Report of the Secretary-General A/56/326: Road map towards the implementation of the United Nations Millennium Declaration

This UN Secretary-General report emphasises the adoption of strategies to reduce the impact of natural and man-made disasters disasters, along with climate change, global warming, deforestation, the decimation of biodiversity, soil erosion and desertification, and reduction in water tables issues, as an essential action within the section IV, “Protecting our common environment” of the United Nations Millennium Declaration declaration. It addresses the following goal: to intensify our collective efforts to reduce the number and effects of natural and man-made disasters, on the basis on facts from 1999.

It also recalls: the establishment of both the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (1990-1999) and the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction; and the endorsement of the Geneva Mandate on Disaster Reduction, as well as the the General Assembly mandates on international cooperation to reduce the impacts of El Niño and other climate variability, and to strengthen disaster reduction capacities through early warning. It eventually sets some strategies for moving ahead, which include: (i) supporting interdisciplinary and intersectoral partnerships, improved scientific research on the causes of natural disasters and better international cooperation to reduce the impact of climate variables, such as El Niño and La Niña; (ii) developing early warning, vulnerability mapping, technological transfer and training; (iii) encouraging Governments to address the problems created by megacities, the location of settlements in high-risk areas and other man-made determinants of disasters; (iv) encouraging Governments to incorporate disaster risk reduction into national planning processes, including building codes.