IUCN: Global Platform 2009 'We must work with nature to keep ourselves safe'

From the 16-19 June 2009, The Second Session of the Global Platform on Disaster Risk Reduction will bring together a wide cross-section of the global disaster risk reduction community, including heads of state, senior ministers, UN agencies, NGOs, scientific and technical experts, and others. Under the slogan ‘invest today for a safer tomorrow’, a key focus at the event will be close scrutiny of the linkages between climate change adaptation, poverty and disaster risk reduction.

Human and economic losses from natural disasters are increasing at an alarming rate, according to the UN’s Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction launched in May 2009. Environmental destruction and climate change are the main reasons for the unprecedented increase in global disaster risk.

IUCN urges policy makers at the Platform to recognise and invest in sustainable ecosystem management as a cost-effective solution to reducing vulnerability to disasters. Healthy ecosystems, such as intact forests, wetlands, mangroves, and coral reefs are beneficial to local populations for the many livelihood benefits and products they provide: firewood, clean water, fibres, medicine and food. But they also act as natural buffers to hazard events, for instance through regulating flood waters, reducing landslides and avalanches, protecting coastlines from storm surges, and reducing the threats and impacts of drought, desertification and fire.

The services provided by ecosystems are not an additional luxury, but rather a basic necessity to disaster risk reduction. We must work with nature if we are to keep ourselves safe while facing increasingly hazardous times.