Disaster conference in Cancun next week to attract 5,000 attendees

Hard on the heels of a drought-linked hunger crisis in Somalia, floods in Peru and Colombia, and Cyclone Debbie in Australia, governments will be tasked with formalizing efforts to protect citizens from disasters, and working out how to cover the cost at a major U.N. conference in Cancun next week.

Thomson Reuters Foundation reports that with natural disasters expected to increase as the planet warms, the gathering of more than 5,000 experts will provide a crucial check-up on how government strategies to reduce risk are shaping up ahead of a 2020 deadline to substantially increase the number of countries that have them in place.

“It is not about score-keeping, it’s not about naming and shaming,” said Jo Scheuer, director for climate change and disaster risk reduction with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

“We do not know how many countries have truly worked on their strategy for 2020 (so) being able to actually look at that and learn from that is extremely important,” he said.

Running from May 24-26, the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction is the first international summit since the 15-year Sendai Framework was hammered out in Japan in 2015, setting ambitious targets for governments to substantially cut deaths and economic losses from disasters by 2030.

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Source: Thomson Reuters Foundation