Japan SPOTLIGHT November/December 2015 issue

Japan SPOTLIGHT November/December 2015 issue

COVER STORY:Disaster Mitigation
Global Discussion & Developments
Disaster Risk Mitigation is now one of the major issues being discussed at various international venues, including the United Nations and the OECD, against the background of increasing awareness of the need to be well prepared for large-scale natural disasters, such as Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami in 2011.

The UN Sendai Conference in March 2015 sent a message to the world that we should get together and collaborate with each other, not only at national government level but also among private businesses and individuals and NGOs, to be well prepared for disasters. Knowledge of how to minimize potential damage inflicted by a disaster is a starting point for Disaster Risk Mitigation, but it is a much broader concept involving national resilience against any disaster and requiring collaboration and coherent efforts among all the players in a globalized world to achieve it. This is mostly a matter of software and not hardware, and thus education and exchange of information among national governments, private sectors and NGOs would be instrumental in achieving it.