United Nations Department of Public Information

Through the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030, the Conference outcome, participants requested the United Nations General Assembly to integrate into its post-2015 strategy for sustainable development seven goals to reduce risk for loss of life, livelihood and critical infrastructure from disasters, through enhanced national planning and international cooperation...

Opening the discussion, titled 'Public Investment Strategies for Disaster Risk Reduction', was its Chair, Secretary of State in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Romania, Raed Arafat, who said the past decade had shown that governance arrangements were significantly shaping progress on disaster risk reduction...

[For] ministers and other senior officials in the third round table of the World Conference...full engagement locally and a clear articulation of responsibilities was a message conveyed by many, including Japan’s State Minister of the Cabinet Office, who said that public awareness was the first line of defence; involving the entire country, society and all communities was the second...

In speaking of both cooperation and building back better, participants stressed the need for a forward-looking perspective to build now the kind of resiliency that would be needed in the future, particularly given the knowledge of the increased severity of certain crises due to climate change and other factors...

Disaster risk reduction — the front-line defence against climate impacts — 'is in everybody’s interest, and it is everybody’s business,' Mr. Ban said, stressing that it was a smart investment for business and a wise investment in saving lives...

The private sector acts financially with a shorter payback requirement than the public sector, but if both are left to operate separately, opportunities will be lost, warned speakers in a discussion this afternoon of how to boost private-sector involvement in reducing disaster risk...

Children can and should play a crucial role in disaster risk reduction, a panel of children from disaster-prone regions told the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction this afternoon. Children from Ethiopia, Japan, Viet Nam, Cambodia, Lesotho, Norway and the United Kingdom shared their experiences with disasters and suggested how they and other children could be instrumental in reducing disaster-related risks...

There would be no disaster resilience without effective decentralization, without empowering communities and without addressing social inequalities and poverty alleviation, local government representatives told a meeting there today...