The United Nations has designated the 1990s as the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR) to reduce loss of life, property damage, and economic disruption caused by natural disasters especially in developing countries. However, effective actions taken to materialize its goals have been few.

Natural hazards, such as earthquakes, tsunamis, cyclones, floods, drought and volcanic eruptions, pose a risk of a natural disaster only in relation to human exposure to them, and the vulnerability of the population exposed.

Considerable progress has been made in managing natural disaster risk in developed countries over the past four or five decades. But risk at the global level is still great. In many developing countries, disasters, environmental degradation and poverty form a closely-knit vicious cycle. Natural disaster mitigation is essential for sustainable development, because the effects of disasters pose heavy strains on development efforts and divert funds from other needed purposes.

Losses due to natural disasters cannot be nullified, but they may be mitigated by integrating new and existing knowledge, and by managing risk through various structural and non-structural strategies. International cooperation is needed to meet the challenge of this ever present and complex problem.

The United Nations University (UNU), together with the World Seismic Safety Initiative (WSSI), the International Center for Disaster-Mitigation Engineering (INCEDE) of the University of Tokyo, and Stanford University, is initiating a Global Network in Natural Disaster Risk Management (GLO-DISNET) to act as a catalyst in formulating effective programmes to deal with the issues and global risk associated with natural disasters.

The approach will be multi-disaster and multi-faceted, ranging from disaster preparedness through response strategies to community recovery. The focus will be on assisting developing countries in managing risks associated with natural disasters through research, capacity building and information.

UNU Agenda 21

In December 1993, the UNU Council approved of a UNU Agenda 21 for the UNU Programme on Environmentally Sustainable Development. The UNU Agenda 21 defines the general direction and suggests specific lines of action for a new work programme taking into account the principle outputs of the Rio Earth Summit.

The UNU Agenda 21 identifies three principal methodological approaches and areas for focus of UNU activities: (1) Eco-Restructuring; (2) The Capacity of Ecosystems; and (3) Environmental Governance.

The Global Network on Natural Disaster Risk Management falls within the second of these areas: namely, the Capacity of Ecosystems. The programme aggregates issues of environmentally sustainable development from the entry point of the capacity of ecosystems and their ability to support, resist or recuperate from the long-term impact of major transformations, including natural disasters and their effects.