction (DRR) into development planning. This special event was held in parallel to the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) meeting convened from July 14 to 24, 2025, under the auspices of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).

Panelists acknowledged progress to date but warned that emerging and intensifying risks—such as extreme heat and low-frequency, high-impact events like earthquakes and tsunamis—continue to threaten development outcomes and undermine hard-won gains. DRR, they emphasized, is not a siloed issue but a systemic development challenge—one in which resilience and economic growth must go hand in hand.

On the sidelines of the forum, CACCI Senior Officer Wenju Liao met with Hiromi Aoki, Chair of CACCI’s Young Entrepreneurs Group of Asia-Pacific (YEGAP), who was participating as part of the Japanese delegation