'Be Ready’ for Disasters

‘Be Ready’ for Disasters, Haitian Official Tells World’s Mayors at UN Event

New York, Jul 30 2010 5:10PM Drawing from the experience of January’s catastrophic earthquake which devastated Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, the city’s mayor today told a United Nations-backed conference in Shanghai that local governments must be better prepared for disasters.

Addressing a conference of his fellow mayors, Jean Yves Jason stressed the need to “be ready,” underlining the importance of developing a “culture of security” and access to the resources necessary to respond to a catastrophe.

Mr. Jason’s priority as Haiti enters the hurricane season, he said, is to bolster people’s safety through better information and simulation drills.

“My people still live in a very precarious situation,” Mr. Jason said, with more than three quarters of his staff having perished in the magnitude-7.0 quake which claimed more than 200,000 lives and left 1.3 million more people homeless in Haiti. Countless buildings, including Government facilities, hospitals and schools, were also destroyed.

He was one of the 100 local government officials who took part in the Shanghai Forum on Disaster Risk Reduction, organized by the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR), the UN Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) and other organizations.

Wrapping up today, the three-day event was held on the sidelines of the Expo 2010, being held in the Chinese city.

Participants at the conference discussed how to link recovery with long-term economic development and to promote disaster risk reduction as part of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the eight anti-poverty targets agreed upon by world leaders with a 2015 deadline.

They also committed to using disaster risk reduction as a means to reduce the impacts of weather-related catastrophes.

In a related development, a ceremony was held today to welcome the signature of the five latest cities to join Making Cities Resilient, the UN initiative to boost their resilience against natural hazards.

Mayors and top officials from Makati City, Philippines; Makassar, Indonesia; Bhubaneswar, India; Chengdu, China; and Dalifort-Foiral, Senegal are the latest to officially sign on to the campaign, which has garnered the support of 63 cities spanning the globe so far.

Also today, Margareta Wahlström, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction, named Joey Salceda, Governor of the Philippine province of Albay, as a “Champion” of the campaign for his efforts in promoting disaster preparedness.

The two-year initiative seeks to enlist more than 1,000 local government leaders worldwide to step up investment in disaster risk reduction by improving urban planning, infrastructure and building safety, among other measures.

ENDS