A Public Symposium on Post Disaster
Recovery Lessons Learned was held on 19 January 2006 in
Kobe, Hyogo, Japan, co-organized by International
Recovery Platform (IRP) Secretariat, the Asian
Disaster Reduction Center (ADRC), Cabinet Office
of Japan, Hyogo Prefectural Government, United
Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations
Inter-Agency Secretariat of the International Strategy
for Disaster Reduction (UN/ISDR), and United Nations
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
(UN/OCHA) Kobe. The symposium attracted more than
180 participants from 21 countries throughout the
Asian-Pacific region and provided a unique opportunity
to learn from the past post disaster experiences
and to identify the challenges faced in the recovery
process of more recent major disasters, highlighting
in particular strategies to reduce potential risk
and reconstruct safer and better. Mr. Salvano Briceno,
UN/ISDR Director indicated that the challenge lies
in coordinating efforts amongst existing initiatives
and resources and recognized the IRP as a very
promising initiative to achieve this, and HFA (Hyogo
Framework for Action) is a tool for everybody at
any level for every day life. A signing ceremony
of Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Hyogo
and Sri Lanka was also conducted as a donation
for the victims of the Indian Ocean Tsunami Disaster.
The video of the symposium is available on IRP
website (http://recoveryplatform.org/).
For more
information on the Symposium and IRP, please contact
Mr. Murata (murata@recoveryplatform.org).
The
UNICEF East Asia Pacific Regional Office
carried out a review of the
participation of
children and young people in the response to
the emergency and issued a comprehensive publication
entitled “Children and Young People Responding
to the Tsunami” as an outcome of a “Child
and Youth Participation Forum and Fair” (Phuket,
12-16 November 2005), that brought together
over 20 young people from five tsunami affected
countries to share their experiences. Even
though most of the report relates to the involvement
of children in post disaster situations, several
sections of the publication are of high relevance
to disaster risk reduction and highlights encouraging
and innovative behaviours and reflections of
young people in disaster situations. Among
others, as part of the workshop on “Education:
Promoting Children’s Rights in Disaster
Situations”, the Thai NGO “Plan
Thailand” is helping children identify
the issues affecting them, their families and
environments, thereby raising children’s
disaster awareness and related emergency preparedness
concerns. In northern and eastern Thailand,
children have learned about forest conservation,
household sanitation and silk weaving as part
of local curricula and have suggested mangrove
conservation, natural resources management
and indigenous cultures as part of the subjects
in which they want to learn more. The latter
subject was raised because many of the Moken
Seafarin communities, due to the passing down
of traditional folk wisdom, had recognized
the impending signs of tsunami. An entire workshop
was dedicated to the issue of “Mitigating
Risk: Children’s Role in Disaster Preparedness” exploring
the importance and benefit of involving children
in mitigating the risks and effects of disasters.
Save the Children Vietnam presented an initiative
to teach children and adults how to spot the
threats that disasters pose to young people
and how to reduce the impending risks. Plan
International presented recent research findings
from tsunami-affected countries that reveal
young people’s strong desire to participate
in disaster preparedness plans.
For more information,
please contact: Joachim Theis at jtheis@unicef.org
Regional Implementation Meeting for
Asia and the Pacific for the
Fourteenth Session
of the Commission on Sustainable Development
(CSD), 19-20 January. ESCAP, in collaboration
with FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific,
UNDP Regional Centre in Bangkok, UNEP Regional
Office for Asia and the Pacific and UNIDO Regional
Office in Bangkok, hosted the Regional Implementation
Meeting for Asia and the Pacific for the Fourteenth
Session of the Commission on Sustainable Development
(CSD). The meeting met to review the progress
made as well as identify key challenges and
opportunities towards implementation of the
Johannesburg Plan of the Implementation of
the World Summit on Sustainable Development
(WSSD), in the areas of (a) Energy for sustainable
development; (b). Industrial development; (c)
Air pollution/atmosphere; and (c) Climate change.
Issues raised are similar to disaster risk
reduction issues raised in the HFA priority
4: "Reduce the underlying risk factor".
An extract from the climate change paragraph
states that "stresses from climate and
climate-related events and phenomena that could
be exacerbated by future climate change are
already being felt by most countries through
extreme weather and natural disasters in the
region". The text of the outcome of the
meeting was still being debated and was not
available but will be submitted to Geneva for
their record.
The 6th ASEAN Committee on Disaster Management took place on 27 January
2006 in Jakarta, Indonesia.
The UN/ISDR was invited by the ASEAN Secretariat
to brief the group on its recent and forthcoming
activities in the region and to identify areas
of potential cooperation in disaster risk reduction
with the ACDM Member Countries. The discussions
built on the ASEAN Agreement on Disaster Management
and Emergency Response recently adopted by
ASEAN and that clearly refers to the Hyogo
Framework for Action (HFA), urging Member States
to give priority to disaster risk reduction
and cooperate closely to mainstream disaster
risk reduction efforts into sustainable development
policies planning and programming at all levels.
The NDMOs were invited to cooperate even further
at the national and community levels to enhance
the participation of all relevant national
and local stakeholders in a mapping exercise
of existing actors, activities, legal and institutional
mechanisms in place for DRR so as to assist
the Government identify its own national priorities
in terms of DRR and formulate a comprehensive
strategic national action plan for DRR based
on cohesiveness and partnership-building among
relevant key national and local players. An
area of immediate cooperation will be the contribution
of ACDM Member Countries to the annual world
campaign on disaster risk reduction that focuses
this year on “Disaster Reduction begins
at School”. The UN/ISDR invited the participants
to provide contributions to this year’s
campaign and a possible joint celebration of
the ASEAN Day for Disaster Management and International
Day for Disaster Reduction is foreseen for
the first time next 11 October 2006 in Asia.
For more information, contact rosec@un.org.
The Second US Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning
System (IOTWS) Program Coordination
Workshop was attended by ISDR–BKK. The purpose
of the workshop was for the US IOTWS Program
Team and partners to focus on “national
and local level” donor coordination and
more strategic implementation of IOTWS-related
issues in support of the broader IOC/IOTWS
process. Specific discussions focused on: i.
National warning center and DM capacity building;
ii. National and local warning communications
systems; iii. Coastal community resilience
and hazard analysis; iv. Coastal disaster mitigation
policies and practices. Over 60 participants
attended; ISDR Asian Partnership on Disaster
Reduction was represented by UNOCHA and UN/ISDR.
UNESCO/IOC briefed participants on the IOC/IOTWS-II
meeting in Hyderabad and highlighted a strengthened
partnership and cooperation in this area between
the UN/ISDR and UNESCO/IOC. The $16.6 million
US IOTWS Program managed by USAID provides
regional support on development of the IOTWS,
and works in five focus countries including
Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and Maldives.
The outcome of the workshop will be made available
at www.iotws.org.
For more information, please
contact Orestes Anastasia at oanastasia@usaid.gov
The UN-ISDR-BKK participated in the Provention
Consortium Forum that was
held on 2-3 February
2006 for the first time outside Geneva, in
Bangkok, Thailand. The overall theme of the
Forum this year was focusing on “Incentives
for Reducing Risk” and considered the
political, economic, social and environmental
incentives needed for a more proactive ad preventive
approach to dealing with disaster risk and
vulnerability. To that end, the Forum was broken
down into various sessions covering a broad
spectrum of disaster management aspects, from
state responsibility and community action in
disaster risk reduction to risk transfer solutions
and the role of private sector in DRR, without
forgetting to what extent post disaster recovery
offers a real window of opportunity for disaster
reduction or how to turn learning and knowledge
on DRR into concrete action. The Deputy Director
ISDR Geneva, Helena Molin Valdes was invited
at the Forum as a panelist in Session 2 on “Government
incentives-and disincentives-for investing
in disaster reduction” and briefed the
group on the relevance of the Hyogo Framework
for Action (HFA) as an incentive to boost governments’ action
in implementing disaster risk reduction at
the national level. A comprehensive report
on the discussions will be available at www.proventionconsortium.org.
The UN Country Team for Thailand produced
a first draft of the UN
Development Assistance
Framework (UNDAF) for Thailand which, following
consultations with the Royal Government of
Thailand, was renamed as the “United
Nations Partnership Framework (UNPAF). The
document provides a comprehensive, collective
and integrated UN system response to the national
priorities and needs identified for Thailand
within the framework of the Millenium Development
Goals (MDGs). Among them, disaster risk reduction
was recognized as one of the priority areas
on which the RTG wishes to pay particular attention.
References to DRR and the HFA are integrated
as part of the Sections on “Environment
and Natural Resources” and “Local
Governance”. The UNPAF Thailand is a
good illustration of the integration of disaster
risk reduction within national development
planning. The proposed document will be submitted
for the RTG’s final approval. The UN/ISDR-BKK
will be working closely with the UN Country
Team to facilitate the effective implementation
of DRR at the national level over the coming
five years.
For more information, please contact
chung2@un.org or rosec@un.org
A national disaster risk management
framework document, entitled the “Roadmap
for a Safer Sri Lanka” was launched last
30 December 2005 in Colombo by the Disaster
Management Centre (DMC) of Sri Lanka and Ministry
of Disaster Management in collaboration with
UNDP Sri Lanka. The document is a ten-year
framework to lower the risks of future disasters
and to guide the management of these disasters
in Sri Lanka. Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickramanayake,
as the chief guest at the launch, welcomed
the document as a useful tool “to lead
to a more efficient and coordinated approach
to disaster risk management”. The Roadmap
includes seven components related to the preparation
of a national policy for disaster management,
reviewing and formalizing mandates, identifying
capacity development needs of agencies to perform
their disaster management functions. The roadmap
will also develop a vulnerability atlas for
Sri Lanka to enable development planning which
is sensitive to multiple hazards and associated
vulnerabilities. Other components include multi-hazard
early warning systems, preparedness and response
plans, integrating DRM into development, community-based
disaster management and public awareness, education
and training. A supplement to the road map
with detailed project proposals is under preparation
and expected by March 2006 , which shall include
references to the Hyogo Framework for Action
(HFA). For more information, please contact
ramraj.narasimhan@undp.org
The Indonesian Society for Disaster Management
(MPBI) in Jakarta, Indonesia,
is cooperating
very closely with ISDR-BKK and has carried
out, among other important activities in DRR,
the translation of the Hyogo Framework for
Action (HFA) and of the Beijing Declaration
in Bahasa as well as the production of a leaflet
in Bahasa inviting to different workshops on
the issue of MicroFinance to meet the objectives
of the 2005 Annual Campaign on Disaster Reduction.
MPBI has played a critical role in advancing
the discussions on the legislative reform in
Indonesia and in formulating a draft Disaster
Management Bill that recognizes disaster management
as part of basic human rights, in particular
the “Right to Safety”. Dr. Pujiono
contributed to produce a White Paper on “Disaster
Management in Indonesia in 2005 – A Briefing
Paper on Legislative Reform” in Bahasa
and translated it into English.
For more information,
please contact wenny@mpbi.org or hening_parlan@yahoo.com
The UN/ISDR-BKK was invited to take part
in ADPC’s
Regional Workshop on Community Based Disaster
Risk Management (CBDRM) Standards
for the South East Asia region (24-27 January)
led by Ian Davis. HFA was very much present
in the discussions, which mainly focused though
on brainstorming exercises on the relevance
to develop “standards” in disaster
management. The idea of investigating on low
/ no cost initiatives in disaster reduction
in the Asia and Pacific region came out of
the meeting, and the UN/ISDR-BKK was requested
to evaluate the possibility to take the leadership
in such an initiative.
At the request of the Resident Coordinator
in Papua New Guinea (PNG), the
Office for Coordination
of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) recently fielded
a Humanitarian Affairs Officer (HAO), Mr. Antonio
Massella, to Port Moresby to strengthen the
UN system’s disaster preparedness and
mitigation capacity. The HAO is currently housed
within the RC’s office and will work
closely with UN Country Team members to establish
a standing nationwide contingency plan to cover
various scenarios including natural and human-made
disasters. Building on OCHA’s comparative
advantage in the disaster preparedness arena,
regional expertise in public information, advocacy
and coordination will aim to raise awareness
of PNG’s profile within the region. Mapping
of vulnerabilities is another short term priority.
Strong interest exists among key stakeholders
for the establishment of a disaster management
team to ensure a coherent and cohesive response
in the event of a disaster. The HAO will be
responsible for providing secretariat and reporting
services to the team and RC as its head. Consultations
and discussions with key UN, government and
NGO colleagues will continue in the weeks ahead.”
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