UNDRR News

The Secretary General of the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC) has called for strong regional commitment towards development of a disaster risk reduction strategy to strengthen the resilience of nations and individuals to natural hazards.

Heavy rains caused massive flooding in Jakarta yesterday bringing the city to a halt with many government offices and businesses forced to close because employees could not get to work.

The largest chain of shopping malls in the Philippines, SM Prime Holdings, has taken its leadership in disaster resilience to yet another level by becoming the newest member of the UNISDR Private Sector Advisory Group (PSAG).

In 2014 Modulo Sperimentale Elettromeccanico, Italy’s biggest public works project which began nine years ago is scheduled to begin reducing the flood risks faced by the population of Venice each year. Venice stretches across numerous islands in the Venice Lagoon along the Adriatic Sea. At high tide, parts of the city are flooded. Rising sea levels and groundwater pumping are causing the city to sink.

Asia suffers from more disasters than any place on earth. While the number of people killed by disasters in the region have decreased in 2012, the economic impact remains a major cause of concern. The 'Inside Story', an Aljazeera English program, looked at the economic implications of disasters and what can be done to better protect people from these recurrent disasters.

The Italian Government is urgently seeking EUR 40 billion over the next 15 years for flood prevention following a week of heavy rains that began on 10 November in the north and then wreaked havoc in Umbria and Tuscany in central Italy.

She was the first woman to take office as a Mayor in Mauritania and her stature as a champion for resilience and disaster risk reduction in Africa was confirmed last week when she was elected President of the Women’s Federation of Mayors in Africa.

The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) today announced that it is accepting nominations for the 2013 UN Sasakawa Award for Disaster Risk Reduction, a prestigious award made possible by an endowment from the Nippon Foundation of Japan.

An early view of disaster trends in 2012 across Asia, the world's most disaster-prone region, shows that mortality from flood events continues to decline but economic losses remain a major cause of concern.

The UN General Assembly confirmed that Japan will host the Third World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in 2015 when it passed its annual resolution yesterday on the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction.