Asean Members Assess Lessons From Natural Disaster

BANGKOK, Nov 25 (Bernama) -- Representatives from Asean member countries meet in Jakarta Monday, to assess lessons they have learned and action taken to increase the resilience of agricultural livelihoods to natural disasters, mindful that the 10-year anniversary of the devastating Indian Ocean Tsunami is just weeks away. Several countries in the Asean region were among the hardest hit by the Dec 26, 2004 tsunami, particularly Indonesia’s Aceh province, said the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations. The FAO has jointly, with the Indonesian Government and the Asean Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance convened a technical workshop to consider the resilience of agriculture to major disasters. It said the workshop shared lessons learned from the Indian Ocean Tsunami – and other major disasters such as Typhoon Haiyan that struck the Philippines just over a year ago – and assessed what remained to be done in the agriculture forestry and fisheries sectors to prevent a recurrence of such widescale damage and losses. During the opening remarks, FAO Deputy Regional Representative, Vili Fuavao, on behalf of FAO Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative, Hiroyuki Konuma highlighted that reducing risks and increasing resilience to natural disasters and extreme climate events was a priority for FAO and was now mainstreamed in all relevant work. FAO said the workshop’s participants were considering a number of lessons learned from across the region, including better governance practices such as development/implementation of technical standards for risk reduction and management in agriculture; vulnerability assessments and early warning systems; prevention and mitigation measures to reduce risks and impacts, among others. -- BERNAMA