West African parliamentarians on disaster risk reduction: an instrument for achieving Millennium Development Goals

Consultative Meeting for West African Parliamentarians on Disaster Risk Reduction: An Instrument for Achieving Millennium Development Goal

In West Africa, the major disasters, which are common to all the countries, are floods and drought. Each year, floods and drought took people's lives, destroy people's limited livelihoods and property, leaving hundreds of thousand of people with hunger, even starvation. The 2009 unexpected heavy rain in West Africa has killed 193 people and affected 940,000 people across 12 countries.

The repetitive drought in the region also pushed millions of people into hunger and deprived even more of clean water. The impact of the floods and drought are still felt by tens of thousands of people in the region today. Among the disaster affected population, the poor is always hit most for very obvious reasons that they live in marginalized areas very prone to disasters, and hardly have any human and financial resources to address their vulnerability to the natural hazards that they expose to on daily basis. Disasters threaten national, regional and international efforts in achieving Millennium Development Goals.

The concept of disaster risk reduction is slowly taking its roots in African countries as it is regarded as a tool for reducing the impact of climate change. There has been a growing engagement in disaster risk reduction by different stakeholders, including national platforms, academic communities, and civil societies. Progress has been made, but very slow due to other competitive priorities in the region and the lack of understanding of disaster risk reduction among development planners and practitioners. Risk and vulnerability reduction have not yet become essential elements in development planning and programmes. The changing climate and wide spread poverty will further increase people's vulnerability to and risk of disasters in Africa if disaster risk reduction is failed to be systematically integrated into development sectors.

In 2009, UNISDR secretariat has been working very closely with African parliamentarians in making disaster risk reduction a tool for climate change adaptation. The initial impact has been very encouraging. African parliamentarians with increased knowledge of disaster risk reduction and climate change, have been active advocating the issue at national and regional levels. During the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, they have been active to have African voice heard in support of African Governments.

The overall goal is to make disaster risk reduction a national and community priority, in order to increase disaster resilience and protect development gains. Specifically, this objectives is to update the participants on the global progress and challenges in Disaster Risk Reduction as well as to update the participants on the progress and challenges of Disaster Risk Reduction in West Africa.

To build on the gains in disaster risk reduction, the National Parliament of Senegal and UNISDR will jointly organize a consultative meeting under the theme Disaster Risk Reduction: An Instrument for Achieving Millennium Development Goals in partnership with the Pan African Parliament, African Parliamentarian Network for Climate Risk Reduction in Dakar, Senegal on 1-2 June 2010.