UNDRR News

UNISDR Chief Margareta Wahlström today participated in the launch of a National Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction in Bosnia and Herzegovina where over 400,000 people have been affected by floods and drought since the beginning of the century, taking a major toll on the country's economic development.

Italy has moved to empower its leaders to make better informed decisions to reduce the country's overall disaster risk.

In 2014 Modulo Sperimentale Elettromeccanico, Italy’s biggest public works project which began nine years ago is scheduled to begin reducing the flood risks faced by the population of Venice each year. Venice stretches across numerous islands in the Venice Lagoon along the Adriatic Sea. At high tide, parts of the city are flooded. Rising sea levels and groundwater pumping are causing the city to sink.

The Italian Government is urgently seeking EUR 40 billion over the next 15 years for flood prevention following a week of heavy rains that began on 10 November in the north and then wreaked havoc in Umbria and Tuscany in central Italy.

There are strong links between climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR) across several European countries according to the results of a survey presented by a Working Group on Climate Change Adaptation, chaired by Norway, at the European Forum on Disaster Risk Reduction in Croatia this week.

Details of the first-ever peer review of a country implementing the world's first agreement on disaster risk reduction, the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA), were presented today on the final day of the European Forum on Disaster Risk Reduction in Croatia.

The UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction, Margareta Wahlström, today urged other countries to follow the example of Croatia in recognising individual efforts to raise awareness of disaster risk in their own communities.

Experts from 27 European countries opened three days of discussions today in Croatia on a successor to the world's first global agreement on reducing disaster risk, the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015: Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities which expires in 2015.

The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) today welcomed Sweden's second largest city, Gothenburg, into the global "Making Cities Resilient" Campaign, a two-year old campaign to protect lives and reduce economic losses from disasters in urban settings.

The United Nations, European Commission and national authorities have launched a new project in the Western Balkans and Turkey that will reduce disaster risks and increase resilience to climate change.