JEDDAH: A three-day Arab Nations workshop on setting up a mechanism to implement the United Nations’ guidelines to reduce risks and mitigate the worst effects of growing incidences of natural disasters began in Jeddah yesterday.
The UN plan, entitled the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA), aims to help nations and communities reduce their vulnerability to natural disasters.
“Natural disasters pose a dangerous threat to sustainable development. They do not only uncover social, economical, political and environmental problems but they worsen them,” said Prince Turki bin Nasser, president of the Executive Bureau of Arab Environment Ministries.
The three-day “Workshop for the Promotion of the Regional Implementation of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction” started yesterday under the theme “Disaster Risk Reduction for Sustainable Development.”
“The workshop is expected to set a mechanism on how to implement the Hyogo plan in the region,” said Prince Turki, who is also president of the Presidency of Meteorology and Environment Protection (PME) in the Kingdom.
“Disaster risk reduction is based on the premise that although we cannot avoid natural hazards, we have the power to reduce their impact by reducing our vulnerability to them,” said Salvano Briceno, director of the United Nations — International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR).
“It’s not the earthquake that kills people but poorly built buildings,” he said. “The evidence we have at hand strongly suggests that rapid urban population growth and environmental degradation are amplifying the levels of vulnerability to disaster risk in many areas of the world including the Arab region,” Briceno said. “Governments need to focus on reducing risk, not just responding to them,” he said.
Speaking on the Hyogo plan, the UNISDR director said that, although every country in the world is doing something, “issue is countries are not acting quickly enough.”
Ahmed Mohammed Ali, President of the Jeddah-based Islamic Development Bank, an organ of the Organization of Islamic Conference, said his bank was committed to helping member countries in the region reduce risks of natural hazards.
A newly released global assessment report on disaster, released by EMDAT, said that over the last 28 years approximately 37 million people in the Arab region have been affected by droughts, earthquakes, floods and storms, causing Arab economies to lose $19 billion.
