UNDRR News

Hundreds of legislators from around the world have gathered on the sidelines of the COP21 climate summit to focus on harnessing low carbon development to eradicate poverty and better protect people against disasters.

Delegates at the COP21 global climate summit have thrown the spotlight on resilience, a central issue in international efforts to reduce the risk of disasters and face up to growing environmental challenges.

Thirty-five cities and districts in one of the world’s most disaster-exposed countries, Indonesia, have come together to declare their commitment to reduce disaster risk following months of devastating forest fires which have released huge quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

The governments of Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Luxembourg and The Netherlands have agreed to give more than US$80 million to equip up to 80 countries with better climate risk early warning systems.

The leader of Kiribati, one of the Pacific island nations most vulnerable to rising sea levels, says the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction can help protect the existence of his threatened country.

Leaders of the world’s most climate fragile states have issued a call for full decarbonisation of the world economy, 100% renewable energy by 2050, and zero emissions by 2050 to keep the world on track for below 1.5°C warming and to reduce disaster risk.

The veteran campaigner and advocate, Senator Loren Legarda, has been recognized at the Paris UN Climate Conference, COP21, as a Global Champion for Resilience.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today called for a shift from disaster risk to resilience as he highlighted that “three out of four humanitarian disasters are now climate-related.”

Alasdair Hainsworth’s main claim to popular fame may be his decision to add the colour purple to the palette of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology to capture the possibility of temperatures reaching 50°C or more in the heatwave of 2013.

The Americas are paying a high price as one of the worst El Niños on record continues to strengthen. The World Meteorological Organization this week singled out “considerable concern” about the impact of El Niño on the Amazon basin in the context of long-term climate change.