UN asks Asia-Pacific countries to invest more in preventing damage from disasters

MANILA, Philippines -- Disasters, including those wrought by fiercer storms, are threatening more people and could derail economic progress in the Asia Pacific region if governments don't invest more in disaster mitigation and prevention, a U.N. official said Tuesday.

U.N. Assistant Secretary-General Kamal Kishore, who heads the U.N. Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, issued the warning in a speech at the start of a regional conference on disaster mitigation hosted by the Philippines, one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries.

"Disasters are now affecting record numbers of people and threatening their lives and livelihoods,” Kishore told hundreds of delegates to the three-day conference in Manila led by ministers in charge of disaster mitigation and response across the Asia Pacific.

"Left unchecked, these disaster risks threaten to derail the development aspirations of the Asia Pacific region and push back progress that has taken decades to achieve,” he said.

Kishore said Asia Pacific countries should regularly dedicate funds in their national budgets for the reduction of disaster risk, and should allocate a larger proportion of foreign development aid to disaster prevention and “not simply response.”

Such investments have brought down death tolls, he said. "They do die, but the mortality is coming down compared to before,” Kishore separately told reporters in an interview on the sidelines of the Manila conference.

Discussions focused on better disaster-warning systems, sharing of technology and building more resilient infrastructure, houses and workplaces.

The Philippines, which is co-hosting the Manila conference, has been in the crosshairs of disasters given its location as an archipelago sandwiched between the Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea, where about 20 typhoons and storms blow across each year. It’s also in the so-called Pacific “Ring of Fire,” where volcanic eruptions and earthquakes have long been a constant threat.

"These are compounded by the increasing frequencies of hazards brought about by climate change, which makes the Philippines at risk and our landscape even more,” President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. told the conference in a keynote speech.

With better access to financing, technology and data, the most vulnerable states could build better resilience, Marcos said.

European Union Commissioner for Crisis Management Janez Lenarćić attended the U.N. disaster-mitigation conference in Manila because he said closer international cooperation was the only way for nations from Asia to Europe to confront “a new reality” of “unprecedented frequency and intensity of weather-related disasters."

“None of us will be able to face these new challenges alone,” Lenarćić told The Associated Press in an interview. “These disasters know no boundaries.”

Since 2020, the EU has allocated more than 80 million euros ($87 million) to the Asia Pacific region to help finance disaster preparedness and mitigation efforts, Lenarćić said, and he urged wealthier countries to contribute more to such campaigns.

"This region has gained a lot of experience in facing disasters, in building resilience, and we would like to learn also the experiences from this region,” he said of the Philippines and other Asian countries. “It’s a two-way street.”

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Associated Press journalists Joeal Calupitan and Aaron Favila in Manila contributed to this report.