This year is pivotal for global action on climate change and strengthening of a framework to guide implementation of disaster risk management efforts worldwide.
As governments move closer to a new, universal climate change agreement in Paris later this year, world leaders are also charting a new disaster risk reduction framework this week in Sendai, Japan at the World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (WCDRR).
Margareta Wahlstrom, the head of the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) sees the importance of the meeting taking place in the region that was worst hit by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that led to the meltdown of Fukushima.
Wahlstrom said governments and civil society groups need to agree on a policy designed to mitigate disaster towards the achievement of sustainable development goals and address climate adaptation.
“Disaster risk is undermining the capacity of many countries to make the capital investment and social expenditures necessary to develop sustainably,” Wahlstrom said.
Earlier, a United Nations report revealed that with a US$6 billion annual investment in disaster risk reduction, up to US$360 billion could be saved.
The UN’s 2015 Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction (GAR15) added that economic losses from disasters are costing an average of US$250-300 billion every year.
In Sendai, all sectors aim to come up with a new framework to reduce disaster losses updating the Hyogo Framework for Action as countries build resilience their resilience.
Senator Loren Legarda, who authored the Philippine Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Act of 2010 and the Climate Change Law of 2009, said the Philippine delegation attending in Sendai will convey the lessons of past disasters and share best practices in the world forum, and help define both local and global actions to reduce disaster losses in the next decade or so.
Legarda stressed that the laws that have enacted provided the framework and commensurate funding to build resilience of Philippine communities through the mainstreaming of disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation in various phases of policy formulation, development plans, poverty reduction strategies and other development tools by all agencies of government.
“We may be vulnerable, but we are not helpless. We are working towards managing and reducing disaster risks to address our vulnerability. We are grateful for the world’s support especially in the aftermath of Super Typhoon Haiyan, which has actually strengthened the Philippine Government’s resolve to embrace the concept of building back better. We will do our share to make the post-2015 framework an effective DRR blueprint for the next decade,” Legarda said in a statement.
Risk from climate change on the rise
Rich and poor countries alike are increasingly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Experts said governments need to invest more in disaster risk reduction initiatives in order to protect its people from climate-related impacts.
Most Asian countries for one, are vulnerable to climate change and disaster with 78 percent of deaths in 2013, according to the UNISDR figures.
The world has witnessed the strongest typhoon ever that hit the Philippines in 2013 with more than 6,000 deaths and millions left homeless.
” Many of the disasters we are experiencing are no longer what we can call natural,” said Philippine Climate Change Commissioner Naderev Sano. ” But extreme events like Typhoon Haiyan need to be highlighted and we must continue to commemorate them so that we are able to construct a global collective consciousness about what is at stake if we fail to avert the climate crisis.”
Sano stressed that as governments build monuments and war memorials, highlighting and reminding the world about destructive events can “push people to act, and evoke a sense of moral awakening.”
” The climate negotiations have been going on for more than 20 years, and in many instances nations engaged in an exercise in futility. Perhaps the political solutions are unattainable because sovereign nations think as if the world has real boundaries when in fact these political boundaries are arbitrarily set by man. Climate change compels us to search for a moral force that can turn things around,” Sano lamented.
Paris must be seen as a stepping stone towards a new future, Sano said. “It must be viewed as a milestone that heralds a new global economic order, a new era of global cooperation, and a period of great empowerment of communities around the world,” Sano stressed.
Saleemul Huq, Director of the International Centre for Climate Change and adevelopment, said it is imperative for the gobal community to urgently curb emissions drastically or we will be reaching the limits of adaptation in the future.
” In terms of adaptation, what is emerging very fast is that all countries have to adapt. It used to be the thinking that only poor countries adapt, but now even rich countries know the impact of climate change is real and that it will hit them,” Huq said.
He said long-term adaptation strategies are much needed as adapting to the changing climate becomes a global issue.
Report by Imelda Abano
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