Letters from Sendai no. 8: the Sendai Framework is adopted

Annegret Thieken of the Institute of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Potsdam dated the eighth letter 19 March 2015, and it was posted on 20 March. The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 had been adopted the night before, at a closing session that ran close to midnight on 18 March.

She set the framework in context. It builds on the Hyogo Framework, refers to the Rio declarations and names climate change as a key driver of risk. Its seven global targets cover mortality, the number of people affected, economic loss, damage to critical infrastructure, national and local strategies by 2020, international cooperation and access to early warning. Only two quantitative indicators survived the negotiations.

The four priorities for action:

1. understanding disaster risk;
2. strengthening disaster risk governance;
3. investing in disaster risk reduction;
4. preparedness for response, with “Build Back Better” in recovery.

The second half of the letter turned to loss data, without which the targets cannot be measured. DesInventar databases in Sri Lanka and Ethiopia showed what systematic records look like. In Europe, by contrast, loss data was scattered. Thieken pointed to a compilation by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, with input from Jaroslav Mysiak and herself, and to ONRN, the French national data platform.

A critical reading of the targets followed in the ninth letter. The framework is also summarised in the glossary.