Margareta Wahlström on disaster risk reduction and Sendai
In 2014, ahead of the March 2015 Sendai conference, Margareta Wahlström of UNISDR set out her aims for a strong post-Hyogo framework and stressed the weight of private investment in creating risk.
Margareta Wahlström was the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction and head of UNISDR. Ban Ki-moon had appointed her in November 2008 as the first holder of that post. The interview was given in 2014, when the Third UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Sendai (14 to 18 March 2015) was still ahead, and it featured in the first ENHANCE e-news alert in July 2014.
She described her job as harnessing countries and stakeholders to cut disaster mortality and economic losses, and securing a strong framework to follow the Hyogo Framework for Action.
Her strongest point was about who creates risk. Citing the Global Assessment Report of 2013, she noted that the private sector accounts for 70 to 85 percent of new investment worldwide. Where factories, homes and infrastructure are built, and to what standard, is therefore largely a private decision. The Hyogo Framework had already referred to public-private partnerships under its fourth priority.
She also observed that in OECD countries the risk of economic loss from disasters was growing faster than GDP per capita.
On Europe she mentioned three things: the European Commission as a major donor to UNISDR, its 2013 Green Paper on disaster insurance, and the conclusions of the EU Council on the post-2015 Hyogo framework. The ENHANCE consortium’s answer to the Green Paper is recorded in the Green Paper response. In Sendai a year later Wahlström spoke at an insurance forum covered in the third Letter from Sendai.