UNDRR News

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.

Ten years after the first Funds were established to support adaptation activities in developing countries, the world, and Africa in particular, is waiting to see if a deal can be brokered this weekend at the UN Climate Change Conference in Durban which would amount to a quantum leap in the finance available to reduce disaster risk in countries bearing the brunt of climate change.

While good news remains in short supply from the main climate change talks here in Durban, there is a growing sense that local government is taking the lead on mitigation and adaptation without waiting for their central governments to direct their efforts.

The President of the African Development Bank, Donald Kaberuka, told a major forum at the COP17 talks in Durban yesterday that ”failing to fund climate change is failing to fund poverty reduction.”

UNISDR Chief, Margareta Wahlström, told an exclusive gathering of 35 eminent scientists and politicians from around the world at the COP 17 in Durban that "there is a huge need to translate the best science on climate change into practical action."