“For every peso invested in reducing risk, we have saved seven pesos in disaster management,” Santos said. More than 10 million people have benefitted from government disaster risk reduction programmes. Over the past three years, the programmes have reduced the impact of natural disasters on people by 51 per cent, he said.

Community-level disaster resistance drills form an important part of the approach, he said. “Many do not believe in the importance of drills, but they are very important. If you know what needs to be done, the difference is considerable,” he said.

Around Ituango, over 20,000 people participated in 19 evacuation drills and 163 workshops led by the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management, which also installed numerous warning systems in the affected municipalities.

In her opening address to the three-day conference, Special Representative of the UN General-Secretary for Disaster Risk Reduction and head of the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, Mami Mizutori, applauded Colombia’s achievements.

“Colombia stands out for its many successes in disaster risk reduction. It was the first country to align its national development plan with the (UN’s) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Sendai Framework, explicitly integrating disaster risk reduction and action on climate change as conditions for resilient growth,” she said.

But Santos warned that Colombia still faces big challenges, including the full implementation of the national plan for risk reduction and complying with its international commitments under the Sendai Framework, the global plan for disaster risk reduction adopted in 2015.

Date:

20 Jun 2018

Sources:

United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction – Regional Office for the Americas (UNISDR AM)

Themes:

Early Warning, Complex Emergency, Critical Infrastructure

Hazards:

Land Slide

Countries:

Colombia

Regions:

Americas