The United Nations General Assembly has designated 13 October as International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction to promote a global culture of disaster risk reduction. It is an opportunity to acknowledge the progress being made toward reducing disaster risk and losses in lives, livelihoods, and health in line with the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 adopted at the Third UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Japan in March 2015.
In keeping with the Day’s focus on the impact that disasters have on people’s lives and wellbeing, this year’s theme is about conveying the message that many disasters can be avoided or prevented if there are disaster risk reduction strategies in place to manage and reduce existing levels of risk and to avoid the creation of new risk and that these must be fully cognizant and sensitive to the systemic, complex and concatenated nature of much disaster risk today. What that amounts to is “good disaster risk governance” And this will require continuous evolution and improvement in the risk management systems available to different countries.