Urban resilience underlined for tackling disasters in Asia

Asian ministers delved into strategies for strengthening disaster resilient infrastructure and urban resilience at the ongoing Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction on July 5.

A featured conference, Deputy Prime Minister U.Enkhtuvshin noted, “Mongolia is landlocked, has extreme climate, located in an area of high seismic activity, and two thirds of its population lives in urban areas. The dramatically increasing frequency of earthquakes in recent years is becoming a serious concern for all of us. This conference themed ‘Strengthening Disaster Resilient Infrastructure and Urban Resilience’ is especially important for Mongolia because it opens opportunities to learn from successful practices and experience of other countries, support public-private partnership, and attract investment for strengthening resilience of cities, enhance infrastructure, and mitigating disaster risks.”

He mentioned that Mongolia is very supportive of the UNISDR’s flagship Making Cities Resilient campaign – which has grown into a global network of more than 3,300 local governments since its launch in 2010. He believes that the campaign will play an important role for achieving the fifth target in the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, which targets to substantially increase the number of countries with national and local disaster risk reduction strategies by 2020.

Later, Deputy Head of the National Emergency Management Agency B.Uuganbayar shared a presentation on the “Achievements of Ongoing Measures for Improving Earthquake Resilience of Buildings” and Secretary of the Institute of Disaster Management M.Serjmyadag on “Disaster Resilience of Infrastructure in Ulaanbaatar”.

Participants of the Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction plan to discuss the progress achieved in implementing the Sendai Framework at the regional and national levels, outline recommendations for reducing and mitigating the risk of disasters and aligning risk reduction activities with the Sustainable Development Goals, as well as adopt the Action Plan for the Asian Region in 2018-2020 and the Ulaanbaatar Declaration on Disaster Risk Reduction.