The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Crisis Bureau and the Accelerator for Systemic Risk Assessment (ASRA) have announced a new strategic partnership to help countries better anticipate, assess, and respond to increasingly interconnected global crises. The initiative aims to strengthen risk-informed decision-making by equipping UNDP Country Offices with advanced tools and training to manage complex and overlapping risks.
Operating in 170 countries and territories, including 60 classified as fragile by the OECD, UNDP will work closely with ASRA to co-design workshops on systemic risk assessment. The collaboration will introduce the Systemic Tool to Explore and Evaluate Risks (STEER), an open-access framework that enables teams to understand how different risks interact across systems, evaluate trade-offs, and develop more effective responses.
The partnership comes as climate change, armed conflict, natural disasters, and economic instability continue to create cascading crises that challenge traditional approaches to risk management. By integrating systemic risk analysis into its planning processes, UNDP aims to improve preparedness and strengthen resilience in vulnerable countries.
Knowledge gained through the initiative will contribute to the development of a new Systemic Risk Course within the UNDP Crisis Academy, scheduled to launch in the fourth quarter of 2026. The course will provide practical guidance for professionals from UN agencies, governments, and non-governmental organizations on applying systemic risk approaches in their work.
According to UNDP, the collaboration will enable country offices to move beyond responding to individual crises and instead identify the underlying connections between multiple risks, helping to prevent them from escalating into larger systemic challenges.
The partnership also marks the first application of the STEER framework within humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding contexts, demonstrating a growing commitment to innovative approaches that strengthen global resilience and improve crisis response capabilities.
