1.2 M people in Asia-Pacific died due to disasters – experts

MANILA, Philippines – Almost 1.2 million people in the Asia Pacific region died due to disasters in the past three decades and efforts to manage disaster risks have been hampered by lack of timely, reliable and comparable statistics, a United Nations-backed group of experts said.

The Expert Group on Disaster-Related Statistics in Asia and the Pacific said the lack of disaster-related statistics was mainly due to the absence of common standards.

For this reason, the expert group agreed last week on core principles for establishing a common basic range of disaster-related statistics.

The expert group met for the first time in Sendai, Japan in a conference led by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia (ESCAP), the Tohoku University and the UN Development Program (UNDP), in collaboration with the Japanese government and the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR). The conference was held from Oct. 27 to 29.

Speaking at the opening of the conference, Kilaparti Ramakrishna, director of ESCAP’s East and North-East Asia Office, underscored the significance of the group’s first meeting.

“With climate change, the frequency and severity of extreme weather events are expected to rise. This means there is a tremendous need for better disaster risk management for society and the environment,” he said.

The expert group noted that a set of common standards would enable more precise risk assessment across the region and help governments in evidence-based policymaking which provides targeted support and infrastructure to manage disaster risks.

“The success of the post-2015 sustainable development agenda highly depends on disaster risk reduction,” said Shamika Sirimanne, director of ESCAP’s Information and Communications Technology and Disaster Risk Reduction Division.