GENEVA—The global disaster risk reduction conference ended Friday with 1,800 participants from 165 nations calling on political leaders around the world to halve the number of deaths from natural hazards by 2015.
The participants in the four-day Second Session of the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction said they want their governments to implement measures to drastically bring down the mortality rate in disasters and minimize economic losses.
In 2008 alone, 250,000 people died due to disasters that affected 200 million people, said Jerry Velasquez, the regional coordinator for the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) in the Asia-Pacific region.
The total economic cost last year was US$180 billion, he said.
The Global Platform is the main biennial forum on reducing deaths and other risks associated with disasters, bringing together a wide cross-section of the worldwide disaster risk reduction community, including heads of state, senior ministers, UN agencies, non government organizations, scientific and technical experts, and others.
Under the slogan “Invest today for a safer tomorrow,” the event focused on the linkages between climate change adaptation, poverty and disaster risk reduction.
The delegates, including heads of state, scientists, academicians, environmental advocates and parliamentarians, met for four days here to craft a global strategy to lessen risks and vulnerabilities of countries when disasters strike.
Sen. Loren Legarda attended the Global Platform as a champion disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation in the Asia Pacific region.
Legarda delivered an impassioned speech at the start of the session in which she called for a new development paradigm that would usher in a safer environment amid the worsening effects of global warming on societies and economies.
Describing disaster risk reduction as a moral imperative and social responsibility, she called for a new vision and approach to development.
She pointed out that the current model of economic development championed by the West had failed, and should be replaced by a new politics based on accountable leadership, good governance and real compassion for humanity.
For instance, she called for the kind of development that would put an end to over-industrialization and ecosystem and cultural destruction, and for the construction of schools, bridges, hospitals and housing facilities based on disaster risk assessment to withstand earthquakes, floods and tropical cyclones.
In the Chair’s Summary delivered at the close of the four-day Global Platform, John Holmes, UN Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and chair of the Second Session, said specific targets were also identified, reflecting the key issues deliberated during the conference as catalysts for cutting deaths and economic losses brought on by disasters, to wit:
• By 2010, establishment of clear national and international financial commitments to disaster risk reduction (DRR), for example to allocate a minimum of 10 percent of all humanitarian and reconstruction funding, at least 1 percent of development funding, and at least 30 percent of climate change adaptation funding to DRR.
• By 2011, a global structural evaluation of all schools and hospitals and by 2015 firm action plans for safer schools and hospitals developed and implemented in all disaster prone countries with DRR included in all school curricula by the same year.
• By 2015, all major cities in disaster prone areas to include and enforce DRR measures in their building and land use codes.
“Achieving targets like these is challenging but it can be done," Said Margareta Wahlstrom, UN Assistant Secretary General and Special Representative for DRR. “It is clear that participants are leaving the Global Platform today with high expectations. The targets specified this morning are simply a first step – delivery must follow rapidly.”
She also welcomed a joint statement from the six members of the ISDR management oversight board, delivered during the closing ceremony, inviting Governments to make 2010 “the year of investment and action.’”
Velasquez said that the Global Platform succeeded somehow in strengthening the Hyogo Framework for Action, a global blueprint adopted in Kobe, Japan to substantially reduce losses and prevent disasters after the 2005 tsunami in the Indian Ocean.
“The difference is that in the first global platform session in 2007, there were no targets, no commitments. Implementing DRR actions was purely voluntary. Now, they are saying that it’s time to come out with targets, concrete mechanisms such as debt swaps, safe schools and hospitals,” said Velasquez.
The Philippines and the region of the Asia-Pacific as a whole bore much of the brunt of disasters last year, accounting for more than 80 percent of the global loss of life.
The Philippines is also vulnerable to a rise in sea level, stronger and more frequent storms and other disasters associated with climate change.
Being an archipelago, a one-meter rise in the water level in the Philippines could submerge 129,000 hectares of land in 28 of the 80 provinces in the country.
Climate change or global warming, which refers to the increase in the average temperature of the air and oceans since the mid-20th century, is characterized by rising sea levels and increasing extreme weather events (more/less rains).
Comments
Post a Comment