UNDRR News

The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) and the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) aim to reduce disaster losses in some of the world’s most hazard prone cities with the initial aid of a €6 million grant from the EU, over the next three years.

In the midst of one of the worst droughts to affect Central America in decades, the expanded Panama Canal is a model for how to adapt to climate change and reduce disaster risk.

Officials in Paris have closed two of the world’s most famous museums as the river Seine rose above its preliminary alert level of five metres yesterday evoking fears of a repeat of the catastrophic floods of 1910.

A major global network launches today at the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul to facilitate business engagement in crisis situations through pre-positioning supplies, meeting humanitarian needs and providing resources, knowledge and expertise to disaster prevention.

Authorities in Uganda’s capital city are prioritising infrastructure development, climate-smart capital investment procedures and emissions reduction in order to strengthen the city’s resilience to natural and man-made hazards.

One of the world’s most ambitious low-cost housing reconstruction programmes ever to be undertaken in a seismic zone is due to get underway this week following the first anniversary of the April 25 Nepal earthquake.

The head of the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, Mr. Robert Glasser, today marked the anniversary of the 7.8 magnitude earthquake which struck Nepal last year with a call for greater investment in resilient infrastructure if the death toll from future earthquakes is to be reduced.

The hundreds of deaths in Ecuador and the dozens of victims in Japan are a stark reminder of a basic fact about earthquakes: it is buildings, and not the shake itself, that claim most lives.

Trillions of dollars of new investment are expected to pour into in hazard-prone areas by 2030, dramatically increasing the global value of assets at risk. Factoring that into capital investments, supply chains and operations will be decisive for business resilience and the success of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction.

An international business group working to reduce the impact of natural and man-made hazards has pledged to ensure that the private sector plays its part in implementing the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction.