The road to Sendai: Building resilience to disasters priority for Asia-Pacific region

Tuesday 24 February 2015 17:13
Building resilience to disasters is one of the mostpressing development challenges faced by Asia and the Pacific, the world’smost disaster prone region.

That was the clear message of senior policymakers and experts at the UN-ledRegional Conference on Integrating Disaster Risk Reduction into DevelopmentPlanning and Financing. In the context of promoting multi-sectoraldevelopment planning to address disasters and mainstream disaster riskreduction and building resilience into broader development planning andpoverty reduction strategies, the United Nations Economic and SocialCommission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) hosted the Conference from 16to 18 February.

Despite the rapid economic growth in the region, many developing countries,in particular smaller economies, are vulnerable to disasters. The impactsof disasters on the economy and people are expected to rise. Disastersimpact multiple socio-economic sectors. In this respect, there are needsfor multi-sectoral policy planning and implementation to address disastersand mainstream disaster risk reduction into broader development planning.

Meeting one month ahead of the Third UN World Conference on Disaster RiskReduction which will be held in Sendai, Japan, delegates expressed concernthat despite disaster risk management being a key component fordevelopment, the focus for policymakers continues to be on relief andresponse measures in the aftermath of a disaster.

“The Asia-Pacific region continues to be battered by natural disasters withever rising economic losses,” said Ms. Shamika Sirimanne, Director,Information and Communications Technology and Disaster Risk ReductionDivision. “ESCAP research shows that disasters are already rolling back

sustainable development gains. It is high time natural disasters areconsidered as a serious threat to development and poverty reduction in Asiaand the Pacific.”

A key constraint for many countries of the region who have announcednational policies, and developed the legal and institutional framework, isthat they remain constrained by limited budgetary allocation forincorporating disaster risk reduction measures into development planning,national budgets and mega investment projects.

Representatives from 17 developing countries that are especially vulnerableto disasters shared their experiences and good practices, identified gapsand barriers, and mapped out the strategies towards accelerating theprocess of incorporating disaster risk management to all sectors at all

levels of governments.

“The experience of the Government of Indonesia as one highly vulnerablecountry can be used as lessons learned and good practices for othergovernments and pave the way for promoting the mainstreaming of disasterrisk reduction in the planning and financing of development in theirrespective countries,” said Dr. Suprayoga Hadi, Deputy Minister for theDevelopment of Resources of Indonesia.

Experts and key stakeholders agreed on three separate but interconnectedprocesses that include a national development plan with a strategicframework of disaster risk management, national guidelines formainstreaming disaster risk management across all sectors of developmentand national guidelines for mainstreaming disaster risk management inspecific sectors.

The meeting concluded with the National Disaster Risk Reduction Centre ofChina and India’s National Institute of Disaster Management pledging theirsupport to serve as ESCAP’s Regional Network of Knowledge and InnovationCentres in Disaster Risk Reduction and to provide capacity developmenttraining for senior officials from planning and finance ministries on howto mainstream disaster risk reduction into development planning andfinancing.

About the Third UN World Conference on Disaster Risk ReductionThe Third UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction will be held inSendai, Japan from March 14-18. The World Conference will gather a diversegroup of Heads of States and government ministers who will adopt a newinternational framework for disaster risk reduction for the coming 15 yearsto succeed the Hyogo Framework for Action adopted in Kobe in 2005.