Hanoi (VNS/VNA) - Localitieshave been urged to develop long-term disaster risk reduction plans to bettercope with catastrophes, an official said at a workshop held in Hanoi on March 6.

Speaking at the workshop on the SendaiFramework, Tran Quang Hoai, chief of the Vietnam Disaster ManagementAuthority, said: “Vietnam suffers an average annual loss of about 400 peoplewho are killed or missing due to natural disasters, as well as losses ofhundreds of millions of US dollars.”   

Vietnam has taken measures to cope with climatechange and prevent natural disasters, especially to improve the legal frameworkon natural disaster risk reduction, in which the Central Steering Committee forNatural Disaster Prevention and Control plays a key role.

In 2017, the Government established the VietnamDisaster Management Authority under the Ministry of Agriculture and RuralDevelopment to better manage disaster prevention from the central to locallevels.

“The Sendai Framework was adopted by UN MemberStates in March 2015 at the Third UN World Conference on Disaster RiskReduction in Sendai City in Japan,” he said. “The framework aimedto substantially reduce disaster risk and losses of lives, livelihoods andhealth and economic, physical, social, cultural and environmental assets ofpersons, businesses, communities and countries.” 

In Vietnam, disaster risk reduction is one of theurgent issues to be addressed, he said, adding that the Law on Natural DisasterPrevention and Control requires local governments at all levels to developlocal disaster risk reduction plans.

However, many provinces have not developedeffective disaster risk reduction plans, mostly due to a lack of money andhuman resources, as well as insufficient understanding of the purposes andsignificance of local disaster risk reduction planning, and lack of knowledgeand experience in methods to develop them.

Kenichiro Tachi, advisor for water resourcesmanagement and disaster risk reduction for the Ministry of Agriculture andRural Development, said that Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) hadprovided support to Vietnam through projects such as the “Project for BuildingDisaster Resilient Societies” from 2009 to 2016.  

JICA has also committed to continue its supportfor disaster risk reduction in Vietnam, he added.

The workshop was co-hosted by the VietnamDisaster Management Authority and the JICA’s office in Vietnam.

The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction2015-2030 is the first major agreement of a post-2015 development agenda, withseven targets and four priorities for action.

The framework is a 15-year, voluntary,non-binding agreement which recognises that the State has the primary role toreduce disaster risk but that responsibility should be shared with otherstakeholders, including local government, the private sector and others.-VNS/VNA