In addition to the President of the World Bank, the major global development and humanitarian partners speaking at the event included, the Minister of Finance, Japan; the President of the Japanese International Cooperation Agency; the EU’s Commissioner for International Cooperation, Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response; the UK Secretary of State for International Development; the UN Development Programme Administrator; the US Agency for International Development Administrator; and the UN’s Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator.

Speaking in the sidelines of the World Bank/IMF annual meetings, at an event hosted by the European Union, the Government of Japan, and the World Bank/GFDRR (Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery), in partnership with DFID and USAID, the seven partners identified specific actions that would help make disaster risk reduction and resilience a core development priority. The partners agreed to:

1. Systematically integrate social, physical, environmental, and economic resilience to extreme events and climate change into all their development strategies and programs.

2. Prioritize global disaster and climatic risk hotspots, where building disaster resilience is most urgent.

3. Coordinate international action and financing based on country priorities to build national and local resilience in disaster hotspots.

4. Prioritize investments, which offer the highest value for money, namely, weather and climate information systems, strengthening early warning and emergency preparedness, linking these systems to triggers for early action, creating safety nets for vulnerable populations, utilizing disaster risk financing/insurance, promoting sustainable land management, protecting critical infrastructure and most importantly, strengthening national and local institutions.

5. Support rapid and resilient recovery by coordinating action in post-disaster situations, in order to link and streamline the transition from relief to reconstruction and development.

The Need for Urgency

Recent disasters in Haiti, Pakistan, Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Japan make a persuasive case that counter-measures for dealing with extreme events must be at the core of every country’s policy and planning, both rich and poor. In addition, the ongoing crisis triggered by the drought in the Horn of Africa is a stark reminder that development and humanitarian actors need to closely cooperate in monitoring and engaging early in slow-onset disasters, in order to avoid catastrophic emergencies. Munich Re recently announced that 2011 has had the highest-ever losses from disasters on record just up to June this year.

Poor and middle-income countries suffer the most. A recent World Bank/UN report Natural Hazards, UnNatural Disasters: the economics of effective prevention calculates that storms, floods, earthquakes and droughts caused more than 3.3 million deaths and US$2.3 trillion in damage (in 2008 US dollars) between 1970 and 2010. Looking ahead, growing cities and a changing climate will shape disaster risks. The number of people exposed to storms and earthquakes in large cities could double to 1.5 billion by 2050. Much of this increase in exposure will be in Asia and the Pacific. Furthermore, by the turn of the century, even without climate change, damages from weather-related hazards are expected to triple to US$185 billion annually.

Floods are the most frequent of all natural disasters. A recent World Bank paper on cities and flooding estimates that flooding in 2010 affected 178 million people. Unprecedented ― and often unregulated and unplanned ― urbanization in the developing world, a large part of which is in fertile floodplains and/or coastal regions, is a key cause of increased exposure to flooding. In China 100 million people have moved from inland to coastal areas in the last 20 years. Globally 600 million people will occupy coastal floodplain land below flood level by 2100.

Moving the dialogue forward

The commitment to work together comes on the heels of an agreement earlier this week in New York by international donors and development agencies to establish a global coalition of high-level champions to enhance resilience to disasters. Today’s event is part of an ongoing discussion on this topic, engaging relevant stakeholders from around the world. It was proposed to hold a regular ‘Resilience Roundtable’ as part of the regular World Bank / IMF Annual Meetings to review progress made on the actions identified. A high level meeting is already planned to be held in Sendai, a major city in the tsunami affected Tohoku area in Japan, on the sidelines of the 2012 World Bank / IMF Annual Meetings in Tokyo in order to strengthen international efforts to disaster risk reduction.