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World Disasters Report 2009 - Focus on early warning, early action
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Timely, preventive response to disaster risk requires
effective early warning systems that are technically
sound, politically viable and communally acceptable.
To curb increasing disaster risks and climate change
impacts, as highlighted in this year’s World Disasters
Report, it is high time to unite and to take concrete
concerted actions, for securing human life and livelihoods
and protecting socio-economic gains and opportunities. |
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Loren B. Legarda
Senator of the Republic of the Philippines
UNISDR Regional Champion for Disaster Risk Reduction and
Climate Change Adaptation for Asia Pacific and UNEP Laureate
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 While natural hazards cannot be prevented, they only become disasters because affected communities are vulnerable and unprepared. Early warning systems have been proved beyond doubt to save lives and reduce economic losses at all levels, as this report explains, but they are still not an integral part of disaster management and risk reduction globally. Nor is early action – the culture of prevention as the Hyogo Framework for Action called it – an effective and timely response to early
warning, across different timescales. This report argues that early warning without early action is not enough; early action can do more to reduce loss of life and protect livelihoods than can be achieved through emergency response alone. National governments, donors and all stakeholders must take up this challenge.
The World Disasters Report 2009 features:
 An introduction to early warning systems for different hazards
and early action
People-centred early warning and early action
Early action and bridging timescales
Climate change – the early warning
Food insecurity: what actions should follow early warning?
Plus: photos, tables, graphics and index
Published annually since 1993, the World Disasters Report brings together the latest trends, facts and analysis of contemporary crises – whether 'natural' or man-made, quick-onset or chronic.
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We are pleased to see that the new World Disasters Report
stresses the value of climate information in reducing
disaster risks. Decision makers need reliable, science-
based information to know how, where and when to
prepare. In developing such information, the IRI aims to
make sure its work is guided by real needs and is useable
by those who need it. |
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Stephen Zebiak, Director-General of the International Research Institute for climate and society (IRI). |
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