7th Session of the ESCAP intergovernmental committee for disaster risk reduction
Hon’ble Minister of State for Environment, Climate Change & Technology, H.E Khadheeja Naseem has been elected as the chair of the Seventh Session of the ESCAP intergovernmental committee for disaster risk reduction. This session convened today (25th August 2021) and will continue until the 27th of August 2021.
The Committee is charged with addressing the following issues: (a) emergence of cascading risks and extension of the disaster risk scape; (b) scaling-up multisectoral cooperation frameworks to manage cascading risks; and (c) status of regional co-operation efforts.
During this session, on behalf of the Secretariat to RIMES, Maldives signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), with UNESCAP, based on successful past collaborations and to scale up future efforts with regards to early warning and disaster risk reduction.
RIMES, elaborated as the ‘Regional Integrated Multi-Hazard Early Warning System for Africa and Asia’ was established over 10 years ago with financial support from the ESCAP Trust Fund for Tsunami, Disaster and Climate Preparedness and through strong leadership of the Maldives as one of its founding member States.
Today, the work of RIMES has taken an important role in the areas of multi-hazard early warning, providing a range of cost-effective early warning services, climate outlooks and impact-based forecasting tools to LDCs and SIDS towards building and enhancing disaster resilience across the region.
Since its inception, RIMES has worked closely with the Maldives Meteorological Service (MMS) through ESCAP’s Tsunami Trust Fund, building national and local early warning capacities through development and application of decision support systems, innovative impact-based forecasting and providing training on preparation of disaster impact outlooks.