On October 13th, 1989 The United Nation’s General Assembly made a call for an international day to promote risk-awareness and disaster reduction. October 13th was hailed as the “International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction.” Disasters can come in many different forms — both natural or artificial. This observed day is dedicated to encouraging a global culture of reducing the risk of disasters. Reducing the risk starts by first identifying potential risks to not only ourselves and our communities, but to the world. This isn’t just a day for ourselves to look at disaster risk reduction, such as preparing our homes for earth quakes, or checking our fire extinguishers, but to see our community and our fellow countries and what risks might be looming.
Identifying certain ways of capacity building through international cooperation is a large component of this International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction. There is a particular focus on how low and middle-income countries are disproportionately affected by disasters. This year is focusing on climate change as it will likely become overwhelming for developing countries within the next ten years. Whether or not you believe in climate change as a human-propagated phenomenon or understand that climate change is a cyclical and ongoing event, we can see that the weather patterns are changing and the climate will indeed cause many natural disasters in the near future.
From our homes, there isn’t a lot that we can do, but you can read more about the International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction here on the UN website, or the more specific UNDRR website here.
You can also help spread awareness of this day along with me by tweeting about this call to action. This webpage has a few sample tweets that you can use to help participate!
