UN drafts targets to cut disaster-induced losses by 2030

On 15 February 2015 the Japan Times carried a report, based on a draft seen by Kyodo News, on the framework due to be adopted at the Third UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Sendai in March 2015. ENHANCE flagged the report the following day.

According to the report, the draft proposed targets to reduce disaster deaths, economic losses and damage to infrastructure by 2030. The new framework would replace the Hyogo Framework for Action of 2005, which had set no numeric targets at all.

Seven global targets were foreseen. Among them were cutting the number of people affected per capita by 20 or 30 percent, wider access to early-warning systems, and more countries with national strategies for disaster risk reduction. Two disputes were still open. Delegates had not settled whether numbers should stay in the text, nor how developed countries should fund aid to developing ones.

Both disputes ran through to the end. When the Sendai Framework was adopted on 18 March 2015, the numbers had largely gone: only two quantitative indicators survived, a result analysed in Letters from Sendai no. 8 and no. 9. The final framework is summarised in the glossary entry on the Sendai Framework.