The severe damage and impacts caused by extreme events in a changing climate will not only make the sustainable development goals difficult to achieve, but also erode the hard-won development gains of the past. This article reviews the major impacts and challenges of disaster and climate change risks on sustainable development, and summarizes the courses and linkages of disaster risk reduction (DRR), climate change adaptation (CCA), and sustainable development over the past 30 years. Our findings show that the conceptual development of DRR actions has gone through three general phases: disaster management in the 1990s, risk management in the 2000s, and resilient management and development in the 2010s. Gradually, CCA has been widely implemented to overcome the adverse effects of climate change. A framework is proposed for tackling climate change and disaster risks in the context of resilient, sustainable development, indicating that CCA is not a subset of DRR while they have similarities and differences in their scope and emphasis. It is crucial to transform governance mechanisms at different levels, so as to integrate CCA and DRR to reduce disaster and climate change risks, and achieve safe growth and a resilient future in the era of the Anthropocene. © 2023, The Author(s).