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Displaying 15 of about 28 resultsGENEVA, 25 June 2013 - The Head of the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR), Margareta Wahlström, today predicted that the year 2013 will be a turning point in how governments around the world view the threat of floods in a new age of extreme weather events.
She said: "India, Nepal, Canada and many countries in Europe have experienced huge lo…
GENEVA, 21 May 2013 - Senior government officials from developing small island states and climate change experts have warned of a massive increase in human, economic and material losses in these countries if risk reduction measures are not taken urgently to mitigate the impacts of major hazards and climate change.
The warning was issued by repres…
RIO DE JANEIRO, 21 June 2012 - The UK's Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir John Beddington, used yesterday's UNISDR "Resilient Cities" event at Rio+20 to make an urgent appeal for scientists to use plain language if they are to play a larger role in policymaking on climate change.
"The next fifteen years are really problematic. We'll have a billion more peo…
NEW YORK, 11 October 2016 - The risk of dying in a hurricane or flood is lower today than it was 20 years ago, in most parts of the world. In Haiti, however, the toll of Hurricane Matthew has already passed 1,000, according to media reports.
The issue of how to reach countries and communities left behind and struggling to reduce their disaster mortalit…
CANCUN, Mexico, 25 May 2017 – Efforts to reduce disaster death tolls in Portugal, Iran, Brazil and Fiji have been honoured by an international award from the United Nations and Japan’s Nippon Foundation.
Issued at the 2017 Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction, the biennial Sasakawa Award recognised projects that have made a substantial contribut…
GENEVA, 19 April 2016 – The hundreds of deaths in Ecuador and the dozens of victims in Japan are a stark reminder of a basic fact about earthquakes: it is buildings, and not the shake itself, that claim most lives.
Collapsing homes and other infrastructure are to blame for the overwhelming majority of earthquake fatalities and injuries.
That makes str…
GENEVA, 20 May 2013 -- City mayors and municipal councilors from around the world today called on governments to ensure greater participation of local authorities in decision-making on mainstreaming disaster risk reduction in national policy and regulatory frameworks.
In consultations held a day before the opening of the Global Platform for Disaster Ri…
PANAMA, 7 May 2013 - A senior official from the Philippines town of San Francisco, which won the 2011 Sasakawa Award for Disaster Risk Reduction, has spent the last five days journeying across Central America to exchange information with local authorities on best practice to make urban settings safer from natural hazards.
Alfredo Arquillano, the Vice-M…
GENEVA, 13 July 2012 - Makati City in the Philippines has scooped an award for an innovative city-to-city learning partnership between Quito, the capital of Ecuador, and the Nepalese capital, Kathmandu.
The City-to-City Cooperation award was presented this week during the 25th anniversary meeting of CITYNET, the Asia-Pacific local authority network, in…
NEW YORK, 9 November 2012 - Development cannot be sustainable if it does not incorporate disaster risk reduction was a key message by Member States yesterday as the UN General Assembly's Second Committee (Economic and Financial Committee) began its two-day meeting on the issue of moving sustainable development forward.
In light of that key message, Mem…
GENEVA, 1 November 2011 - Role model cities from around the world are meeting for two days in Geneva to brainstorm the next phase of the campaign “Making Cities Resilient – My City is Getting Ready!” and have agreed on extending it to 2015.
The 17-month old campaign which now has over 900 members was praised by city representatives from India, the Phil…
NEW YORK, 15 January 2014 – “Disaster risk reduction should not be seen only as an imperative to protecting investments in development, but also as an opportunity for a transformative shift towards resilient development.”
This rousing statement from disaster-prone Bangladesh was one of several calls from governments for disaster and climate risk consid…
Non-governmental stakeholder groups, including the private sector and scientific organizations, have significantly increased their commitments to disaster risk reduction since 2019, according to a new report released by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR).
The report was launched at the second Stakeholder Forum, as part of the…
Press release 2012/02
302 human impact disasters claimed 29,782 lives; affected 206 million and inflicted record economic damages of $366 billion in 2011
Geneva – For two consecutive years the long-term disasters trend has been bucked by major earthquakes which claimed thousands of lives and affected millions in both 2010 and 2011, according to new st…
GENEVA, 23 May 2013 - City mayors today urged national and international leaders to trust and invest more at the local level to transform rapidly expanding urban areas into safe and resilient 21st century cities.
The 50-plus mayors from around the world who attended this week's 4th Global Platform were united in their message: the future of this planet…