High-Level Panel on Water and Disasters
There is an urgent need to raise specific attention to the water and sanitation dimensions of disasters and post-disaster recovery. Addressing this need would directly impact the efforts in reaching the Millennium Development Goals. Above all, it would facilitate the reduction of the number of victims of water-related disasters, as well as reducing the number of victims suffering from poor water supply sanitation conditions during and after a disaster, and during the reconstruction phase. In 2008 alone, 321 disasters killed 235,816 people, affected 211 million others and cost US$181 billion.
With the overall goal of ensuring the provision of adequate safe water and sanitation during and after disasters, the Panel was set up as an independent group voluntarily established by UN agencies and interested governments and institutions, as recommended in the UNSGAB’s Hashimoto Action Plan. It aims to develop such targets, and define their political, scientific, social, and economic rationale.
The High-Level Expert Panel on Water and Disasters that came together at the 5th World Water Forum identified six specific priorities and forty actions guidelines to prevent, prepare for, manage and recover from water-related disasters in its publication, Prevention and Action to Minimize Death and Destruction: Building Resilience Toward Sustainable Development. It called on Governments of all nations to endorse and adopt those measures immediately.