Reducing disaster risk key to achieve MDGs

INCREASING the resilience of Asian countries to disasters and climate change thru “enabling policy environment for effective disaster risk reduction” is important for the nations to be able to achieve sustainable socio-economic development and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Sen. Loren Legarda said Thursday.

Speaking during the open ceremonies of the Asian Parliamentarians Meet with the theme “Disaster Risk Reduction: An Instrument for Achieving the Millennium Development Goals,” Legarda highlighted the burgeoning effect brought on by climate change impacts and disaster risks to Asian countries’ development.

The meeting, which will run from Thursday to Saturday (November 27), aims to provide a forum for leading parliamentarians from Asian countries to share their insights on why policies on the reduction of disaster risks are primal for the nations’ development.

Among the countries represented in the meeting include Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, Maldives, Pakistan, the Philippines and Thailand.

Legarda, also chair of Senate foreign relations and climate change committees and a United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction champion for disaster risk reduction in Asia and Pacific, singled out disaster risk reduction as “one development issue that cuts across all these developmental concerns.”

She said that a “conscientious parliamentarian” would never want to see “the poor and most vulnerable constantly drawn back into abject poverty for lack of government investments in disaster and climate risk reduction.”

Resolving the issue on disaster risk reduction is today’s most daunting task for all sectors, she said. –Bernice Camille V. Bauzon, Manila Times