Scientists get to work on early warning system
Scientists get to work on early warning system
Agencies, Kobe, Japan
More than 150 countries got to work on Tuesday on drafting a global action plan to save lives during disasters, with the United Nations saying the effort needed to be quicker and better funded in the wake of the Asian tsunamis.
Around 4,000 scientists and officials would spend five days to set goals for all nations ranging from an early-warning system for disasters to standards for safe buildings, UN chief humanitarian coordinator Jan Egeland said.
The conference in the western Japanese city of Kobe is due to set goals to be met by 2015, but Egeland urged a shorter time- frame.
"Ten years from now, there should be no country without a disaster prevention program," he said.
"I am acutely aware of how much is being spent on our being fire brigades, of putting plaster on the wounds, and too little preventing the devastation and the suffering in the first place," Egeland said.
Egeland, who famously accused rich countries of being "stingy," called in Kobe for donors to devote money to prevention measures and for more "newly rich" countries to contribute.
"I would propose that over the next 10 years a minimum of 10 percent of the large sums now spent on emergency relief by all nations should be earmarked for disaster reduction," Egeland said.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan urged the world on Tuesday to learn from the killer Asian tsunami, saying spending now could limit the loss of life and damage from inevitable natural disasters.
Investing smaller sums before disasters could reduce the toll such catastrophes take in lives and in money, Annan said at the start of a 5-day conference in the Japanese city of Kobe, which is marking the 10th anniversary of a quake that killed 6,433 people.
"It's not enough to pick up the pieces," Annan said in a video message following a moment of silence for tsunami victims. "We must draw on every lesson we can to avoid such catastrophes in the future."
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi proposed to the conference that his government would help the effort by setting up a global database on relief and reconstruction and a center on water hazards.
The World Conference on Disaster Reduction was originally designed as a meeting of scientists and low-level civil servants on the 10th anniversary of the devastating earthquake in Kobe from which the city has rapidly rebuilt.
But registration doubled after the Dec. 26 disaster which killed more than 175,000 people and led to outrage as to why Indian Ocean nations were so ill-prepared.
Egeland noted that the world had accurate means to predict most disasters but the problem was how to get the message out in poor countries which suffer worst.
"Early-warning systems targeting vulnerable communities should be put in place in all disaster-prone areas," Egeland said.
"Children everywhere should be learning about safe havens around them as part of their basic education. Communities everywhere should be better trained to handle disasters," he said.
The tsunamis have drawn an outpouring of global sympathy in part because of the unprecedented international nature of the natural disaster -- nationals of more than 50 countries died or remain missing.
Some 478,100 were killed in disasters around the world since 1994, a drop by one-third compared with the previous decade, but the number of people affected went up by 60 percent to 2.5 billion, according to figures provided by conference organizers.
In a separate development, tsunami experts on Tuesday proposed making Dec. 26 an international day of commemoration of Asia's tsunami disaster, saying the simple idea could be just as effective as a pricey warning system in preparing people for the giant waves.
"We have to talk about how we can maintain 100 years and 200 years from now that people know what a tsunami is," Harry Yeh, a professor of tsunamis at Oregon State University, said on the first day of a United Nations disaster reduction conference.
"Can we make December 26th an international tsunami day to just keep reminding people of this event?" Yeh told a panel discussion. "If we make this day an international holiday, people will remember what a tsunami is."
"I think it will probably be a good idea," Laura Kong, director of the International Tsunami Information Center of the UN educational and scientific organization UNESCO, said of a global tsunami day.
"I think it's such a tragic event but we can make this an international awareness event and continue it over the years," Kong told AFP. "That's the challenge."
Fumihiko Imamura, head of the Disaster Control Research Center of Japan, told a news conference: "We have reached consensus that we need to create the memorial day. We will introduce this idea widely during the conference."