Bridging science, policy, and communities: UNESCO’s cases to inclusive risk governance

Systemic and compounding risks—from earthquakes to climate extremes, pandemics—are revealing the limits of conventional governance. Global frameworks and regional diagnostics converge on a central insight: resilience depends on how risk is governed. Yet fragmented institutions, weak local capacities, and short-term incentives hinder progress. This Perspective synthesizes conceptual a few advances in risk governance and draws lessons from UNESCO’s experiences in Latin America, Türkiye, Libya, and Yemen. Across these contexts, interventions proved most effective when rooted in inclusive processes that built legitimacy, ownership, and institutional capacity. The analysis underscores that risk governance is not merely technical but inherently normative—shaped by values, equity, and power. Institutionalizing these dimensions is essential to navigate the accelerating and interconnected risks of the twenty-first century. UNESCO’s experiences offer insights into the adaptation of ­governance principles to a wide range of contexts and institutional settings.