Daily Times

A three day Regional Consultative Committee (RCC) meeting hosted in collaboration with the Office of Civil Defense (OCD), Department of National Defense, Philippines and the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC) with an overarching theme of ‘Sustainable Resilience through Inclusive Governance, Finance, and Local Action’ was held from 5-7 December in the Manila, Philippines. Representatives from 18 countries and over 20 organizations participated in the meeting. Lt Gen Inam Haider Malik, Chairman National Disaster Management Authority represented Pakistan in the 17th session of RCC meeting on the invite of ADPC & Government of Philippines.

Chairman NDMA apprised the forum about the catastrophic state of Floods 2022 experienced by the people of Pakistan. He emphasized that unless ‘Global Climate Goals’ are benchmarked like SDGs, climate erratic recurring events will impact all across the regions. “Handling more than one climate induced emergencies for country like Pakistan (who would still be in rehabilitation stage of current crisis) will be devastating, hence immediate measures are required by the global community”, the Chairman added. He also underscored the need for sharing of latest technology from developed countries to help build a scenario based early warning system in countries like Pakistan being severely affected by the climatic changes.

Chairman NDMA invoked the idea of intellectual exchanges amongst global and regional institutions working on disaster preparedness and management. He suggested global academia connectivity through institutions like National Institute of Disaster Management (NIDM) Pakistan, to enable research exchange on disaster management and climate change for collective benefit of all regions beside sustained engagement of experts to make collage of researches and archiving of experiences. The idea to create an Action Planner Organization of all the regional NDMAs and equivalents was also stressed upon by the Pakistan side. During the session, the Chairman has stressed upon enabling of forecast based financing by global collaborative frameworks to address hybrid poverty – disaster needs. He also suggested ADPC to develop more action oriented strategies to attract and retain support for highly vulnerable countries like Pakistan. The Chairman also highlighted crucial role of mass media that could help in creating awareness about changing climate and disseminate/propagate disaster mitigation/management messages to communities for surviving against natural calamities. Chairman NDMA appreciated the hosts for providing a platform to the member countries for, highlighting the importance of promoting risk management in Asia and the Pacific region. The meeting aimed to accelerate the implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR), the Paris Agreement, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through inclusive governance, finance, regional cooperation, and local action, concluded with closing remarks from member countries and issuance of Manila statement.