• What is your general assessment of the value of this on-line discusssion, what conclusions did youdraw out of this dialogue?
• In your opinion, what should be the next concrete steps to improve the substance of the Framework? What should be the concrete steps to achieve global endorsement of a framework for disaster reduction and commitment to progress on agreed benckmarks/targets (is the process of MDGs (see http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/) a good example to follow?). Brian Doswell, in his contribution of 22nd of September, has raised excellent questions related to this topic, please reread his message when replying to this question.
• As some of you might recall, the first World Conference on Natural Disaster Reduction was held in Yokohama, Japan in 1994. At that time UN member States in partnership with international organizations, NGOs, the scientific and business community, adopted the Yokohama Strategy (http://www.unisdr.org/unisdr/yokostrategy.htm) and Plan of Action, to guide Natural Disaster Prevention, Preparedness and Mitigation over the last ten years. This Strategy and Plan of Action are currently being reviewed (http://www.unisdr.org/unisdr/GA2001.htm) to identify achievements and gaps. From this review, a renewed Programme of Action is expected to be adopted at the second World Conference on Disaster Reduction, tentatively planned for 2005 in Kobe-Hyogo, Japan.
  The question is then how should the framework exercise link with the global review of the Yokohama Strategy and the second World Conference on Disaster Reduction?
• What should be the process of engaging the donors in supporting disaster reduction under this Framework? How to get donors to commit to this Framework? How should their role be reflected in the Framework? (See the example of MDGs)
• Many of you had suggested closer linkages between this Framework and the MDGs, How can this be concretely achieved?
• If you are aware of any major events where this framework can be discussed that will help the process of reaching global agreement and commitment, please let us know.

See draft disaster risk reduction framework.

The last days of this on-line conference will be devoted to a wrap up exercise. It should capture the main outcomes of the dialogue, and summarize the advances made on the framework and its development process, paving the way for work in the coming months.