Disaster Reduction: Kobe Conference (Hansard, 19 October 2004)

HL Deb 19 October 2004 vol 665 cc651-2 651

§ 3.2 p.m.

§ Lord Hunt of Chesterton asked Her Majesty's Government:

§ Whether their policy objectives at the forthcoming conference on disaster reduction in Kobe, Japan, in January 2005 will include the improvement of the international exchange of predictions and warnings, and the provision of assistance to developing countries most at risk.

§ The Lord President of the Council (Baroness Amos)
My Lords, DfID's objectives for the Kobe conference include an improvement in the dissemination of information on early warnings. The Government will continue to support developing countries most at risk of disasters.

§ Lord Hunt of Chesterton
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her reply. Is she aware that despite the great technical advances in the prediction of natural disasters, there are still very limited arrangements for the international exchange of warnings, especially of major floods, and that some countries have resisted the free exchange of warnings? Will the Government be assisting developing countries through governmental insurance arrangements which need to be established? I declare an interest as a member of the advisory committee for natural disaster reduction.

§ Baroness Amos
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Hunt is right; there are limited arrangements for the exchange of information. One of the things that we will be seeking to do at the conference is to promote the findings of the DfID commissioned scoping study 652 which contains recommendations on a range of issues that can contribute to a more effective international response to tackling disaster risk reduction.

§ Baroness Northover
My Lords, is the Minister aware—she surely is—that 98 per cent of those affected by natural disasters are in developing countries and that the impact of these natural disasters has increased threefold since the 1970s? What plans is DfID now making to improve its country assistance plans so that it puts in the mainstream measures to combat these natural disasters?

§ Baroness Amos
My Lords, the noble Baroness is right. The figures for the impact of disasters on developing countries as against that on developed countries indicate that as well as the human factors the economic impact in particular is much greater in developing countries.
One of the criticisms made of DfID in a recent NAO report was that we should do more to encourage developing countries that are prone to disasters to include disaster preparedness in their country's assistance plans. The scoping study, which I mentioned earlier, is one mechanism for doing that. We will use the recommendations coming out of that report to develop a further strategy on disaster preparedness.

§ Lord Tanlaw
My Lords, does the noble Baroness not agree that catastrophes can occur not only in developing countries? If there is a connection between the greenhouse effect, about which the Government's Chief Scientist has recently warned, and any form of slowing down of or change in the circulation of the Gulf Stream, it will affect the whole of northern Europe, which does not comprise developing countries. Is anything being done to monitor the situation and possibly discover whether we are vulnerable to such a catastrophe?

§ Baroness Amos
My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord did not take from my reply that only developing countries are impacted by these changes. The impact on developing countries is much greater than the impact on the developed world.
On climate change, in its Synthesis Report for the Third Assessment Report in 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change noted the increasing body of observation giving a collective picture of a warming world. That is why one of the issues we are going to put at the front of our agenda as part of our G8 discussions next year is climate change not only in parts of Africa and Asia but also in the rest of the world.