Sendai Framework critical to reshaping aid

ISTANBUL, Turkey, 23 May 2016 - On the first day of the World Humanitarian Summit (WHS), the head of the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, Mr. Robert Glasser, warned that risk reduction efforts would struggle to have impact if greenhouse gas emissions are not radically scaled down.

Speaking to the media, Mr. Glasser said: “I am 100% sure that all our efforts to reduce disaster risk will be overwhelmed if we do not make serious progress on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The consequences will be deadly including impacts on disease outbreaks, storm surges, and drought which can contribute to conflict.”

Mr. Glasser who is also the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction, said: “I am an optimist and I believe that the Paris Agreement is the start we need to get climate change more under control but implementation needs to start now and we need to see a dramatic scaling up of our efforts.”

Asked what can be done to reduce the scale of humanitarian needs, Mr. Glasser said governments should focus on three things.

First, governments need to understand what their losses are from disaster events and this means establishing disaster loss data bases which can guide investments in resilient infrastructure.

Second, nobody should plan for the future using only the past as a guide. Given underlying drivers of risk such as climate change, population growth and urbanization, the world needs realistic projections of disaster losses in the future.

“The third thing is that governments and the private sector need to act on that information and factor it into their planning and that means things like not building a hospital in a flood zone. Disaster risk reduction must become a key part of economic planning.”

Mr. Glasser also emphasized that the implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction is critical to any effort to reshape aid, it has specific targets to reduce mortality, numbers of persons affected, damage to critical infrastructure and economic losses.

He said a key target which governments attending the World Humanitarian Summit could commit to was that by 2020 they would have plans in place at national and local level to implement the Sendai Framework.

Earlier, at the opening ceremony, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said: “We are all here because global humanitarian action is unprecedentedly strained.”

He recalled: “I proposed this Summit four years ago out of concern for rising humanitarian needs and declining political will. Today, the urgency has only grown.”

The United Nations estimates that a record number of people – 125 million – currently need aid to survive. More people have been forced from their homes than at any time since the end of the Second World War including 19.2 million last year as a result of disasters caused by natural hazards such as floods, storms, drought and earthquakes.