Science integral to new global disaster risk reduction agreement

World leaders met last week in Sendai, Japan, to finalise a new international agreement to reduce the impact of natural disasters.


At the close of the UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (14-18 March 2015), world leaders released the Sendai Declaration in which they recognised the "increasing impact of disasters and their complexity in many parts of the world" and declared a "determination to enhance our efforts to strengthen disaster risk reduction to reduce disaster losses of lives and assets worldwide."
These efforts will be undertaken through a new framework agreement, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030, which supersedes the previous Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015.

Thanks in part to the efforts of the Science and Technology Major Group, coordinated by ICSU and with input from IAP and its member academies, the requirement for science and technology in disaster reduction programmes features prominently in the new agreement.

For example, the new Sendai Framework calls to: "Promote and improve dialogue and cooperation among scientific and technological communities, other relevant stakeholders and policymakers in order to facilitate a science-policy interface for effective decision-making in disaster risk management," as well as to: "Enhance the development and dissemination of science-based methodologies and tools to record and share disaster losses and relevant disaggregated data and statistics, as well as to strengthen disaster risk modelling, assessment, mapping, monitoring and multi-hazard early warning systems," and to "Strengthen technical and scientific capacity to capitalize on and consolidate existing knowledge, and to develop and apply methodologies and models to assess disaster risks, vulnerabilities and exposure to all hazards."

IAP was represented on the Science and Technology Major Group by two experts from the Science Council of Japan, Haruo Hayashi and Fumiko Kasuga and their report is available HERE. The Science and Technology Major Group organized many active events in Sendai, among which there was a Working Session 'Applying Science and Technology to Disaster Risk Reduction Decision-making'.

A report, including the input from the Science and Technology Major Group, is also available on the ICSU website page.

For more information, see: http://www.wcdrr.org/

Related activities in 2015:

Takashi Onishi, President, Science Council of Japan (SCJ) presented the Tokyo Action Agenda which was adopted at the Tokyo Conference on International Study for Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience, held in January 2015 at the University of Tokyo, Japan.

Watch the video on 'Applying Science and Technology to Disaster Risk Reduction Decision-making' summarizing the events in Tokyo, Japan, on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtdzaXPlG7U.

The Tokyo conference generated integrated inputs from the science and technology community for the UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Sendai, in particular the Tokyo Statement and a Tokyo Action Agenda. Follow the link HERE for more information on the Tokyo conference, co-organized by SCJ.