3 March 2015
ESCAP Conference Says Asia-Pacific Must Build Resilience to Ensure Development Gains
story highlights

As the world's most disaster prone region, the Asia-Pacific must build resilience to meet its development goals, according to participants at the Regional Conference on Integrating Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) into Development Planning and Financing.

The Conference, hosted by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), brought together policymakers and experts one month ahead of the Third UN World Conference on DRR.

UNISDR UNESCAP18 February 2015: As the world’s most disaster prone region, the Asia-Pacific must build resilience to meet its development goals, according to participants at the Regional Conference on Integrating Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) into Development Planning and Financing. The Conference, hosted by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), brought together policymakers and experts one month ahead of the Third UN World Conference on DRR.

Delegates reflected that current policy focuses largely on relief and response measures, rather than on mainstreaming DRR into development and poverty reduction strategies, and emphasized the importance of multi-sectoral development planning to address disasters. They discussed challenges to implementing national policy, legal and institutional frameworks aimed at DRR, including budgetary constraints.

“ESCAP research shows that disasters are already rolling back sustainable development gains,” said Shamika Sirimanne, ESCAP. Observing that the Asia-Pacific region continues to experience natural disasters and rising economic losses, she stressed “it is high time natural disasters are considered as a serious threat to development and poverty reduction in Asia and the Pacific.”

According to ESCAP, participants agreed on three separate but interconnected processes: a national development plan with a strategic framework of disaster risk management (DRM); national guidelines for mainstreaming DRM across all development sectors; and national guidelines for mainstreaming DRM in specific sectors. China’s National DRR Centre and India’s National Institute of Disaster Management pledged to support capacity building for senior officials from planning and finance ministries on mainstreaming DRR into development planning and financing.

In advance of the Conference, the Japanese business community held a seminar to discuss the private sector’s role in a post-2015 DRR framework. The event underlined the need to incorporate disaster risk into corporate management, pointing to the positive societal benefits that follow when businesses maintain operations in the aftermath of a disaster. The event also launched the Japanese version of the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction’s (UNISDR) publication, ‘Private Sector Strengths Applied: Good Practices in Disaster Risk Reduction from Japan.’ The UNISDR Office in Japan and the Japanese member companies of the UNISDR Disaster Risk Reduction Private Sector Partnership (DRR-PSP) hosted the event, which took place in Tokyo, Japan, on 13 February 2015.

The Conference convened in Bangkok, Thailand, from 16-18 February 2015. The Third World Conference on DRR will be held in Sendai, Japan, from 14-18 March 2015, and is expected to adopt the successor to the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015 (HFA). [ESCAP Press Release] [UNISDR Press Release]


related events


related posts