Op Ed

Schools play a vital role in disaster risk reduction by educating students on risks in their communities, building preparedness, conducting drills, and fostering a culture of prevention.

We must continue to strengthen multi-hazard early warning systems in the Caribbean, through efforts such as the recently announced Climate Risk Early Warning Systems (CREWS) Caribbean 2.0 project.

Greater efforts to limit death and destruction from disasters will help us protect development progress and adapt to climate change.

When the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, toured the damage caused by the recent floods in Pakistan, he called the devastation “climate carnage.”

For a growing number of populations around the world, facing a future of more frequent and extreme disasters will only be possible if more funding is channelled towards adaptation and disaster risk reduction, writes Mami Mizutori.

The focus of this year’s IDDRR on 13 October is on a topic which has been pushed to the fore by the debates raging around the faltering response to planetary emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic an, the climate emergency.

We need to apply scientific knowledge to Disaster Risk Management and promote the creation of risk science in view of the permanent and growing increases in hazards, vulnerabilities and greater exposure.

By Mami Mizutori Climate-vulnerable nations know all too well that action on the climate emergency is just as important as a successful and affordable vaccine against COVID-19. This year’s U.N. climate talks may have been postponed, but no one can take

Some 95% of COVID-19 cases have come from urban areas. Pandemic preparedness in cities and towns is more urgent than ever for reducing disaster risk, particularly in challenging situations where disease outbreaks could coincide with an extreme weather

The health crisis stress-tests our ability to cooperate, learn and adapt in the face of deep uncertainties and rising risks. The new coronavirus, COVID-19, was declared a “public health emergency of international concern” by the World Health Organization