Letters from Sendai no. 6: stalemate in the negotiations

Jaroslav Mysiak, senior scientist at the Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM), wrote the sixth letter, posted on 18 March 2015. Talks on the post-2015 framework for disaster risk reduction had stalled with one day left, and 186 governments were taking part.

He named three sticking points:

• the wording on enhanced international cooperation;
• higher levels of official development assistance;
• the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities, borrowed from the climate negotiations.

The aid question carried a history of broken promises. Mysiak recalled the target of 0.7 percent of gross national product for aid, set at Monterrey and Johannesburg in 2002, and the G8 pledge of 2005 to add 50 billion USD by 2010. Neither had been met.

His judgement was critical. Disaster risk reduction had become entangled with development and climate politics, and the fight over money and principles was pulling attention away from measurable targets, the part of the framework that could actually show progress. He pointed ahead to the Addis Ababa meeting on development finance and the summit on the Sustainable Development Goals, both due later in 2015, where the same arguments would return.

The deadlock broke late on 18 March, as the eighth letter recorded. What the compromise cost in terms of targets was assessed in the ninth.