World Heading for Catastrophe over Natural Disasters, Risk Expert Warns
Part 2 –Importance of Disaster Risk Reduction at Core Planning Stage
Mr Glasser, the head of UN Disaster Risk Reduction,asked for more money and resources to be ploughed into ‘Disaster Risk Reduction’ at the core planning stage. Else the rise in number of simultaneous disasters is bound to happen.
As per him, the internationally agreed ‘Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction’ remains the best option to reduce human and financial loss.
In Bangladesh, which regularly experiences devastating floods, thousands of lives had been saved over recent decades because of money invested in infrastructure, storm shelters and early warning systems. In Nepal a school safety program retrofitted 350-400 schools to make them earthquake resistant and not one was damaged in the 2015 earthquake.Significantly more than one third of the deaths from natural disasters in the world were in Nepal due to the earthquake that year.
Mr Glasser pointed out that the above highlights the importance of including Disaster Risk Reduction in core planning. Only then can we aim to achieve a development outcome like improving literacy or the education of girls in the poorer disaster prone countries.
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