Deputy Secretary-General Calls for Greater Collaboration in Developing Local, National Disaster Risk Reduction Strategies Ahead of 2020 Deadline

Following are UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed’s opening remarks, as prepared for delivery, on the outcome of the sixth session of the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction, in New York today:

Thank you, Ambassador [Jürg] Lauber, for the invitation to participate in today’s briefing.  I am also grateful to Ms. [Mami] Mizutori, and to your respective offices, for hosting and co-chairing the 2019 Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction.

Today’s briefing offers an opportunity to hear about the wealth of experience and knowledge shared by all stakeholders at the 2019 Global Platform.  This will help us to advance the implementation of the Sendai Framework [for Disaster Risk Reduction], which is essential for the achievement of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The message coming out of the 2019 Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction is threefold and clear:  Managing risk is possible.  Managing risk yields multiple dividends.  And managing risk is an imperative.

In the period from 1998 to 2017, 1.3 million people were killed by climate-related and geophysical disasters.  Many more were injured or experienced damages to their homes and livelihoods.  Without concerted action, these numbers will increase as the frequency and intensity of natural hazards is growing.

Factors such as rapid urbanization, new technological hazards, environmental degradation, unsound development practices and a lack of risk-informed investment, are also leading to increased disaster risk and threats to sustainable development.  These trends are very worrying.  We must raise our ambition to address them.

At the current pace and scale of action, we will not meet the targets of the Sendai Framework.  Failure would, in turn, jeopardize the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.  The Global Platform therefore emphasized the need for coherent action on sustainable development, climate change and disaster risk reduction.

Target E of the Sendai Framework points the way forward.  It calls for a substantial increase in the number of countries with national and local disaster risk reduction strategies by 2020.  This deadline is nearly upon us.  I call on you to collaborate to make such strategies a reality.

These strategies will be the foundation for the next ten years of implementation of the Sendai Framework.  And they can advance the coherence we need.  The Global Platform has put forth strong ideas to build resilience and prevent future disasters by managing risk.

I urge leaders in the public and private sectors, science and academia, as well as civil society, to come together to put these ideas into practice and lead by example.  The outcomes of the Global Platform will also now feed into the political processes that will take place here in the period ahead, including the Secretary-General’s Climate Action Summit in September and the High-level Political Forum and the Mid-Term Reviews of the SAMOA Pathway and Vienna Programme of Action.  Let us work together for the strongest.