Inflationary times?
- By Gareth Byatt
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- 02 Jun, 2021
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Inflation may be coming back. What risks does this present?

News sources such as The Financial Times, The Economist, The Guardian, The BBC and others are all covering the current state of affairs, describing how inflation is rising around the world as economies open and large government fiscal spending continues.
In Europe, Eurozone inflation is up as their economies reopen. In the UK, The Bank of England has warned in May about inflation risk. In the US, the Federal Reserve said in May that the sharpest rise in April in US consumer rices since 2008 is manageable.
Maybe the current inflationary signs are indeed transitory. But maybe they are signs of a long-term change. As The Economist described in February, if inflation persists, global economic policies could be forced to change.
In thinking about risks to investments and the financing of activities we undertake, it will pay to think carefully about this particular financial risk - to think through "ranges of outcomes" and to make an informed decision on how to proceed based on your financial risk appetite.
(Note: access to article links in The Economist and The Financial Times provided in this blog post may be restricted)

We held very interesting in-person discussions about how my Urban 2.0 framework and system can be used by cities and towns around the world, and also the release of the UNDRR Global Assessment Report, Special Report 2024, which I was delighted to contribute towards.
The municipality of Bordeaux is continuing to pursue some excellent work in urban resilience, which I will be profiling in due course...

Almost half of Small Island Developing States' (SIDS) populations reside in urban areas. Research into urban resilience and urban planning tends to focus on cities in large nations, and only a relatively small amount of specific research on SIDS cities currently exists. However, much of the general urban resilience research is applicable to SIDS, as long as context is considered.
This paper focuses on ways to implement measures that will foster resilient and dynamic cities in SIDS. Ensuring good policy action to build, maintain and continuously improve these cities is key to achieving sustainable development and resilient prosperity as set out in the Outcome Document of the Fourth International Conference for Small Island Developing States (SIDS4).

With growing challenges like climate change, debt burdens, and dwindling resources, they desperately need an actionable, doable, and ambitious roadmap for the next decade. 2024 is an important year for SIDS, with the SIDS4 conferencetaking place in May.
You can access details about the Forum on the Island Innovation website, here.


You can read edition #1 here. This first edition is an introduction to our work, containing a summary of some of the work we are undertaking, links to case studies and interviews with people about different aspects of avoiding disasters.


We held a very interesting in-person round table discussion with citizens about how disasters can be avoided.
The municipality of Bordeaux is pursuing some excellent resilience work, which I will be profiling in due course...

We reviewed approaches being taken to prevent hazards from turning into disasters, including examples and how innovation is helping countries, cities and communities prevent adverse fallouts from hazard events.
You can access the webinar and download all presentations here.


The December 2022 edition, which covers a wide variety of infrastructure-related topics, is available here...