UNDRR News

When unexpectedly heavy floods displaced more than a million people in southern Africa in 2007, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) began to meet annually to prepare for future occurrences, culminating in the creation of the SADC Regional Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction this month.

On 12 October, following the launch of its Disaster Risk Management Centre (DRMC), Cape Town joined 14 other cities around the world who have been awarded ‘Role Model City’ status by UNISDR, the UN office for disaster risk reduction.

South Africa’s Western Cape Provincial Government announced this week that it was increasing the budget allocation for safe schools from Rand 19 million to Rand 21 million and is taking steps to incorporate disaster risk reduction into the school curriculum.

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.

Last Friday over 50 African Ministers of the Environment attending the Fourth Special Session of the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN) adopted a declaration endorsing an ‘African Common Position’ as the basis for negotiations by African States at the next round of UN Climate Change negotiations (COP17) to be held in Durban, South Africa starting 17 November.

The Cancun-agreed Green Climate Fund which aims to provide US$100 billion per annum by 2020 to assist developing countries in financing adaptation, was a hot topic for discussion at today’s Fourth Special Session of the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN).

It is almost 20 years since the historic United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, held in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992, alerted Governments and citizens to critical human development issues and made specific demands of countries. Among the issues fuelling the discourse then, was the global sounding off on the depletion of world’s irreplaceable environmental resources.

At a time when over one billion dollars has been mobilized to provide humanitarian aid to 13 million people in the drought-stricken Horn of Africa, leaders have issued a strong call to “reform the system of emergency humanitarian response in the region, aiming to enhance resilience and promote long-term solutions.”

The Minister of State for Environment, Hon. Flavia Munaaba, launched a special joint session on disaster risk reduction during the Twenty-Ninth Greater Horn of Africa Climate Outlook Forum (GHACOF29). The aim of the special session is to move towards a “paradigm” shift when addressing climate change and risks for sustainable development in the Region.

The Southern Africa Development Community Disaster Risk Reduction Unit, GFDRR and UNISDR are conducting a disaster risk reduction stakeholders training workshop from 27-28 August 2011.