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OPENING STATEMENT
 BY
MR. KIM HAK-SU
EXECUTIVE SECRETARY
UNITED NATIONS ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COMMISSION FOR ASIA
AND THE PACIFIC

Your Excellency Dr. Bhokin Balakula, Minister of the Interior, Royal Thai Government,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,

First of all, I would like to express on behalf of UNESCAP our sincere appreciation to His Excellency the Minister of the Interior of the Royal Thai Government for his presence today at the commemoration of the International Day for Natural Disaster Reduction of 2004 on the theme "Learning to Live with Risk". The theme reflects the 2005 World Disaster Reduction Campaign in the lead up to the World Conference on Disaster Reduction (WCDR) as well as the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014) showing the importance of learning in disaster reduction to raise public awareness and understanding in relation to past experience, sharing of information as well as conducting educational services.

The map on the slide (slide 1) shows major flooded areas of the world in 2004. As you can see most of the floods occur in the Asia-Pacific region, with Bangladesh as one of the major areas affected. This reminds us of the recommendations of the World Summit on Sustainable Development held in Johannesburg in September 2002, which called, among others, for “an integrated, multi-hazard, inclusive approach to address vulnerability, risk assessment and disaster management, including prevention, mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery, as an essential element of a safer world in the twenty-first century.”

The economic cost of natural disasters (slide 2 and slide 3) has continued to increase during the past half century.  This increase of economic impacts continues to threaten the good progress made in most parts of Asia in recent years as seen from the slide in the rates of economic growth in the region.  The losses are particularly damaging when depriving countries of resources, which could otherwise be used for economic and social development.  The toll of these losses is most severe and tragic in the least developed countries of the region. 

The next slide (slide 4) shows the difference in exposure of nations to the socio-economic impacts of natural disasters. It is important to recognize this difference as one of the most important challenges to "environmentally sustainable economic growth" in the region, the theme recently adopted for the Fifth Ministerial Conference on Environment and Sustainable Development in Asia and the Pacific, to be held in Seoul in March 2005.  In achieving a process of sustainable growth in the region, living with risk is an unfortunate necessity.

UNESCAP has been promoting good practices, especially during the past few years, to enable countries and disaster-prone communities to learn from these examples how to live with risk.

Natural disasters are often linked to water-related disasters such as those shown here (slide 5).  Major disasters in the region include floods, cyclones, earthquakes, drought, tornados, landslides etc.

Some years have been more severe than others. This year has just seen a number of powerful typhoons causing damage to countries in the region, but also in the 1990’s there have been critical years.

Disasters bring with them high numbers of casualties and damage in the range of hundreds of billions of US dollars.

Several countries in the region have gained experience in how to deal with water-related disasters. Such experiences range from Flood Risk Management as an integral part of the national development process in Japan and the Republic of Korea; Flood Risk Management as a social component of development in Bangladesh; Storm-water risk management in Malaysia; and Integrated River Basin Management is being applied in major river basins in the region.

Japan and the Republic of Korea have applied two contrasting approaches in their way of dealing with water-related disaster management.

After 1945, Japan made flood control one of its Five-year Plan priority areas and put two-thirds of public investment towards flood risk management and disaster rehabilitation. The Republic of Korea instead integrated flood risk management at the village level through the Program for Village Environmental Improvement (Saemael Undong) from 1970 through a period of high economic growth rates during the next decade, and with the full incorporation of flood risk management in the 4th Five-year plan (1977-1981) According to a recent statistical study, the frequency of flood disasters in the Republic of Korea was higher than that in Japan during the period 1964-1986 (although the severity of flood disasters was less than that in Japan.).  The experience in the Republic of Korea has showed that community participation in flood control programmes should be considered an important factor for integrating it into the national socio-economic development programme.

In Bangladesh, flood risk management was implemented as an integral part of participatory river basin management, with slogans such as "let the river expand", "be aware of danger" and by developing an effective forecasting and warning system. With this new philosophy on how to live with risk, Bangladesh people let the river burst, they are aware of its danger and are better prepared using forecasts and warnings.  The integrated actions in Bangladesh resulted in a considerable reduction in the number of lives lost in the major flood in 1998.

Flood-risk management is a social component of national development in several developing countries, where the costs of structural measures are too high compared with annual government budgets or allocations for public sector investment.  The example of Bangladesh provides one of the best practices in this category.  Bangladesh, with the population of over 120 million, suffers severe annual floods, which submerge about one fifth to one third of the country by overflowing rivers to varying degrees during the monsoon.  With the adoption of the Water and Flood Management Strategy of Bangladesh in 1995, as an overall framework to prioritize flood-risk management activities for national development, the Government could mobilize active participation of the affected communities and assistance from the donor community. 

In Malaysia, the focus has been on storm-water risk management, which has faced a number of challenges. Major engineering options in relation to water-related disaster management have become increasingly expensive and land acquisition for such management in urban areas has become difficult.  The local governments and the private sector are encouraged to assume a larger role in order to promote the concept and practice of cost recovery from direct beneficiaries.  The country's integrated approach to storm-water risk management is part of its Vision 2020.

In several countries, activities on water-related disaster reduction were conceived as an important part of an environmental management strategy for sustainable development.  Examples of such strategies include the conceptual approach to flood control and management initiated by His Majesty the King of Thailand for the Chao Phraya River basin in Thailand; the amendment of the River Law of Japan in 1997 to incorporate environmental dimensions in the flood control programmes; and the Klang River Basin Environmental Improvement and Flood Mitigation Project in Malaysia in 1998 (slide 6).  In all these examples, clear strategic approaches are first developed to ensure that the respective action programmes are well established and the participation of all stakeholders is guided towards the adopted vision.

Sustainable economic development of countries, therefore, requires effective integration of typhoon-related disaster mitigation into water resources management and thus into the socio-economic development process.  As seen in the following charts (slide 7), in the Philippines, damage-costs, deaths and missing persons are on the increase.  Damage to houses is relatively high because the Philippines is located on the path of cyclones, and with the rapid increase in population, most of the houses and buildings are not strong enough to withstand typhoons and floods.  Thailand has relatively few disasters, but the urban type of flooding, such as that in Bangkok Metropolis, has become in recent years a major economic problem.  Looking at flood management in the Chao Phraya Delta, including Bangkok Metropolis, it is worthwhile to note a rapid improvement in flood mitigation, which may be the reason for the recent trend in reduction of damage cost.  The experiences of effective integration of typhoon-related disaster management into the socio-economic development process of Japan and Republic of Korea as illustrated in the next charts show the importance of the continuity and consistency in investment in these mitigation activities as part of the process.  In the case of Japan, annual investment in disaster management activities continues to account for nearly 1 per cent of GDP.  These experiences clearly show that living with risk requires integrated water resource management as well as continuity in public investment.

In conclusion, it can be noted that the actual damage of water-related disasters in the region has continued to increase with countries showing different levels of preparedness in relation to early warning capability, levels of investment in disaster prevention as well as public awareness.

However, past cooperation among the UNESCAP countries has established a good network of experts and modern facilities to monitor disasters, including several effective flood forecasting-systems. It is evident that regional cooperation as promoted by UNESCAP offers the best approach to "learning to live with risk", the topic of this year's International Day for Natural Disaster Reduction.

I would like to take this opportunity to assure you of the continuing efforts of UNESCAP to further strengthen these regional networks, including our partnership with ADPC and the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation of the Royal Thai Government, to achieve the common Millennium Development Goals.  With the cooperation of all concerned, together we can help build a safer world in the twenty-first century.

Thank you for your attention.