International Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Japan

On March 13, the 3rd International Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction opened in Sendai City, Miyagi Prefecture, northeastern Japan.

This is also the place 4 years ago (date)11/3/2011) was most severely affected by the double natural disaster of earthquake and tsunami, killing and leaving missing nearly 20,000 people, with total property damage reaching nearly 20,000 billion Yen.

The terrible tsunami in Japan in 2011 (Photo Reuters)

The conference was chaired by the United Nations with the participation of more than 40,000 guests, including more than 5,000 leaders of countries, Ministers of Disaster Prevention, representatives of international organizations, non-governmental organizations... On the Vietnamese side, Vice President Nguyen Thi Doan led the Vietnamese delegation to attend the conference at the invitation of United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

On the morning of March 14, a content that the Conference especially emphasized was related to the need to build a system of basic measures to minimize risks from natural disasters that may occur in each country.

According to the latest statistical report of the United Nations, natural disasters in the world every year cause huge losses in human life and property, negatively impact the environment, community health...

Every year alone, natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, storms and floods cause damage of up to 250-300 billion USD, and it is forecasted that in the following years, this damage figure could reach 314 billion USD.

The conference believes that the general development trend of each country will cause negative impacts on the living environment as well as the issue of climate change. Therefore, building a specific roadmap to support and help countries enhance their ability to prevent natural disasters is extremely urgent and necessary.

In addition, a very important content that was also brought up by the Conference this morning was the issue of reaffirming the commitment to implement the Hyogo Framework for Action for the period 2005-2015; discussing and approving the Hyogo Framework for Action related to natural disaster prevention after 2015, in which for the first time the Conference will approve the goal of reducing the number of victims and economic losses in natural disasters.

In addition, a number of other topics will also be raised at the Conference, such as reducing damage to infrastructure, increasing financial support for disaster recovery and economic development, and expanding the number of participating member countries...

According to the plan, on the sidelines of the plenary meetings of the Conference, the host country Japan is expected to organize more than 30 ministerial-level dialogues and about 350 different seminars for international agencies, organizations, non-governmental organizations... also with content around the topic of reducing risks from natural disasters.

According to VOV