Statements and messages

Ever increasing numbers of people are losing their homes and livelihoods in extreme weather events, such as those which displaced 30 million people last year. There has been a shocking escalation of world hunger to the point where over two billion people struggled to feed themselves adequately in 2020 and 811 million people face chronic hunger. As successive FAO reports have demonstrated, a doubling of disaster events over the last twenty years has had a huge impact on food production, especially in developing countries with strong dependence on the agricultural sector, not least through drought, pests, floods, storms, heatwaves, and rising sea levels.

International cooperation to developing countries to support their implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk is the focus of this year’s International Day. The Sendai Framework is the global blueprint adopted in 2015 by all UN Member States including the United Arab Emirates to reduce disaster losses and disaster risk. Enhancing international cooperation is one of the seven global targets of the Sendai Framework, and now is an excellent moment to reflect on this target when the world is trying to cope with planetary emergencies triggered by risk drivers such as global warming, the COVID-19 pandemic, drought and desertification, and increasing poverty in all parts of the globe.

Launch of the Centre of Excellence for Climate and Disaster Resilience, by WMO and UNDRR

Statement by SRSG Mizutori at the the session of the Meeting of the Parties to the UNECE Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes

Remarks by SRSG Mami Mizutori on the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan, following the take-over by the Taliban, focusing on the disaster risk reduction approach.

Remarks of SRSG Mizutori at the Asia-Pacific Regional Review Meeting on the Implementation of the Istanbul Programme of Action in Preparation for the Fifth United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries (UNLDC-5) in Session 2: Supporting our climate, recovery from the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic and building a resilient society against future shocks

Launch of WMO’s Report on the State of the Climate in Latin America and the Caribbean 2020

The Secretary-General's Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction's message on World Tsunami Awareness Day

On World Tsunami Awareness Day, we call on countries, international bodies, and civil society to increase understanding about the threat and share innovative approaches to reduce risks.

However rare they might be, tsunamis are the single most deadly of all sudden onset natural hazards. Millions of people live and work in tsunami-exposed communities across the world’s oceans.