Civil protection chiefs meet to review growing Mediterranean disaster risk
The increasing risk of disasters threatening the Euro-Mediterranean region and the growing importance of strategies to reduce those risks will be in focus when civil protection chiefs from 27 EU member states and 14 Mediterranean and Balkan partner countries meet in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo next week, under an EU-funded civil protection project.
The Steering Committee of the PPRD South project meets on 14 June 2011, bringing together the Directors General of the National Civil Protection Authorities of all 27 EU Member States and 14 Mediterranean and Balkan Partner Countries, together with representatives of the European Commission, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and the UN agencies working with disaster management in the Mediterranean region.
They will review the latest results obtained by the PPRD South Programme and agree on the proposed work-plan for the coming months, in the light of the recent series of disasters in the region and worldwide. Since 2009, PPRD South has organized 15 workshops and meetings attended by over 350 civil protection officials from the Partner Countries, among which a workshop on earthquakes, a visit to the earthquake-damaged city of L’Aquila and to the EU earthquake response exercise in Tuscany, trainings and table-top exercises on planning in advance response to possible disasters and a training workshop on flood risk management in Turkey.
The Programme also organized for the first time in the area two regional workshops dedicated to the most recent technological innovations for civil protection: the use of Geographic Information Systems for risk assessment and mapping and the use of satellite images to support crisis response actions. PPRD South’s achievements, which will be illustrated during the event, also include the implementation of five pilot awareness raising projects involving around 145,000 people in Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestinian Authority and Montenegro, and the development of the regional Risk Atlas with its proposed methodology for risk assessment and mapping.
If adopted by the Partner Countries, this methodology will provide a better understanding of the existing hazards in the Mediterranean countries and of the communities exposed to such hazards. In the past months, the Mediterranean has seen emergencies ranging from the wildfires in Mount Carmel, Israel, which triggered broad international aid efforts, to heavy floods in Morocco, Bosnia, Albania, Montenegro and Turkey, earthquakes in Spain and Turkey, and the migration crisis from Libya which involved Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, Italy and Malta. The meeting will end with the endorsement of the future Programme work-plan which includes, among other activities, the organization of workshops on drought, resilience, mass events, and climate change.
The €5 million PPRD South Programme – which runs for three years and is managed by a consortium led by the Italian Civil Protection Department together with the French, Algerian, Egyptian Civil Protection Authorities and the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) – is also organising training workshops dealing with risks in the region such as wild fires, technological disasters, floods, earthquakes, epidemics and drought, among others.
Contact information | n/a |
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News type | Inbrief |
File link |
http://www.enpi-info.eu/medportal/news/project/25496/Civil-protection-chiefs-meet-to-review-growing-Mediterranean-disaster-risk |
Source of information | ENPI MED |
Keyword(s) | Climatic change, Mediterranean climate, drought, deforestation, flooding, natural risk |
Subject(s) | AGRICULTURE , POLICY-WATER POLICY AND WATER MANAGEMENT , RISKS AND CLIMATOLOGY |
Geographical coverage | Euro-Med, |
News date | 09/06/2011 |
Working language(s) | ENGLISH |