UN-backed conference discusses early warning systems for natural disasters

With over 200 million people affected every year by natural hazards, and 15 months after the Indian Ocean tsunami claimed more than 200,000 lives, 1,200 participants from 140 countries today opened a United Nations-backed conference on early warning systems, widely recognized as the best way to save lives.

“This action-oriented conference will be an opportunity to highlight, through the presentation of projects in the field, the importance of early warning mechanisms for people’s daily lives,” UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland said of the three-day event in Bonn, Germany.

Former United States President Bill Clinton, the UN’s Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery, said that making communities safer – by better managing the risks of natural hazards – must become a global priority.

Hosted by the German Government under the auspices of the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR), the conference will be divided into two parallel streams: a Projects and Priorities Forum in plenary, where some 15 projects will illustrate the relevance of early warning systems, and a Scientific and Technical Symposium, which will be attended by scientists and practitioners of early warning.

Experts believe that many tens of thousands of lives could have been saved in the Indian Ocean tsunami of 26 December, 2004, if there had been an early warning system such as the one existing in the Pacific Ocean, currently the world’s only fully functioning system.

As it was several hours passed between the quake that spawned the tsunami off the Indonesian island of Sumatra and the landfall of the waves in some regions such as Sri Lanka, wasting precious time in which many could have fled to higher ground.

Mr. Egeland is to present a report on a Global Survey of Early Warning Systems called for by the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan after the tsunami.

The UN is now leading efforts to set up such systems, both in the Indian Ocean and elsewhere, based on quake and tidal sensors, speedy communications, alarm networks from radio to cell phones, and disaster preparedness training in vulnerable regions.

Between 1991 and 1999 the number of people affected by natural disasters doubled. In 2005 alone, a total of 149 disasters killed 97,000 people, affected over 133 million others and caused economic losses of $220 billion. The 2004 tsunami caused $10 billion worth of damage.