UN develops innovative early warning tool for drought prone Asia-Pacific regions

Date: Nov-30-2013Senior officials from governments across the Asia-Pacific region have agreed on a
set of collective priorities and ground-breaking initiatives that will
build resilience to natural disasters and further enhance regional
cooperation, at a meeting convened by the United Nations Economic and
Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) in Bangkok.

Faced with the continued, severe impact of natural disasters across the
region, representatives at the Third Session of the Committee on Disaster
Risk Reduction called on ESCAP to facilitate regional cooperation aimed at
harnessing technological advances for resilient, inclusive and sustainable
development.

In line with this, ESCAP's long-standing Regional Space Applications
Programme for Sustainable Development (RESAP) announced the development and
operationalization of a new regional mechanism on drought. With this
mechanism, the monitoring and early warning capabilities of drought-prone
countries will be significantly strengthened through the effective use of
space-based information provided by service nodes in the region.

Every year in the Asia-Pacific region, droughts push millions of farmers
into debt and deepen poverty and hunger but this new regional mechanism is
capable of issuing early warnings before the drought is visible to the
human eye. Its satellite sensors will detect warning soil and water
conditions before the worst of the droughts take hold, so that early action
can be taken.

Initially supported by Chinese and Indian space agencies, the regional
drought mechanism will provide monitoring and early warning services and
capacity building for drought-prone countries in the region. Mongolia is
already piloting the mechanism, and Cambodia, Myanmar and Sri Lanka are
expected to join soon as pilot counties.

"The commitment shown by member States to mainstream disaster risk
reduction into their sustainable development plans is encouraging, and
raises the hope that the Asia-Pacific region will emerge as a global role
model in this regard," said ESCAP's Director of Information and
Communications Technology and Disaster Risk Reduction Division, Ms. Shamika
Sirimanne. "And there is significant momentum towards greater coherence of
efforts in disaster risk reduction across the region."

H.E. Ms. Fathimath Thasneem, Deputy Minister, National Disaster Management
Centre, Government of the Republic of the Maldives, and Chair of the
Committee Meeting added: "Faced with the major challenge of strengthening
resilience to natural disasters, ESCAP member states have come together to
reinforce how they work together in the region, launch new initiatives and
set out an ambitious collective agenda for the years ahead.

"This has been a most timely and successful meeting, that has benefitted
from ESCAP's unique role in bringing together officials from ministries of
planning and finance with disaster managers in order to mainstream disaster
risk reduction."

Echoing this, a clear message to emerge from the meeting was that
governments need to place resilience on the core agenda of planning and
finance ministries, to ensure that disaster risk reduction does not take
place in isolation. Instead it should be brought together with climate
change adaptation and sustainable development into a 'resilience framework'
with clear performance metrics.

To this end, the senior officials asked ESCAP to develop a set of
measurable 'resilience indicators' that will inform policymakers of their
country's preparedness level. They also requested ESCAP's support in
strengthening disaster-related statistics and improving damage and loss
assessments and datasets.

Organized with the active participation of a range of United Nations actors
involved in disaster risk reduction, the outcomes will be tabled at the
ESCAP Commission Session in May 2014. They will also inform discussions at
other forthcoming high-level events, including the 6th Asia-Pacific
Ministerial Conference in June 2014 and the 3rd United Nations World
Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in March 2015.

Courtesy: Medical News Today Note: Any medical information available in this news section is not intended as a substitute for informed medical advice and you should not take any action before consulting with a health care professional.