28 February 2011: The UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UN/ISDR) has announced that Morocco is to develop a National Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) to support policies for building resilience to disasters. A roadmap for creating Morocco’s National Platform was developed at an intra-ministerial meeting in early February.

The meeting was attended by government officials, as well as representatives from the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the UN/ISDR office in the Arab States. The event was funded by the World Bank Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery’s contribution to UN/ISDR. The Department of Environment at the Moroccan Ministry of Energy, Water, Mines and Environment will be the focal point for activities, collaborating and coordinating across many ministries to form the multi-stakeholder National Platform for DRR.

According to UN/ISDR, Morocco is one of the Arab region’s most hazard-prone countries, and it faces the danger of sea-level rise and desertification as a result of climate change. UN/ISDR has been providing support to the Department of Environment to establish a national disaster loss database to assess the costs of disasters borne by Moroccan households. In addition, the World Bank is undertaking a probabilistic risk assessment to determine how a complex system of risk assessment can contribute to ensure more safety in Morocco. [UN/ISDR Press Release]