United Nations Radio

victims of Cyclone Sidr

The vulnerability of human settlements is a major factor for disasters and governments and communities need to address it. That according to a senior United Nations official. Salvano Briceño of the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) says although climate change is an aggravating factor, there is a need to look at other critical ones.

He stresses the importance and urgency of reducing risk to natural hazards in all development planning processes which, he says, is not yet being done at the pace that is needed.

Briceño: There is clearly an increase of disasters in this last month that is very, very important to look at in detail and the basic message that we want to convey is that although climate change - it is an aggravating factor - there are other factors, other critical ones and that need to be paid attention which is in particular, the vulnerability of human settlements which is on the rise and it's not yet being fully addressed by governments and communities. Human settlements in urban areas are becoming vulnerable mainly when people choose or are allowed to live in risk areas - along the river banks ...slopes. Urban areas become populated too quickly with people escaping from war or poverty with not enough attention by governments for planning the settlement for their safety; the rapid expansion of urban areas that makes risk reduction a more urgent priority.

NARRATOR: Mr. Briceno says having good early warning systems is clearly an important component of risk reduction but there are several other measures that are more urgent and more important. He says the issue of climate change and the weather-related factors are extremely important.

Briceño: But we do want to call the attention on the importance and urgency of reducing risk to natural hazards in all development planning processes. And that is not yet being done at the pace that is needed....We know that Pakistan, Russia, China, Niger - all the disasters happening at this moment are all countries whose governments are doing a lot but clearly not enough because these measures take time. For example, we mention always that the situation of countries like Chile or Cuba are visibly very different than that of Haiti, or Bangladesh with regards to Myanmar. We saw how disasters happening in these countries with more or les the same periods of time where they had very different impacts. That is what needs to be..why in some places when hazards hit, disasters are greater and why in other places disasters have less impact. It's human intervention.

NARRATOR: Briceno points out that certain natural occurrences are known, including the times of rainfall and monsoons and the melting of the glaciers in the Himalayas which cause floods.

This is Donn Bobb reporting for United Nations Radio.
Duration: 3'12"