The lethal devastation that struck Japan in March was a traumatic reminder that the Asia-Pacific region is the most disaster-prone region on the planet, but also that the international community has not succumbed to fatalism and is in fact mounting a global race against time to reduce the risk and damage of such phenomena.

The effort is parallel to other associated campaigns to improve post-disaster emergency response or to mitigate climate changes that increase such disasters.

 People in the Asia-Pacific region are four times more likely to be affected by natural disasters than those in Africa and 25 times more likely than those in Europe or North America according to a UN report released October 2010 at the Fourth Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Incheon, Korea. http://www.unescap.org/unis/press/2010/oct/g53.asp

http://www.unisdr.org/news/v.php?id=16172

The report noted that while the region generated one quarter of the world's GDP, it accounted for a staggering 85 per cent of deaths and 38 per cent of global economic losses due to natural disasters over the last three decades.

As a region highly prone to natural disasters with disproportionate impacts on human development, and facing new threats from climate change, the Asia-Pacific region has surprisingly lacked a comprehensive regional assessment of disasters. Accordingly, ESCAP and ISDR collaborated to produce the Asia and Pacific Disaster Report 2010.

Underling the point, The Economist magazine of London published on March21 A World Bank survey stating that while the Japanese earthquake and tsunami disaster might be the costliest in history at $325 billion, the 1995 Kobe earthquake ranking second, China was the victim of three of the ten worst disasters and a total of five in the 20 worst, with Japan's Niigata earthquake also registering among the top 20. http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/03/natural_disasters&fsrc=nwl

It has also been reported that climate change disasters account for approximately 80% of today's natural disasters, leading to the consensus that both mitigation and adaption strategies and plans should be mainstreamed into national policymaking everywhere. At a basic level, early warning systems and prior planning for emergency relief should be part of these strategies.

Jerry Velasquez, the senior regional coordinator for international strategy for disaster reduction, speaking to a Brussels audience of specialists in at the Europaid Infopoint centre Brussels March 21 also stressed similar points in a briefing on current research and other efforts. He noted that in Asia-Pacific region, China and India were the most affected. He added that while poorer regions were heavily affected by natural disasters, and if more Millennium Development Goals were met, damage seemed reduced, but   it was actually middle-income countries that suffered the worst. He and others have observed that economic development frequently is intense in more vulnerable coastal regions and that urbanization and other practices also deplete defences and intensify some exposure.

A central point of his message is that raising awareness that preparations can reduce the damage and victims and that sound research and data on risks, best practices and strategies were essential to building capacity. The data gathered to date from various institutions, such as Europaid, provided valuable insights for devising strategies and programs to reduce disaster impact. But he noted that other input was needed from others,such as the EU's development cooperation, its ACP system and others which did not participate yet in the research.

But he presented graphs, charts and other data detailing the degree of risk exposure for all countries in the Asia-Pacific region to various forms of natural disasters. In this respect, he indicated that Vietnam and the Philippines are probably the most advanced in the region in formulating such national strategies and plans. But he added that even these efforts are limited by national capacity and resources. They sometimes, for example, make provisions for building dykes, seawalls or other protection for a one-metre rise in sea levels, but the possibility cannot be excluded for rises above that.

There is also a need, he said, to follow-up work done at the EU level to development a methodology for needs assessments by sectors in responding to emergencies.