UNDRR News

UNISDR Chief Margareta Wahlström today expressed concern at the great number of people who have lost their lives or have been affected by severe floods currently ravaging many countries across Asia.

As the international community gears up for the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development to be held in June next year, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is calling for any future framework for sustainable development to include a “clear prescription for incorporation of disaster and climate risk management.”

Under the slogan ‘Step Up for Disaster Risk Reduction’, UNISDR and the coalition Children in a Changing Climate - PLAN International, Save the Children, UNICEF and World Vision - will focus on children and young people on the International Day for Disaster Reduction (IDDR) on 13 October.

The head of the United Nation’s disaster risk reduction office, UNISDR, Margareta Wahlström, today strongly backed the NGO initiative “Never Again: A Charter to End Extreme Hunger.”

Over 40 officials from China, Africa and the United Nations are taking part in a three-day “Sino-African High-Level Seminar on Drought Risk Reduction” which is calling for drought risk reduction to be on the agenda of the next year’s Sino-African Summit for Development Cooperation.

In a further sign that Africa is mobilizing for its voice to be heard at the COP17 negotiations in Durban, the Mayors of major cities and chairmen of local governments across West Africa met this week in Lagos, Nigeria, to endorse and sign the African Mayors Climate Change Declaration.

At the opening of the General Debate of the 66th session of the UN General Assembly yesterday, incoming Assembly President Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser identified disaster prevention as one of the key issues that will “help frame our work this session”.

Six months after the Great East Japan Earthquake, Margareta Wahlström, the United Nations Disaster Risk Reduction Chief, has met with Mayor Jin Sato of Minami-Sanriku town which lost 558 people in the tragedy. The total population of the town was 17,300 before the disaster and 343 are still unaccounted for.

The UN-EU Partnerships Report for 2010 highlights the increasingly important role of disaster risk reduction in the joint activities of the United Nations and the European Union. The report was released following the opening of the 66th session of the General Assembly of the United Nations on 13 September.

Seismic risk has taken on a different meaning this week with the trial opening in Italy of six scientists charged with failing to predict the L’Aquila earthquake that killed 309 people in 2009 and left 70,000 people homeless. The scientists and one official are charged with manslaughter.