Hosted by the Spanish Dirección General de Protección Civil y Emergencias, the Chair of the EFDRR, the 5th European Forum for Disaster Risk Reduction was co-organized in collaboration with the Council of Europe (EUR-OPA), European Commission and UNISDR Europe from 6-8 October 2014. The meeting called for a strong joint action to face the common challenges of climate change, sustainable development and disaster risk reduction.
“The discussions have shown how the forum is moving forward strongly in addressing the challenges,” said meeting co-Chair Daniel Cano from Spain’s Directory General for Civil Protection and Emergencies.
The role of science was among issues raised on the opening day of the conference. “The scientific community offers a means of achieving greater integration in the global agendas”, said Virginia Murray, a UK public health consultant and vice-chair of the UNISDR Science and Technology Advisory Group. See Virginia Murray’s presentation on “Science and Technology for the Post-2015 DRR framework – EFDRR discussion”.
The Madrid outcome document from the meeting emphasized the need to champion, reinforce and better connect existing and future initiatives for integrated research and the scientific assessment of disaster risk thorough an adequate international scientific advisory mechanism. For the S&T component, the document stressed the value of respective contributions of disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation to deal with the growing challenged associated to climate change and agrees to contribute to the 21st Conference Of Parties on Climate Change 2015 debates through the support of EFDRR Working Group on DRR and CCA.
The meeting also shared best practices such as the ENHANCE project that highlighted the importance of risks partnerships between companies and governments.
The Madrid conference is the latest in a series of regional meetings aimed at forging consensus on a new international framework for disaster reduction and revising the existing global blueprint, the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA).
EFDRR’s recommendations will be shared with the co-Chairs of the Inter-Governmental Preparatory Committee working on a revised draft document for November’s second preparatory conference in Sendai.
