Asia looks for ways to cut disaster risks

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate a three-day Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (AMCDRR) in the capital on Thursday. This is the first major inter-governmental event to discuss measures for disaster risk reduction and as many as 4,000 representatives from 41 countries will be participating in the event.

The conference will discuss issues related to disaster risk reduction in 6 technical, 22 thematic and 3 featured sessions. The technical events will be broadly based on themes related to risk sensitive development for community resilience.

The three featured events related to risk resilient infrastructure for sustainable development, application of science and technology for prevention of new risks and regional co-operation will be chaired by India.

Various Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs), government and UN bodies will be part of the event. The commemoration of the first World Tsunami Awareness Day to spread awareness about the dangers of tsunami and the importance of early warning systems will be on November 5.

On closing day, the conference will adopt the ‘New Delhi declaration’, a political commitment of participating governments towards preventing and reducing disaster risk. It will also adopt the ‘Asian regional plan for implementation of the Sendai framework’.