News and announcements

At a time when over 50 percent of humanity lives in urban areas, UN-Habitat’s new 'State of the World’s Cities Report 2008/9: Harmonious Cities' sets out to determine which cities are in danger and which communities might well be drowned out....

'Papua New Guinea requires an effective, integrated and people-focused early warning system. A needs analysis, with input from all stakeholders, will identify any priorities for improvement of this system.' said SOPAC's Michael Bronte Grapentin....

'We need greater investment in the development of models to aid decision-making, reduce uncertainty and augment costly monitoring programmes' said Corinne Wallace, researcher at UNU and one of the authors of a new policy brief....

Every year, hundreds of thousands of people are forced to flee their homes to escape war or natural disasters. Displaced within their own country and having lost loved ones, livelihoods and belongings, they face terrible hardships....

'Even before this latest series of hurricanes and tropical storms, Haiti was particularly vulnerable to extreme weather,' said John Holmes, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs....

'The Haitian Government and all donors need to push forward on the broader development agenda, work together on recovery and reconstruction efforts, and foster a new vision for medium-term growth and development' Zoellick said...

'The London School of Economics did a research of 141 disasters worldwide and for every disaster, out of five people who died, four of them were women,' says Lorena Aguilar, IUCN Global Senior Gender Adviser....

The international research programme is designed to address the gaps in the knowledge and methods that are preventing the effective application of science to averting disasters and reducing risk...