Asian ministers take up climate change related uncertainty on agenda. A special issue number 169 of southasiadisasters.net has been launched at the Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction 2018 (AMCDRR) Mongolia by UN Women, UNFPA, JICA and Duryog Nivaran. It is titled “Understanding Uncertainty: Views from Kachchh, Mumbai, and Sundarbans”.
Uncertainty unfolds in many ways in the desert, delta and urban areas of Asia and this issue for the first time offers ways of thinking about uncertainty in disaster risk reduction framework. While there is overwhelming scientific evidence establishing a causal link between anthropogenic activity and climate change, there is a degree of uncertainty on the precise impacts of this phenomenon on the environment and human society.
The uncertainty induced by climate change poses a threat to the ecology, human settlements, biodiversity and economy. Greater uncertainty makes the prediction of extreme climate events like droughts, floods and extreme temperatures tougher which in turn causes problems for preparation against such contingencies. This is why climate change related uncertainty has become a great challenge to be addressed by planners, policymakers and at-risk communities.
The Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (AMCDRR) was established in 2005. It is a biennial conference jointly organised by different Asian countries (India, China, Thailand, Mongolia) and the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR).
AMCDRR aims to plan and strengthen implementation of Asian Regional Plan (ARP) for implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR). The ARP focuses on how to reduce disaster risk at national and local levels. ARP has longer term road map of cooperation and collaboration, spanning the 15-year horizon of the SFDRR.
ARP also has a two-year action plan to further DRR with specific and actionable activities. The result of AMCDRR 2018 called Ulaanbaatar Declaration argues for translating coherence of global frameworks into policy and practices to achieve resilience at national and local levels across all sectors of society. AMCDRR 2018 suggests achieving results by strengthening governance arrangements and by providing practical guidance to ensure effective and efficient management of disaster risk.
