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Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management Crisis and Emergency Management Newsletter Website |
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November
2004
Volume 7 - Number 2 |
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International Strategy for Disaster Reduction By Zina S Johnson Throughout the world, disasters caused by natural hazards such as hurricanes, floods, wildfires, drought, and earthquakes can have a heavy toll in terms of loss of human lives as well as the destruction of economic and social infrastructure. While natural hazards will continue to occur, human action can either increase or reduce the vulnerability of societies to these hazards and related technological and environmental disasters by focusing on socio-economic factors determining such vulnerability. This consideration has led the international community to launch the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR, 1990-1999) in order to increase awareness of the importance of disaster reduction. The International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR), as the successor arrangement to the IDNDR, is designed to respond to this need by proceeding from protection against hazards to the management of risk through the integration of risk reduction into sustainable development. The International Strategy for Disaster Reduction revolves around three major concepts for which the following definitions apply: Natural hazards, vulnerability, and risk. The expression “natural hazards and related technological and environmental disasters” describes situations where natural disasters have been compounded by the occurrence of technological and environmental damages.
The ISDR Vision is 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 can be achieved through public awareness, commitment by public authorities, multidisciplinary and inter-sectoral partnerships and networking, and scientific knowledge. The approach used to realize the ISDR vision should be coherent and initiatives undertaken under each objective should be based on the following modalities: advocacy; coordination; horizontal exchanges of information, knowledge and experiences; mainstreaming of disaster reduction in sustainable development and in national planning processes; regional and national capacity building with special emphasis on developing counties.
Implementation of the ISDR by the Inter-Agency Task Force and the Secretariat for the ISDR is chaired by the Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and composed of representatives of United Nations agencies, civil society, NGO community, and regional entities. Except for the United Nations agencies, members of the Task Force rotate every two years to ensure both continuity of work and increased participation of relevant entities representing regional and civil society interests. The Secretariat for the ISDR has been established as a flexible structure composed of a small number of substantive officers and managed by a Director under the direct authority of the Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs. The ISDR Secretariat is funded exclusively from voluntary contributions.
The World Conference On Disaster Reduction starting 18-22 January 2005 in Kobe and Hyogo, Japan will commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Great Hanshin-Awaji earthquake that resulted in thousands of fatalities. It was the first major earthquake in a large city in a developed country in recent history. Japan has a long history of living with geological hazards such as earthquakes and is one of the leading countries in disaster engineering and planning. |