News and announcements

UNISDR chief, Margareta Wahlström, today welcomed the focus on the importance of systematic recording of disaster losses and impacts contained in the report. 'Access to information is critical to successful disaster risk management. You cannot manage what you cannot measure'...

UNISDR chief, Margareta Wahlström, today welcomed the focus on the importance of systematic recording of disaster losses and impacts contained in the 2012 MDG Gap Task Force Report launched by the Secretary-General yesterday.

'This technology gives city planners a new set of tools - so that if disaster strikes again, our cities can be more sustainable and built in a way that mitigates the risk,' said 3D GIS expert Len Olyott...

Rising temperatures and the decrease of winter snow have increased the wildfire risk in the region, and climate change is expected to further worsen the situation in the decades to come...

'We are looking at a water management and flood mitigation plan and institutional changes. The drainage department has not changed to respond to our new realities,' Minister of the Environment and Water Resources of Trinidad and Tobago Ganga Singh told Newsday...

The guide explains how gender roles and responsibilities result in differential exposure to disasters. It encourages disaster risk managers to put on a 'gender lens' and analyse what women and men do in their daily lives, look at how they interact and what specific needs arise out of this, and factor these in every aspect of their work...

'At the just-concluded Rio+20 Conference, commitments were made on an ambitious sustainable development agenda. But to keep those pledges credible, we must deliver on previous commitments. As a world community, we must make rhetoric a reality and keep our promises to achieve the Millennium Development Goals'...

UNISDR Chief, Margareta Wahlström, today welcomed a major policy decision by Pacific Island States to help formulate a new international framework on disaster risk reduction to replace the current Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA) in 2015.