International Early Warning Conference for Natural Disasters Opens in Bonn, Germany
The International Early Warning Conference for Natural Disasters, which opened in Bonn, Germany yesterday, confirmed that an early warning system for South Asia will be established by July this year.
The earthquake off the eastern coast of Sumatra on December 26, 2004, which triggered a tsunami, along with a series of earthquakes in the same region this March, claimed the lives of 223,492 people across 12 countries and caused damages exceeding $10 billion.
Bill Clinton, the UN Special Envoy for Disaster Recovery, stated that the early warning system (EWS) will save many lives and urged stakeholders to accelerate the establishment of this system. However, he emphasized, “The complex and sophisticated EWS will be meaningless if signals do not reach a community trained to protect itself when the alarms sound.“
The Bonn Conference stressed that the transition from words to action will include: creating a list of response strategies, illustrated by practical examples to support residents living in high-risk areas (including actions from national to community and civilian levels regarding risk assessment and implementation checks); compiling a catalog of all early warning projects to select the most effective ones at a future conference; and conducting scientific studies of the system to be presented at a workshop on science and technology to discover optimal warning methods.
Based on this, a “Global Study on an Early Warning System” has been prepared at the request of the UN Secretary-General and was presented at the conference. According to the study, the EWS is not a centrally controlled system but rather a network of systems based on the technological capabilities and expertise of various economic and social sectors.
For effectiveness, the EWS must focus on people and integrate four key elements: knowledge of the hazards that individuals must confront, technical warning and monitoring services, dissemination of warnings to those living in high-risk areas, and the awareness and readiness of the communities living in these vulnerable regions. The study emphasizes, “The failure of any one of these four elements will lead to the failure of the entire system.”
This research is compiled based on data collected from 122 countries.
TRẦN ĐỨC THÀNH (IPS, AFP, CNA)
