UNDRR News

Twenty Philippine Governors joined the Making Cities Resilient: My City Is Getting Ready! campaign at the Local Government Unit SUMMIT+3i on “Mainstreaming Climate Change Adaptation in the Philippines” from 4 to 6 November in Albay. Participants will discuss how climate change adaptation at local government level is critical for meeting the 2015 Millennium Development Goals (MDG).

The annual report of the Secretary General on "Implementation of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction" is now available in Arabic. The report gives an overview of the global trends in disasters and disaster risks, challenges and opportunities

Officials meeting at the Fourth Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction have approved a five-year regional roadmap to establish climate resilient disaster risk management systems by 2015 that will contribute to sustainable development at the regional, national and community levels.

People in the Asia-Pacific region are four times more likely to be affected by natural disasters than those in Africa and 25 times more likely than those in Europe or North America, says a UN report released at the Fourth Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (AMCDRR). The region generated one quarter of the world’s GDP, yet it accounted for 85 per cent of deaths and 38 per cent of global economic losses due to natural disasters over the last three decades.

Investors in partnership with UNISDR held an Entrepreneurial Finance Seminar on 25 October to provide Kenyan entrepreneurs with training on capital formation options in the over-the-counter market in the United States. > View full story

Earthquakes in Haiti, Chile and China have provided stark reminders of the increasing disaster risk in urban areas. Smaller and more frequent disasters in communities around the world attest to rising vulnerability and insufficient capacity to cope with disaster risk at the local level. The report of the Secretary General provides an overview of progress in the implementation of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction.

From promoting women’s empowerment in Indonesia, to teaching architects to build structures resilient against hurricanes and earthquakes, the Sasakawa Award for Disaster Reduction has helped fund innovative disaster reduction work by a range of professionals from geologists to engineers for the past 23 years. Nominations are now open for the 2011 Sasakawa Award to be given to an individual or organization for outstanding and internationally recognized action that contributes to building the resilience of nations and communities to disasters.

As a region hard hit by weather-related events, UNISDR is urging Asian government ministers meeting at the Fourth Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction this Monday to incorporate disaster risk reduction as part of their national policies to cope with climate change, and with it, more predicted floods, cyclones and drought.

The second round of government-led progress review on the implementation of the Hyogo Framework for Action is underway. More than fifty countries have already carried out the self-assessment. A number of regional bodies have also started to conduct an assessment of their progress in disaster risk reduction. The results of the country and regional assessments received before the end of 2010 will be presented in the 2011 Global Assessment Report. > View full story

A mentoring programme created by UNISDR and the Stockholm Environment Institute trained its first batch of young researchers, most in the mid-20s to mid-30s, in response to a request from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for more peer-reviewed literature by authors from developing countries. > View full story