Conference agrees non-binding pledge on disasters

The world’s nations – united in shock over the Indian Ocean tsunami – agreed today to work together to better guard against natural disasters, with steps ranging from stronger building codes to expanded monitoring of nature’s upheavals.

In a first concrete step, four weeks after an earthquake and tsunami killed between 157,000-220,000 people in 11 nations, the World Conference on Disaster Reduction, meeting in Kobe, Japan, laid groundwork for the Indian Ocean’s first tsunami early warning system, expected to be in place next year.

The five-day, 168-nation UN conference concluded – after dozens of workshops and a final night of closed-door negotiations – by adopting a “framework for action” to reduce disaster losses in the next 10 years.

This is “one of the most critical challenges” facing the world, a final declaration said, because cyclones, floods, earthquakes and other events set back human progress, especially in poor nations.

Some were disappointed that conference documents were non-binding, committed no new money to risk reduction, and set no hard targets for assessing progress.

Japan, for example, had proposed setting a goal of cutting water-related disaster deaths in half by 2015, but the US delegation and others opposed such ideas.

The international Red Cross said it would continue to advocate firm targets and more aid for poor countries’ disaster readiness. “The international community has 2005 to make concrete its promises,” said the relief agency’s Eva von Oelreich.

The chief UN official in Kobe, Jan Egeland, said he believed the 10-year action plan could halve disaster casualties by 2015.

The conference in Kobe, a city battered by an earthquake 10 years ago, brought together 4,000 diplomats, development specialists, scientists, economists, aid workers and others to try channelling experience and resources into building better human defences against the worst of nature.

Each day delegates could see the need – in the latest news footage from coastlines ravaged by the giant waves spawned by the December 26 earthquake near Indonesia’s Sumatra island.

“It heightened our awareness of the importance of stepping up our joint efforts,” said Marco Ferrari of Switzerland, drafting committee chairman for the conference, planned months before the tsunami.