UNDRR News

Governments from over 50 countries in Africa will meet in Arusha, Tanzania from 13-15 February for the Fourth Africa Regional Platform on Disaster Risk Reduction (ARP) to address the challenges of building a disaster resilient society.

A new report published today by the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, UNISDR, lays bare the huge challenges faced by medium-sized African towns struggling to cope with the rising tide of disaster events, rural-urban migration and ecosystem destruction without early warning systems or budgets to reduce risk.

The global burden of disasters and armed violence which affect over 200 million people and result in over 500,000 deaths each year will be the focus of a forum on conflict and fragility which opens in Liberia tomorrow.

The top UN disaster risk reduction official on Friday urged African governments to acknowledge risk reduction as the first line of defense against the impacts of climate change.

UNISDR Parliamentary Champion for Disaster Risk Reduction, Abdou Sané, Member of Parliament from Senegal, recently welcomed the African Union's decision to establish an African Risk Capacity Secretariat - a specialized agency of the African Union which will help elaborate a legal agreement on a pooled risk insurance facility for droughts, floods, earthquakes and cyclones.

Yuwan Malakar has good reason to be focused and driven these days. The 30-year old environmental management major from Nepal has just had his first paper on climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR) published in one of the highly respected online journals of the Policy Studies Organization.

The March to May rainfall season in the Greater Horn of Africa is likely to result in "near normal to below normal rainfall" over much of the region, according to a statement today from the 30th Greater Horn of Africa Climate Outlook Forum (GHACOF30).

Government representatives, climatologists, agricultural experts, disaster risk managers and others gather in Kigali, Rwanda, for three days next week to share information on the possibility of a third consecutive year of drought in the Horn of Africa.

For the second year in a row, Valentine's Day on the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar has been marked by the arrival of a tropical cyclone. Cyclone Giovanna made landfall on the east coast shortly after midnight, bringing torrential rain and reported wind speeds of up to 231 km per hour.

In advance of critical rainfall forecasts for the Horn of Africa, the UN office for disaster risk reduction, UNISDR, today announced a partnership with the WMO-supported African Centre of Meteorological Applications for Development (ACMAD) to ensure rapid dissemination of weather updates to disaster managers.