Asia NGO consultative meeting on disaster risk reduction

This meeting was facilitated by a Steering Committee that includes the Asia Disaster Risk Reduction Network (ADRRN), Oxfam Hong Kong, and the UNDP Special Unit for South-South Cooperation and UN/ISDR. The meeting was expected to serve as a platform for South East Asia and South Asia NGOs to discuss potential for collaboration around key thematic areas, and develop a regional framework allowing NGOs and civil society organizations to provide inputs to the Global Network.

A total of 33 participants from different backgrounds attended this two-day consultative meeting. Climate change clearly emerged as the group's major concern among a number of issues that included urbanization and local governance. The group decided against forming an additional DRR network at this stage. Instead, it was agreed that the Steering Committee would be expanded to include representatives from Duryog Nivaran - a South Asia regional network, one representative from South Asia and one from South East Asia.

The expanded Steering Committee will lead in taking the recommendations of the meeting forward. In particular, the new and expanded steering committee will work towards establishing a ‘Regional Advisory Committee’ for networks and organisations participating in this two-day consultative meeting. One of the functions of the Steering Committee will be to write the Terms of Reference for the emerging regional coordination mechanism, conduct a regional mapping of NGOs and identify immediate and appropriate actions for the Regional Advisory Committee.