UN Urges Asia-Pacific Governments to Invest More in Disaster Mitigation and Prevention

United Nations Assistant Secretary-General Kamal Kishore is asking governments in the Asia-Pacific region to invest more to prevent and mitigate damage from increasingly intense storms, reported The Associated Press.

In a speech given to kick off the 2024 Asia-Pacific Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in the Philippines, Kishore — head of the UN’s Office for Disaster Risk Reduction — issued a warning.

“Disasters are now affecting record numbers of people and threatening their lives and livelihoods,” Kishore said in an address to hundreds of delegates in Manila, as The Associated Press reported. “Left unchecked, these disaster risks threaten to derail the development aspirations of the Asia Pacific region and push back progress that has taken decades to achieve.”

Climate change-fueled disasters are impacting an increasing number of people and could derail the region’s economic progress.

“We must significantly increase our investments and develop financing mechanisms in disaster risk reduction,” said President of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., at the three-day conference in Manila, according to a press release from the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. “As we confront the realities, we must deepen collaboration, ensure dedicated funding in national budgets and local and inclusive approaches to disaster risk reduction.”

Kishore said countries in the Asia-Pacific region need to dedicate funds from their national budgets to reduce disaster risk, as well as earmark a larger portion of foreign development aid for disaster prevention rather than “simply response.”

Kishore praised the Philippines — one of the most disaster-threatened nations in the world — for being “way ahead” of the disaster risk reduction curve for its focus on communities, reported the Philippine News Agency.

“The work that is being done in [the] Philippines can be a lighthouse to the rest of the region, and, indeed the world,” Kishore said. “Also very unique is how you bring together different parts of the government — there are two secretaries in the media event and there are other departments involved throughout the conference — it is not something that you see very often in many countries.”

Conference discussions focused on building more resilient infrastructure, homes and workplaces; sharing technology; and developing better disaster-warning systems, The Associated Press reported.

Because of its location, the Philippines — an archipelago set between the South China Sea and the Pacific Ocean — is in the path of about 20 typhoons and other storms each year.

The country is also located in the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” where earthquakes and volcanic eruptions pose a continuous threat.

“These are compounded by the increasing frequencies of hazards brought about by climate change, which makes the Philippines at risk and our landscape even more,” Marcos said in a keynote speech.

Marcos said the country’s most vulnerable states would be able to develop better resilience if they had improved access to financing, data and technology.

Conference attendee Janez Lenarćić — the European Union commissioner for crisis management — said closer international cooperation is the only way Asian and European nations can tackle the “new reality” of the “unprecedented frequency and intensity of weather-related disasters.”

“None of us will be able to face these new challenges alone,” Lenarćić told The Associated Press. “These disasters know no boundaries.”

The EU has allotted over $87 million to help finance mitigation efforts and disaster preparedness in the Asia-Pacific region since 2020, Lenarćić said. He encouraged the world’s richer countries to give more to these types of campaigns.

“We hope to provide an avenue where governments in the region, international organisations, the private sector, civil society, and other key stakeholders can convene, share best practices and coordinate a robust, and sustained regional response to the challenges we are facing, both as individual nations and as a collective whole,” said Gilberto Teodoro Jr., the Philippines’ Secretary of National Defense, in the press release.