Guatemala: Política nacional para la reducción de riesgo a los desastres

The National Policy for Disaster Risk Reduction in Guatemala is a multisectoral document with national coverage that establishes the strategic axes and lines of action to be implemented to guarantee that disaster risk reduction is a national and local priority equipped with a solid institutional base. The objective is to increase resilience and reduce the vulnerability of populations and peoples, as well as productive processes and territories at risk of disasters, as the basis for improving the quality of life and the safe development of Guatemala. The Policy focuses on the issue of food security, which can be affected by disasters and natural catastrophes. One of the lines of action consists precisely of the incorporation of risk management in the process of agricultural extension and rural productive development aimed at reducing environmental vulnerability and the risk of food insecurity.

Within the general objective of increasing resilience and reducing the vulnerability of populations and peoples to disasters, the document proposes the following specific objectives:

• Strengthen the capacity for systemic monitoring, adequate coverage of geographical measurement sites or points, registration of reliable historical series, analysis of potential threats and vulnerabilities, management of knowledge and wisdom and open access to information by territories, towns, linguistic communities and population vulnerable;
• Create and recover capacities and conditions in central government institutions, local governments, indigenous authorities, civil society organizations and the private sector for their active participation in initiatives aimed at increasing resilience, reducing vulnerabilities, and responding in a pertinent manner. in cases of disasters;
• Plan and implement actions in a coordinated and systematic manner to reestablish, in a pertinent, timely, safe and sustained manner, the conditions and means of life, as well as the recovery of balance with nature.

The Policy is developed around the following four strategic axes: 1) Identification, analysis and assessment of risk; 2) Preparation of capacities and conditions for disaster and disaster risk management; 3) Management: mitigation, transfer and adaptation; 4) Post-disaster recovery. Within the framework of Strategic Axis 1, it is worth mentioning that it is a line of action to strengthen the institutionality of the food security early warning system.