UNDRR News

Current estimates are that Hurricane Sandy may be the most expensive storm to have hit the United States since Hurricane Katrina with the final bill possibly reaching $50 billion. Last weekend, Margareta Wahlström, Chief of UNISDR, visited Hurricane Sandy affected areas in New York and New Jersey.

Development cannot be sustainable if it does not incorporate disaster risk reduction was a key message by Member States yesterday as the UN General Assembly's Second Committee (Economic and Financial Committee) began its two-day meeting on the issue of moving sustainable development forward.

UNISDR Chief, Margareta Wahlström, yesterday introduced the Secretary-General's Report on the Implementation of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction to Member States at the Economic and Financial Committee -- also known as the Second Committee - of the 67th session of the United Nations General Assembly.

Margareta Wahlström, the UN Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction, today said that the economic losses inflicted on the US and Caribbean island states by Hurricane Sandy underlined the growing threat posed by extreme natural hazards to the world economy.

There was a strong call for "the incorporation of disaster risk reduction in any future framework for sustainable development" during the UN General Assembly Thematic Debate on Disaster Risk Reduction yesterday which served as a major curtain raiser for Rio+20.

The cost of disasters were summed up last night in dollars lost, people displaced, lives lost as one would expect at a meeting hosted by Columbia University with the theme "From Sendai to Rio -- Cultivating a Disaster-Resilient Society for Sustainable Development."

The newly formed Group of Friends for Disaster Risk Reduction this week launched a powerful photo exhibition at the UN in New York to coincide with the opening of the so-called "informal-informal" negotiations leading up to the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development or Rio+20.

Japan is to hold an international conference to share the lessons learned from the Great East Japan Earthquake in the latter half of next year, according to a debate at the United Nations in New York on the latest report of the United Nations Secretary General on Implementation of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction.

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.”

Joseph Deiss, President of the General Assembly said DRR was crucial for protecting progress made towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and for achieving sustainable development, at the GA Thematic Debate on DRR on 9 February. Throughout the day, he and other participants called for the enhancement of data collection and the scaling-up of investments in education, better urban planning, the sharing of information and technology, and the raising of awareness, especially to ensure that specific disasters and the needs of victims, remained high on the international agenda long after they had dropped from the news headlines.