The world of disaster management is made up with millions upon billions of acronyms and ISDR is one that you might not have heard of yet. ISDR translates into the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction. From 1990 to 1999 the United Nations (UN), presented the world with the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction or IDNDR. That decade was to focus on mitigation issues and the main question everyone was asking is how can we as disaster managers strengthen our communities against the ever-growing effects of natural disasters? This made the international community shift the focus from response to mitigation. The ISDR was a direct result of the IDNDR, Geneva Mandate on disaster reduction, the Yokohama Strategy (1994), and the strategy "A Safer World in the 21st Century: Disaster and Risk Reduction" (1999).1

     The United Nations formed the ISDR to continue with the lessons learned from the IDNDR. The UN Secretary General and the General Assembly formed an Inter-Agency Task Force and appointed a Secretariat Director, Salvano Briceno, with special responsibilities to lead the ISDR. The UN General Assembly also wants the ISDR to continue international cooperation to reduce the impacts of El Nino and other climate variability, and to strengthen disaster reduction capacities through early warning. The ISDR states that its vision is:2

To enable all societies to become resilient to natural hazards and related technological and environmental disasters, in order to reduce environmental, human, economic and social losses.

The ISDR thinks it can achieve this vision by concentrating on the following four objectives:

•    Increasing public awareness;

•    Obtaining commitment from public authorities;

•    Stimulating interdisciplinary and inter-sectoral partnership and expanding risk reduction networking at all levels;

•    Improving further the scientific knowledge of causes of disasters and the effects of natural hazards and related technological and environmental disasters on societies.

Some examples of ISDR's current and past activities:

•    RADIUS – Risk Assessment Tools for Diagnosis of Urban Areas
against Seismic Disasters http://www.unisdr.org/unisdr/radiusindex.htm

•    Fire Globe: Global Fire Monitoring Center (GFMC)                              http://www.fire.uni-freiburg.de/

•    International Day for Disaster Reduction http://www.unisdr.org/unisdr/sasa02programme.htm

•    U.N./ISDR World Summit on Sustainable Development http://www.unisdr.org/unisdr/WSSD.htm

•    Reports focusing on the issues of "Women and Disaster Reduction" http://www.unisdr.org/unisdr/gender.htm

•    ISDR Inter-Agency Task Force Meetings           http://www.unisdr.org/unisdr/task.htm

•    Publication of "Living With Risk: A Global Review of Disaster Reduction Initiatives" http://www.unisdr.org/unisdr/Globalreport.htm

•    Working group on early warning            http://www.unisdr.org/unisdr/genwarning.htm

•    Newsletter on ISDR Highlights         http://www.unisdr.org/unisdr/Highlights2002.htm

 
Additional Websites for Information

1.    The Official Website for the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction http://www.unisdr.org/

2.    The Official Website for the United Nations                                            http://www.un.org/

3.    From the IDNDR to the ISDR http://www.unesco.org/science/earthsciences/disaster/disasterISDR.htm

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