Badung, The Indonesia Post – The United Nations Agency for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) encourages more countries to report on and increase the availability and access of their disaster early warning systems.
This encouragement was conveyed by the Director of UNDRR Ricardo Mena at the 7th session of the Global Platform Disaster Risk Reduction (GPDRR) series which was held in Nusa Dua, Badung, Bali.
Mena’s encouragement is aimed primarily at countries that have ratified the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (Sendai Framework) 2015-2030, which has been adopted by 187 countries.
The Sendai Framework puts forward seven global targets including Target G, which substantially aims to increase the availability of and access to disaster early warning systems and disaster risk assessment and information for communities by 2030.
The UNDRR Director stated that so far only 120 countries have reported on the achievement of Target G of the Sendai Framework at home.
“There are still many countries that have ratified the Sendai Framework but have yet to report on the achievement of their G targets. This of course needs to be improved,” said Mena.
On that occasion, he also explained about a number of achievements and evaluations related to target G indicators – regarding the availability and access to a disaster early warning system.
As many as 77 percent of the countries that ratify the Sendai Framework have indicated that they have information coverage of a disaster early warning system through local or national mechanisms.
“However, there are still 23 percent of countries that do not indicate that they have coverage of disaster early warning information,” said Mena.
Another thing that is also quite worrying, according to the Director of UNDRR, is that less than 50 percent of countries report that their local governments have plans for disaster early warning system actions.
“This is a bit worrying because currently the percentage has dropped to only 46 percent,” said Mena.
He further revealed that less than 50 percent — only 48 percent — of countries have accessible, understandable, durable and relevant information and disaster risk assessments.
“It’s also quite worrying … a country that doesn’t have access to disaster risk information and assessment, it will be very difficult to understand this and have a disaster risk reduction plan that can effectively have an impact on reducing overall disasters,” he said.
Although there has been great progress in disaster risk reduction efforts, for example, in terms of access to and use of information and communication technology, there are still many challenges that need to be addressed in the global effort for disaster risk reduction.
UNDRR estimates that a third of the global population, mostly in developing countries, is still not covered or has access to a disaster early warning system. (mhn/bbs)
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