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TABLE OF CONTENTSMBIS: A MID-TERM PROGRESS REPORT EXPEDITION STUDYING ARCTIC OCEAN AND GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE HUMAN DIMENSIONS OF GLOBAL CHANGE-ARCTIC RESEARCH OPINION-IGBP REPORT NO. 28: WORK PLAN 1994-1998
CCP INFO
MODELLING THE GLOBAL CLIMATE SYSTEM
WEATHER AND CLIMATE: INFORMATION FOR AGRICULTURE
JAMES BRUCE WINS 1994 IMO PRIZE
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THE YOKOHAMA STRATEGY
James P. Bruce
In 1989, the United Nations General Assembly declared the nineties as a decade for concerted national and international efforts to reduce the rapidly mounting toll of losses due to natural disasters. The UN Resolution was based on three clear perceptions:
The UN Resolution provided a long list of natural hazards which turn into disasters without adequate preventive and preparedness measures. These hazards include, most prominently, storms and storm surges, floods, droughts, earthquakes, landslides, volcanic eruptions, wildfires, and tsunamis. Little can be done to prevent the occurrence of these natural hazards but measures such as safer building design, better land use planning to avoid hazard zones, and reliable warning and preparedness systems can greatly reduce loss of life and economic damages. In many cases these measures cost very little. What has happened since the Decade began in 1990? The UN's mid-term review conference in Yokohama, Japan, 23-27 May, 1994, which attracted 5,000 delegates from more than 150 countries concluded that while some progress had been made, a far larger challenge lies ahead. The main achievements have been establishment of more than 130 national committees or focal points for the Decade, many with broad representation from appropriate geological, hydrological, meteorological, oceanographic and engineering organizations, planning agencies, emergency preparedness bodies, NGOs like the Red Cross/Red Crescent Societies, insurance companies and other private business. In a number of countries imaginative prevention and preparedness projects have been launched.
A Scientific and Technical Committee (STC) of 25 experts in various aspects of disaster mitigation from around the world was appointed in 1991 to guide the program. A Special High Level Council of prominent individuals was formed to promote International Decade of Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR) actions at the UN and in countries. These activities are coordinated by a Secretariat based in Geneva, attached to the UN Department of Humanitarian Affairs. All of the international actions are supported through a voluntary IDNDR trust fund, rather than UN funds, with major contributors being Japan, U.S.A. and a number of European countries. The three main targets
Encouraged by the STC, the scientific and engineering community and UN agencies have organized some 35 International Decade projects of research to improve techniques and make them cheaper, training in more than 30 countries, field instrumentation (e.g. of "Decade volcanos" improved risk assessment and warning services. Canada was a co-sponsor of the initial UN resolution and, through the Royal Society of Canada in 1989 and 1990 a panel chaired by Dr. Alan Davenport (University of Western Ontario), developed a plan for Canadian participation in the Decade. However, it was not until 1993 that a small fund, from relevant federal agencies, was raised to support a part-time Secretary in the Royal Society and establish a broadly based Canadian National Committee. That committee's national report to the Yokohama World Conference on Natural Disaster Reduction calls for a program to aid disaster loss reduction at home and abroad. Its first emphasis for Canada is to undertake a comprehensive assessment of natural hazard risks in Canada, combining a number of available assessments for individual hazards, and assessing the vulnerability of Canadian communities to these hazards. This, of course, is a response to the first of the IDNDR targets and could effectively guide future emergency preparedness and preventative activities. Why should readers of DELTA, interested in Global Change issues, be concerned about IDNDR? There are important linkages between global changes and the frequency, severity and location of natural hazards. Changes in forest and land cover can change the frequency of floods and the severity of droughts. Urbanization results in greater flash floods. The potentially most widespread impacts, but the most difficult to quantify, are changes in climatic extremes in an atmosphere with increased radiative forcing due to greenhouse gases from human activities. Some recent increases in climatic extremes have been observed along with dramatic increases in economic losses in climate-related disasters. Some of the new, most sophisticated atmosphere-ocean models of the climate system suggest that the enhanced greenhouse gas climate will bring more intense rainfalls in some regions, greater droughts in others, colder air and water N.E. of Labrador, and more intense North Atlantic storms. However, the observed effects are still within the large range of natural variability of climate and the model results still too tentative to say with real confidence that climate change will be manifested mainly in increased extremes. This subject clearly needs intensive research. But whether the great increase in disaster losses of the 80s and early 90s, and the increased frequency of some climate extremes in some areas, are due entirely to increased exposure and natural variability, or partly to climate change, they do represent a phenomenon about which much can be done in the framework of the IDNDR. The Yokohama Conference had technical sessions to help countries to practice effective disaster loss reduction. They included ones on safer buildings--with lead-off speaker, Dr. Davenport--and several papers on inexpensive means of retrofitting and building safer housing in India, and Latin American adobe houses. The design and siting of cyclone shelters in Bangladesh to reduce loss of life was also featured. An apt slogan would have been "storms and earthquakes don't kill people--collapsing buildings do". The warning systems session focused on better warnings for tropical cyclones and volcanic eruptions and effective use of warnings to save lives. Well proven drought management and risk assessment techniques were presented. The role of the private sector, particularly insurance companies, and of regional cooperation received special attention. Special problems were outlined of island and low lying coastal states, particularly in the face of a rising sea level. It is clear that sustainable development in many countries depends strongly on incorporating disaster mitigation measures in national development plans, and the Yokohama Conference reviewed the experience in a number of countries in such efforts. In all, the Conference provided a valuable compendium of proven means of reducing disaster losses. The challenge now is to ensure wide dissemination of these techniques and their application in all vulnerable countries. The World Conference has provided a qood start. It is a challenge not just to developing countries, but to countries like Canada as well. Both domestically and in technical assistance programs abroad, Canada must modify policies which primarily provide ever-increasing relief after disasters, and invest much more effort in proven preparedness and loss prevention measures of the kind well documented in Yokohama. Then we can be assured of reaching the goal of Yokohama, a safer world for the next century.
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