New York City, June 30th, 2026 — Accelerator for Systemic Risk Assessment (ASRA) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Crisis Bureau today announced a new strategic collaboration to strengthen how countries anticipate, assess and respond to increasingly interconnected global crises. 

The partnership will equip UNDP Country Offices with the tools and training needed to navigate systemic risks. UNDP operates in 170 countries and territories around the world – 60 of them classified as fragile by the OECD.

As part of the initiative, ASRA will work directly with UNDP at HQ and country office level to co-design workshops focused on systemic risk assessment and response. Central to this effort is the use and application of STEER (Systemic Tool to Explore and Evaluate Risks), a framework that helps teams identify how risks interact across systems, work through trade-offs and develop more effective responses. 

Lessons learned will shape a new Systemic Risk Course within the UNDP Crisis Academy, joining its existing recovery, prevention and crisis financing campuses. Expected to launch in Q4 2026, the course will equip practitioners across UN agencies, governments and NGOs with practical tools to apply systemic risk thinking to their work. 

A New Standard for Risk-Informed Decision-Making

Climate shocks, conflict, natural hazards and economic instability increasingly cascade and compound, exposing the limits of traditional risk assessment approaches focused on single hazards in isolation. 

This collaboration will help deepen systemic risk analysis within UNDP's planning cycle, complementing existing practices like context checks, blindspot analysis, and stress tests.

“Managing the interconnected risks of our time demands a fundamentally different approach, one that looks beyond individual shocks to understand how crises cascade and compound across systems," said Minako Manome, Senior Advisor, Research Analytics, Learning and Innovation, Crisis Bureau, UNDP. 

“This partnership with ASRA gives us the analytical foundation and practical tools to do exactly that. This means our country offices will be better equipped not only to anticipate what's coming, but to act decisively to reduce systemic risk at its source, breaking the cycles of compounding crises before they escalate.”

“Systemic risk approaches ask teams to work across silos they didn't build, bring in other voices to their planning processes, and think in different timescales. We’re excited to get this work underway and to learn from the country offices more about what works under the kind of pressure countries are facing today,” said Sarah Hendel-Blackford, Director of Systemic Risk Policy & Response at ASRA and project lead.

The partnership combines ASRA's systemic risk expertise with UNDP's global operational reach, advancing the “honest hope” approach that ASRA advocates for: acknowledging the gravity of today's polycrisis while building the tools and institutional capacity to navigate it. STEER is an open-access tool launched in 2025. The UNDP collaboration marks its first deployment in humanitarian and development, and peacebuilding contexts.

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About ASRA: ASRA (the Accelerator for Systemic Risk Assessment) aims to mainstream systemic risk assessment in policy and decision-making in response to current and future challenges. Hosted by the United Nations Foundation, this independent initiative advances the field and practice of systemic risk, and advocates for transformative action for the prosperity of all people, societies, species, and ecosystems. Learn more at www.asranetwork.org                  

About UNDP Crisis Bureau: The UNDP Crisis Bureau leads UNDP's crisis-related work globally, shaping risk analytics, promoting risk-informed programming, and building institutional capacity to respond to emerging crises across diverse development contexts.

Media contacts: 

• Aimee Brown, communications director, UNDP: aimee.brown@undp.org; +1 929 295 1536
• Olivia Ronsain, media consultant, ASRA: oliviaronsain@gmail.com; +336 222 821 08