What are your expectations from the consultation process towards the development of the Post-2015 Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction?
  • This a wonderful initiative to professionally discuss and come up with solutions on how to ease human suffering. My expectation is that the consultation will endeavor to discuss livelihood related disasters and vice versa with an aim of providing solutions. This will help save lives and billions of dollars spent to respond to disasters that could have been prevented if livelihoods were protected.
  • Disasters are of two categories: (i) man made and (ii) natural disasters. There exists major difference between these two. On my side, it is necessary to study and learn about both of them in order to widen my knowledge on how each one occurs and therefore to enable me to have various ways of looking for safety measures.

    My expectation is to gain more knowledge about cause, nature and extent of disasters from all participants in this dialogue so that I can compare with what I have witnessed in my country. This is the same to all measures which have been taken against disasters in my fellow’s country compared to mine.
  • Alllow me thank for those who are working on such a great organization. UNISDR previously organised such type of online dialogues and I have always found such initiatives very usefull because everybody can freely express and share their ideas and benefit from each others' experiences. My first impression on that dialogue is by exchanging experiences on how we are implementing HFA and/or what are the shortfalls will create a momentum for Post HFA activities. By this initiative we must also evaluate to what extent we were able to put into practice the HFA actions. So I am willing to learn about other colleagues' experiences on HFA and once again would like to thank and would like to wish sucess to facilitators.

    With my best regards.

    Kerem KUTERDEM, Geologist
    AFAD- TURKEY
  • I hope that these contributions help to form the DRR actions framework for all countries in the world. I am pleased to be a part of such a study.
  • I am joining from Istanbul, Turkey as Disaster Manager Consultant in a private company, mostly working on Community based DRR topics for ISMEP project (İstanbul Siesmic Risk Mitigation and Emergency Preparedness Project) The company is one of the contractor companies on community based DRR consultancy of ISMEP since 2009. The area is mostly community trainings, awareness compaigns, İnternational Conference Organizations, Theater Play for primary school children etc. Besides that we are giving consultance services for İstanbul Disaster and Emergency Management Directorate. Mr. Ozan Cilgin is at the online dialogues session and he is working for the same Company, Beyaz Gemi Ltd. We would like to share our experiences, on demand, with you all. Thank you.
  • I’m excited to see level of participation, but I hope that organizations and individuals working outside of DRR, such as sustainable development, humanitarian relief, climate change, biodiversity and conservation, will also participate. I believe one of the key opportunities we have is to integrate or mainstream DRR into these related issues.

    Three issues I’d like to discuss in subsequent rounds, and these comments echo some of the earlier posts --

    • How can we integrate DRR into the broad frameworks of the millennium development goals and sustainable development, climate change adaptation, post-disaster recovery and humanitarian relief efforts.

    • More focus on restoration of ecosystems and the services and benefits they provide. Thinking about ecosystems helps bridge the divide between rural and urban. For example, protecting and restoring watersheds spans rural to urban geographies and provides important short and long-term co-benefits, such as:
    o mitigate the impact of floods and landslides;
    o improve food security;
    o provide for rural and urban livelihoods.

    • Community-based DRR: providing tools, training and funding; case studies and model programs; engaging stakeholders and membership-based organizations, including residents of informal settlements.

    I just received my master’s degree in urban planning from University of California, Los Angeles, and my area of interest is urban ecosystems and informal settlements.

    Bradley Cleveland
    Los Angeles, CA USA
  • Hi Comrades,
    This is Arshad Khan Khalafzai, I hold a maters degree in Disaster & Emergency Management from York University, Toronto, Canada, and am DRR Consultant, presently working on a 6 months DRR/ Emergency Preparedness and Response Planning (EPRP) Project of a UN agency UNICEF. I have expertise in DRR and Emergency Management, would love to exchange views and ideas and share information on DRR. I look forward to learn from all of you. I am glad to be part of the dialogue that is initiated by UNISDR.
    Best,
    Arshad Khan Khalafzai
    DRR/ Emergency Response Consultant
  • Hola, de Perú, trabajo en el Ministerio de Cultura y mi preocupación actual es la conservación de las expresiones arquitectónicas de nuestro patrimonio cultural frente a los desastres naturales, sin embargo me interesa la gestión de riesgos en general. Estuve en la zona de atención de desastres por el terremoto de Ica-Perú 2007. En esta oportunidad espero aprender, aportar ideas e intercambiar experiencias sobre el mejoramiento de la resilencia de nuestras ciudades y las acciones de prevención para salvaguarda del patrimonio cultural.
  • My expectation from this consultation is - there will be wide participation of stakeholders in this consultation process. But I believe following points need to consider for inclusive participation
    1. Some important stakeholders may not reach by this consultation, they are mainly the grassroots communities - for whom we are discussing. So throughout the consultation process we need to check whether community voices are coming and if not adequately coming, then we need to devise the consultation process to reach them. This also needs an eye on social - cultural represetation in the discussion.
    2. I expect that there will be active participation by Non-government actors; but I suggest we need equal encouragement for Government stakeholders. It is just my assumption that there might be some reluctantancy to express views informally through this consultation process.
    3. Similarly we might need to watch whether views are coming from wider geographical areas - Asia, Africa, Latin America, so on. We need to encourage them if there are less representations from certain regions
    4. The participation of stakholders is also improtant from all Themetic areas - working on Landslides, Floods, Earthquake, Epidemics, Policy, Technology, Finance, Institution, etc
    5. I expect that this initial discussion will help set a plateform for the subsequent discussions or consultations. This initial discussion might guide us to form themetic groups, or regional groups, or so on, for more focussed discussions in the next dicussions or consultations.
    6. I expect, at the end of the discussion of each specific question, the facilitator will summarise, synthesise and share the outcomes.

    Gehendra B. Gurung
    Practical Action Nepal
  • Agradezco por la amplitud del tema y la inclusión que se ha dado a muchas personas en cuanto al manejo de RRD

    En vista a lo que ha sucedido en los ultimos dias en mi pais, se ha notado en gran magnitud la participación de los personas que han enfrentado alguna emergencia o desastre y esto ocurre por el nivel de participacion que se le ha dado.

    Asimismo, se ha notado en los paises de la region, donde podemos decir que en muchos casos los pueblos rebasan la participación del estado. Es por ello que creo que es necesario se realice un compromiso con todos los estados para que contribuyan a la formación de las personas a que conozcan aun mas de resiliencia. Que es? Como sucede? Quienes contribuyen a esto? Como ayudan los gobiernos? Hasta donde es su alcance?.

    En resumen, creo que los gobiernes debe involucrar cada dia mas a las personas en cuanto al manejo de emergencias y desastres y si es posible darles aun mas basamentos legales que les permitan sostener esta labor.

    En la actualidad, se ha conformado un gremio de profesionales (Colegio de Administradores de Desastres), donde se manejan 3 directrices:

    1.- Velar por la seguridad social y laboral del profesional, donde se le garantice todos los beneficios obtenidos por la ley incluyendo la formación y actualización del perfil del profesional tanto a nivel nacional como internacional.

    2.- Contribuir a la formación comunitaria para la RRD, haciendo mucha enfasis a la prevención. Haciendo las comunidades resilientes

    3.- Participar en las acciones de las instituciones del estado en materia de emergencias y desastres, teniendo en cuanta el respeto a las competecias de cada quien.

  • Good night everyone. It's been a long and eventful day and a very successful launch of this on line dialogue.
    Rajeev Issar was our 100th member, and we close today , for now that is, with 109 members signing in and a record number of 41 posts. Juan is the latest addition to the members list and the latest commentator. Thank you all for your very active participation.
    There have been very valuable points made on various aspects of DRR practice on the ground, and have raised important issue which can be framed as topics for future questions/themes in the dialogue.

    I would encourage all members to open and read my opening remarks at the start of this first page, if you have not yet done so, and more importantly to down load and read the background paper prepared by UNISDR entitled “Towards a Post -2015 Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction” available at http://preventionweb.net/go/25129
    I would remind all of us that the question is also oriented to gathering what are your expectations from the consultation process.

    Please feel free also to comment on the posts of other friends participating in the dialogues. You can do so easily by clicking on the Quote icon at the corner of every post. Sometimes quoting the entire text makes it an exceedingly long thread, which in any case is located just above, so feel free to delete all or come of the post. If you are unable to do so, I crave your indulgence, along with other colleagues, to shorten the quoted post if deemed necessary.

    Look forward to another day of active dialogue tomorrow.

    Warmly,
    LOY
  • Hi,
    I’m an emergency manager working for the state government here in Melbourne, Australia.
    I would like to see the consultation draw on a wide range of views to develop a post 2015 framework.
    One key area that I would like to see a focus on is engaging with children and young people as a key component of the framework. This demographic are able to make a significant contribution in all settings, rural, urban, developed and developing nations.
    Positive engagement with young people to increase DRR will also assist communities to increase resilience to disasters.
    So I wonder if there will be opportunity for young people to be engaged during this consultation stage of this process?
    Best regards,
    Susan.
  • I would expect that the main accomplishments of the past decade strategy would be further discussed based on the the background paper and the actual findings... It might help with setting the tone for future strategy, by detailing the limitations that were not achievable in the past. There is ongoing debate in the decision making and stakeholders community on issues related to resilience, and tools, techniques and process that will be of use to vulnerable communities.
  • Hi Loy... Glad to see that you are facilitating this on-line dialogue. Will be rewarding.

    I will make more contributions later, but for now, I would like to ask whether there was any meaningful review of the HFA. I am not against the HFA and/or the development of the post-HFA framework, but I think we will have to reflect the value of HFA (and associated global initiatives) before moving forward. Has it been useful? Appropriate for all levels – global, regional, national, sub-national and communities? What about efficiency and effectiveness? What are other lessons?

    I have seen many progress reports, but I have not come across any reports that have addressed such issues/concerns. The closest I can get was several chapters from the two Global Assessment Reports, but again not thorough enough.

    Jeong
  • Disaster risk reduction is an inclusive term. It can be part of the policy frameworks for national ministries, for local governments, for communities and for a household. As such it fits national to households scales of action. Action however is a function of awareness and belief that benefits will accrue from investments (time, effort, money, labor) in actions. There is still much work to do on both awareness and belief.
    At one time I thought all you needed for DDR was the support of national ministries to achieve progress. Now I think you simply need national ministries to support the efforts of local level of government and civil society. This means flexibility, adaptation, and if possible resources and listening to the community in an active way.
    In this beginning dialogue I wish to forward several agendas. One is to spend some time thinking about what constitutes DDR theory. What theory exists and what needs to be built by 2015. A second agenda item to identify the “frictions” or places that cause conflicts for DDR in different countries and to determine if these are systemic issues, or procedural issues. There is a real difference between the two. A third agenda item is in the governance realm: what is a healthy balance between the role of central government and local government. Here I am looking for productive ways for central governments to listen to local governments and for local governments to learn to tell their DDR needs story in a manner where responsibility can be shared. Forth, to integrate risk assessment at levels and to understand how to communicate the different forms or risk for the different groups involved.
    This is a full agenda put forth in this dialogue. I am sure it will change over time.

    William Siembieda
    San Luis Obispo, California, USA
  • Hi Greeting!
    This is Suneet from India
    My expectations are;
    1. Hoping to see the emergence of Different DRR models for different terrain conditions or can say for different ecological zones.
    2. DRR should have "Sustainable Hazard Mitigation Approach".
    3. More decentralised way and the maximum participation and views of communities ( CBDM).
    4. However the "Indigenous Knowledge" of rural world will always help to strengthen the DRR.
    5. A real time monitoring and "Intervention by High Tech Tools" (RS/GIS/ GPS/Ham radios and the available technological information dissemination) for strengthening the DRR. ( A fine blending of indigenous knowledge and modern know how will help to create fruitful DRR.
    6. A part of DRR should incorporate the orientation, awareness, workshops and preparation of database and action plan through "Future generation" i.e. School children of Global village.
  • Dear All,
    Good day!
    Many thanks to UNISDR for successful launch of this on line dialogue. Eco-literacy and woman empowerment can go a long way to achieve DRR. Eco-literacy among common mass is poor especially in developing countries; more so in under developed countries. For example, eco-literacy in terms of soil, climate and crop species can help farmers to understand complexities of these on environment and impending disaster. Similarly, woman empowerment is also important. I would like to see discussion on these issues.
    Thanks and regards.
    Sincerely,
    Pradip Dey
  • Hello all ,,,
    firstly let me thank UNISDR for starting on this dialogue , iam working at civil defence and i think this disscussion will be usuful and important .
    we must all the world work as one community in disaster risk reduction plan because there is no anyone and no community is save from disaster as they say invest today to save tomorrow , therfore we must working in all side such setting the plans , supporting participation all the members of comunity in disaster risk reduction and start thinking for the next step in development process .

    best reards for all participants

  • It is my pleasure to drop a few points regarding the subject. I know this is a very complicated and difficult task. Nonetheless, it is not a task that can be ignored or relegated to a background. Disaster risks are real and they are affecting people, especially in the poor countries.
    In my opinion a successful post-2015 framework needs to address at least the following elements:
    1. Disaster risk reduction should be mainstreamed into development plans. No meaningful development approaches can ignore the need to plan for the extremities prevalent in a country’s context. Nor can a separate, parallel initiative be productive if separated from the core development agenda. Countries need to commit resources in order to mainstream disaster risk components. The challenge is where can the resources come from? Disaster Risk Reduction needs a global commitment to support disaster prone countries in order to contain disaster risks while making meaningful development progress.
    2. Disaster risk reduction cannot be treated in isolation. Reference and proper connection needs to be made with the core causes of disasters. As statistics has it, it is the hydro-meteorological disasters that cause the majority of risks to humanity. Some research findings also indicate that unsustainable extraction of sub-surface resources such as oil and gas using recent technologies including “Fracking” increase geophysical disasters. Hence, mitigation of climate change impacts and seeking alternative energy sources need to be part of its agendas. Otherwise, the world will be dealing with the symptoms instead of the root causes.
    3. Financial and technical capacity should be created in the area of disaster-loss accounting and documentation so that the socioeconomic impacts can be presented based on scientific evidences. This can convince the skeptics and the indifferent. In addition, the data can be used to justify disaster risk reduction investments.
    4. While it can be useful to have risk-reducing codes for buildings, and residential areas, poor countries will have difficulties enforcing them. How can resources be availed, to support communities forced to live in risk prone areas, to meet the expectations of such codes (risk-prone areas may not be fully avoided due to population pressure)?
    5. Disaster impacts emanate from unmet development needs– poverty is the overall reason for the unacceptably high negative impacts in poorer countries. Therefore, rich governments need to commit significant resources for clean development (previous aid support focused on humanitarian response, not so much on creating capital and capacity). However, this kind of development is more costly and technology based. What mechanisms can be put in place to support such initiatives?

    Let me pause here.
    Cheers
  • We, at UN Women Pakistan, feel that it’s a great initiative to give voice to the grassroots realities. We congratulate and support UNISDR in the process. Over the years, the debate around DRR has come a long way but still holistic efforts are required to understand and integrate gender concerns as an important pillar of the development agenda. We look forward to hear how and what can be done to better address the needs of women and girls in disaster resilience.

    Good luck from our side.

    Maira Zahur
    UN Women
    Pakistan
  • Hello colleagues.

    Thank you for this important initiative, I'm believed that these consultations will result in progress on the "how to" aspect of good DRR practices, because DRR is a future challenge. A good way to explains the process of national and regional. As an integral part of DRR, I will use opportunity to share Nigeria experience and knowledge in DRR.

    Town Planning instruments as a strategy for Disaster Risk Reduction in Nigeria.

    It will be good; we innovative and practical ideas shall come out as the result of the discussions these with support to provide critical capacities at national and state level to identify and quantify disaster damages and losses in all sector of the economy.

    A damage and loss assessment will helps countries quantify the damage after a disaster to mobilize the necessary resources and facilitate reconstruction.

    Best regards
    Prince Bright Akinola
    President of African Youths
    Lagos, Nigeria
  • Thank you for initiating and facilitating this online dialogue forum. My expectations from this consultation process are:
    1) Exchange of more practical oriented ideas that help to refine the tools and approaches used in identifying, assessing and monitoring disaster risks (related to extreme events such as flood and drought) and enhancing the early warning capacity of poor communities.
    2) The progress made and challenges faced in achieving the goals and priorities of the Haygo framework for action 2005-2015 in different countries and inform the design of the post 2015 framework in mainstreaming DRR in development programs

    Best regards,
    Nega
  • Impacts of disaster is highly critical and needs immediate response and requires high quality expert and financial resources but the fact that no one gets ready or give attention till it happens. So it needs long term strategy to prevent or minimize disaster. I believe that UNISDR plays its role at all level in capacity building and early warning of the globe.
  • Hi,
    I’m an emergency manager working for the state government here in Melbourne, Australia.
    I would like to see the consultation draw on a wide range of views to develop a post 2015 framework.
    One key area that I would like to see a focus on is engaging with children and young people as a key component of the framework. This demographic are able to make a significant contribution in all settings, rural, urban, developed and developing nations.
    Positive engagement with young people to increase DRR will also assist communities to increase resilience to disasters.
    So I wonder if there will be opportunity for young people to be engaged during this consultation stage of this process?
    Best regards,
    Susan.



  • In addition to what Susan said it clearly I am also suggesting the participation of the representatives of Older People, Person with Disabilities in this consultations
  • I am Urban Planner and I have been working in development sector since last elevan years with national, international and UN organizations. At present serving with Malteser International Pakistan Program as National DRR Advisor. I worked with UNDP for four years in earthquake affected areas of Azad Jammu & Kashmir and Khyber Pakhtonkhwa.As State DRM Coordinator i also contributed as member of Technical Committee for the preparation of National DRM Plan of Pakistan (2012-2022) by NDMA and JICA and also contributed my inputs in the formulation of National DRR Policy of Pakistan.

    As a Programme Officer DRR completed a successful CBDRM project from the platform of ERRA in nine EQ affected districts funded by World Bank.

    Expectations:

    I am expecting a concrete and realistic out comes after this comprehensive consultation towards development of post 2015 framework. So far lot of work has been done in the field of DRR in different countries but there is a huge coordination gap among stakeholders, especially among donors also. Effective horizental and vertical coordination mechanism is lacking. There is a need to improve coordination to avoid duplication and save resources. To achieve set objectives and to touch milestones of HFA priorities, regional coordination is important. Which i expect that this consultation will bring ideas to devise an effective coordination mechansim.

    Instead of haphazard interventions , need to develop national DRM plans to systemize disaster management system and emphasize on mainstreaming DRR into local development planning process.

    Expecting a SMART post 2015 framework.

    Fayyaz Hussain Shah
    National Advisor DRR
    Malteser International Pakistan
  • Hi Loy... I would like to ask whether there was any meaningful review of the HFA. .......... The closest I can get was several chapters from the two Global Assessment Reports, but again not thorough enough.
    Jeong



    Dear Jeong,

    Welcome to the dialogue and grateful for your focused comments that go to the heart of this and other questions in this first round.

    I will myself need to read more of all the literature that has been produced by UNISDR and the outcomes of various processes, notably the Global and Regional platforms,and the regional summary reviews of the HFA progress reports of countries.
    Th closest I think we have at a global scale, besides the two GARs is the HFA Mid Term Review report which is available on line, and whose conclusions were presented last year at the informal Plenary at the 3rd session of the Global Platform 2011.

    WE do have some alternate views presented by civil society in the two VFL reports.

    And individual Governments, and groups of countries have given views on the HFA in the presentations made at the Thematic debates convened by the President of the General Assembly.

    I will try to assemble a compendium of web links on the subject. Most importantly, I would encourage others to react to your views and question in at least two ways

    a) Is such a review needed? if so how should it be done? are there comparable initiatives done for DRR on any scale, national or regional?

    b) are there other sources and writings that approximate such a review, even on a particular priority of action

    Looking forward to more responses on this suggestion,

    Warmly,

    LOY
  • Thanks for initiating this open discussion. I hope that the post 2015 framework will make room for two topics that involve a more expansive agenda than in the past. First, it would be good to enlarge the permanent constituency for DRR by making common cause with groups that may or may not have a direct stake in hazardous places but nonetheless play important roles in what happens therein. I am thinking here of people that are neither technical/scientific experts, government officials or victims but mainly laypersons who have a strong say in what ultimately gets done through their roles as opinion leaders, voters and taxpayers. Second, we should not be shy about including the hazard problems of more affluent communities in the framework's purview; if poor places succeed in managing their existing risks they will likely face many unfamiliar risks that are now emerging in better-provisioned communities.
  • Congratulations to the city of Beira, Mozambique on receiving the first International Risk Award yesterday at the Global Risk Forum 2012 at Davos - https://www.unisdr.org/archive/28192

  • Thanks Margareta W. for additional guidance.
    I think, the disaster events took the destructive momentum taking long time since the industrial revolution after the 2nd WR. The contribution from HFA 2005-15 (only 10 years) could just start to ‘move on’. Measureable initiatives and efforts have been making from ISDR, governments and other institutions and agencies. I think, the increasing disaster events are much stronger and higher than those of the DRR efforts. As a result, all significant initiatives and numerous progresses made by ISDR and governments are not visible. So, post-HFA efforts should strengthen to carry out the HAF-1 (2005-15)’s on-going activities and HAF-2 (2016-25?) should add some more priority actions based on the changing situations. Then there will be a relation between HFA-1 and HFA-2.

    So, what I expect; ISDR analyses and considers the recommendations of the GAR, Midterm Review of HFA progress and VFL reports (as VFL bears the progress from local government and civil society where disaster hits) and other reports that bear the progress information of HFA implementation.

    I would expect there should be 3 more ‘priority for actions’ to be added in the post-HFA framework; 1) gender mainstreaming in legislation, policy and programme/progress (as it is a cross-cutting issue), 2) role of children in DRR and 3) pandemic preparedness (we do not wish but in case pandemic affects, the catastrophe will be beyond the estimation).

    There are several successful stories made by the HFA; it could move forward the world to think and make efforts in DRR, many governments integrated the HFA in their national policy and strategy like SNAP, (there are some good examples in Cambodia like other countries), Development partners and NGOs in collaboration with governments have been working very closely; DRR issues could unite the global and regional organizations, governments, Development partners and non-government organizations to work for a common ‘DRR and CCA’ goal significantly; multi-stakeholder DRR platform is another excellent example and contribution of the HFA, The DRR multi-stakeholder platform could bear the DRR messages from the national to grass-root vulnerable communities even the platform itself is at infancy level, The DRR platforms bridge the government and community people where CSOs play the role of a catalyst that made a substantial progress in disaster risk literacy advancement. Many government officials were unaware on DRR. They believed ‘disaster’ limits within ‘response’ but the HFA through governments, non-government agencies and different programmes like VFL could carry out the theme to the grass-root level that made a tremendous contribution to make vulnerable people literate in DRR.

    These excellent successes in government’s mechanisms should be strengthened; ISDR’s role should be more visible and increased supports to government and CSOs; there are examples of effective coordination still it should be strengthened, money is not everything but it is something very important. So more money flow for integrated /coordinated approaches should be increased;
    Akhteruzzaman Sano
    Save the Earth Cambodia
    [email protected]
This discussion has concluded and posts can no longer be made.