The New South Wales Minister for Police and Emergency Services, The Hon Michael Gallacher MLC, and the Acting Commonwealth Minister for Emergency Management, The Hon Jason Clare MP, have today announced more than $13.5 million funding to improve resilience in New South Wales' communities to withstand natural disasters.
Entries for the 2012 Resilient Australia Awards are now open and Executive Director of Security and Emergency Management at Justice and Community Safety, Baden McMaster, is encouraging Canberrans to nominate individuals or organisations who they feel have made a made a difference to disaster resilience within our community.The Resilient Australia Awards are an Australian Government initiative sponsored by the Commonwealth Attorney-General's Department, in conjunction with States and Territories. They recognise innovative practices and achievements across the nation that are making our communities safer, stronger, more resilient and better prepared to manage any emergency situation.
'As part of our investment to build resilience, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies is committed to allocating up to 10% of appeals for disaster risk reduction,' said an IFRC statement on Rio+20, reported by PR Newswire. IFRC is calling on others to financially support long term resilience building.
The UN Secretary-General's Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction, Margareta Wahlström, today welcomed the US City of San Francisco as both a role model and the first major US city to join the Making Cities Resilient Campaign which seeks to saves lives and reduce economic losses in member cities.
The Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction, Margareta Wahlström, has just visited the site of a major reconstruction programme which is about to start in the earthquake-devastated centre of Christchurch, New Zealand."Over 300 million people live in urban seismic zones around the world which are just as high-risk as Christchurch but without the advantage of New Zealand's very high rate of insurance coverage of about 90% which includes earthquake insurance and, uniquely, also covers land damage," she said.
The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) today launched a new initiative to support cities around the world to manage risk following the worst year on record for economic losses from disasters. It also announced today that over 1,000 cities have now joined its "Making Cities Resilient" Campaign.
Mayors and other representatives from some of Asia's largest cities are gathering for three days in Manila to focus on urban resilience across the disaster-prone region. "I have experienced the power of peer-to-peer inspiration and learning and it works", remarks one of the last year's winners of the prestigious Sasakawa award for Disaster Risk Reduction who is currently in Manila attending a course on making cities more resilient against disasters.Al Arquilano, Vice Mayor of San Francisco (Camotes) in the Philippines and Sasakawa recipient, joins 40 mayors, local government leaders and city officials from eight countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) who are participating in the ASEAN Training Course on Urban Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) which began today.
A new report, released by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) and the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, describes how green buildings advance resiliency in disasters.
New York – Buried in the coverage of last year’s Great East Japan Earthquake is a success story of which the world should not lose sight, because it tells us much about how we manage risk in the twenty-first century. It is the story of how the Japanese people, through centuries of memory and shared experience, have built up their resilience to natural disasters. Indeed, as the sea reared up to ravage the country’s coast on March 11, 2011, more than 90% of the population in the affected areas had already fled to safety.
Geneva - The UN Secretary-General's Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction, Margareta Wahlström, marked International Women's Day today with a call to governments in the world's most disaster-prone countries to "empower girls and women through education and access to resources as part of building resilience to disasters at community level.