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Straits Times, 23 Jan 05
Disaster talks end with few specifics KOBE (JAPAN) - PROMISES of a tsunami early warning system was seen as the sole achievement of an international conference which ended in Japan yesterday, leaving as distant as ever a goal to find ways to reduce the number of lives taken by natural disasters. Experts and officials from around the world agreed to try to cut the number of deaths from disasters over the next decade, but aid workers noted a lack of details on steps needed to achieve this aim. The death of more than 225,000 people in last month's Indian Ocean tsunami had made an early warning system a top priority at the five-day UN-sponsored conference on disaster reduction in Kobe. 'All disaster-prone people deserve to have early warning systems,' Mr Jan Egeland, the UN's director of emergency relief, told a news conference. UN officials have promised to have a warning system up and running in the Indian Ocean within 12 to 18 months, and Salvano Briceno, head of the UN's disaster reduction body, said about US$8 million (S$13 million) had been pledged for the system. About US$4 million of that is from Japan, whose long history of earthquakes and devastating tsunamis has prompted it to set up a system that aims to issue a warning within three minutes, expertise it has pledged to use in the new system. The conference in Kobe, where 6,433 people were killed in an earthquake a decade ago, adopted a framework agreement to be implemented over the next 10 years. The steps agreed upon included cooperation to develop risk maps, the use of satellite technology to help with early warning and educating people in hazardous areas on what to do when an alarm is sounded. Officials worked late into the night to hammer out the details in statements which contained only general language committing countries to action, leading activists to describe the conference as another talking shop with nothing to show for itself. 'You have to ask whether this conference and its outcomes have honoured those who died in the Asian earthquake and tsunamis,' Ms Eva von Oelreich of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said in a statement. 'Have they brought hope to the survivors and to other vulnerable people that soon the day will come when the chance of such horror occurring again will have been reduced to the minimum?' Some delegates said negotiations were hampered by disagreement over measures to hold governments to promises and whether to require nations to pay a fixed amount to reduce the danger of disasters before they happen. Differences even appeared to have emerged over the tsunami warning system. Numerous proposals have emerged about the best system to adopt, and some delegates fear countries were jockeying for leadership of the high-profile project. UN officials, however, denied there was rivalry and said the world body would coordinate the process for the system. -- Reuters, AFP links Related articles on Tsunami and the environment |
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