UN Secretary-General highlights key importance of disaster risk reduction
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Thursday, April 19, 2012
On April 12, Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser, President of the United Nations General Assembly, told the Assembly during a thematic debate on disaster risk reduction that “Disaster risk reduction must be incorporated in all sustainable development strategies,” noting that “the risk of losing wealth to natural disasters is outpacing wealth creation.” He added, “Addressing disaster risk reduction is therefore inseparable from the broader sustainable development agenda.”
The debate before the UN General Assembly is part of the build-up to the forthcoming UN Global Compact Rio+20 Corporate Sustainability Forum, to be held in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil from June 15-18, 2012. Mr. Al-Nasser noted that “Strengthening the resilience of vulnerable communities and building a sustainable future is one of the greatest challenges faced by the international community. Rio+20 is an opportunity of a generation.”
In a message to the participants in the debate, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon noted that “disasters had the tendency to exacerbate poverty and undermine development planning, particularly poverty reduction strategies. When we reduce disaster risk, we increase our chances of achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and building a truly sustainable world for all.” He added, “You have voiced your conviction that disaster risk reduction should not be a standalone issue. You have identified how disaster risk reduction must be integrated into the development agenda. The challenge is to translate this understanding into action.” The Secretary-General added that “progress in this arena requires engagement by governments, civil society and the private sector to ensure that disaster risk reduction is an integral part of all project from planning to implementation. The evidence for investing in disaster risk reduction is clear. The political momentum is growing. Let us continue to be ambitious. Let us work for action in Rio and beyond.”
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While the debate was taking place at the UN General Assembly Columbia University hosted a meeting with the theme “From Sendai to Rio – Challenging a Disaster-Resilient Society for Sustainable Development.” The UNISDR reported that Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute, spoke to the “unexpected ways in which disasters can affect our lives driven by new forces which we are not ready for.” He went on to add that, “We are living in the anthropocene era of a crowded planet where disasters are a booming business, food insecurity and high food prices are rampant, and technological hazards are on the rise in unpredictable ways as evidenced by the consequences for Sendai, Japan as a result of the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.”
One of the Issue Briefs for Rio+20 is on Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience Building.
The Friends of Disaster Risk Reduction, a group of countries within the UNISDR, also issued “a strong call for the incorporation of disaster risk reduction in any future framework for sustainable development.” Australia’s Foreign Minister, Bob Carr, urged “increased investment in disaster risk reduction and to build the resilience of the most vulnerable communities.”
Japan’s Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs, Joe Nakono, announced the intentions of Japan to “bring the outcome of its High-Level International Conference on Large-Scale Natural Disasters in July [2012] to the Third UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in 2015.”