UN urges crisis prevention, mitigation steps

The UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (Escap) has urged the region to brace for a rise in the number of natural disasters and financial crises by putting in place prevention and mitigation measures. 

Meanwhile, Myanmar President Thein Sein has been invited to attend Escap’s regional development policy forum, which starts tomorrow in Bangkok. 

The best solution to a likely rise in the number of crises is to ensure prevention and mitigation measures are in place, since post-crisis recovery costs are enormous, Shamika Sirimanne, Escap’s director of information and communications technology and the agency’s disaster risk-reduction division, said yesterday.

She made the remark at a press conference during her presentation of a study on “building resilience to natural disasters and major economic crises”. 

“The research finds that these natural disasters, financial crises, oil and food-price crises, they are increasingly becoming larger and having so much more of an impact, so if we want to address these crises after the event, we have to put in an enormous amount of money for relief efforts, and so forth. What we find is that the solution is to prepare for the shocks in advance, which is much cheaper and can be achieved,” she said. 

Sirimanne said the study would be presented to policy-makers at the regional development policy forum, which takes place from tomorrow through May 1. 

U Thein Sein has been invited to join the forum, as well as Deputy Prime Minister Plodprasop Suraswadi, who is in charge of Thailand’s Bt350-billion water-management project. 

UN officials are waiting for confirmation that Myanmar’s president will be able to join the event.

 Sirimanne said the study had found that Asia-Pacific was particularly prone to natural disasters. For example, Thailand was hit hard by the massive flooding in 2011. 

 Moreover, economic interconnection with other regions also makes Asia-Pacific vulnerable to any financial crises that originate in other parts of the world, such as the financial crisis in the United States during 2007-2008, she added.