Recognizing the need to develop, implement and sustain shared comprehensive disaster management strategies and programs to reduce the vulnerability of our populations and economies to natural and man-made disasters and to maintain or quickly restore minimum levels of consumption, income and production at the household and community levels in the aftermath of disasters, including irregular population settlements; acknowledging in this regard the need to expand the community of stakeholders at the regional, national and local levels engaged in the formulation of early warning systems, the management of risk and response operations in the event of disasters and integrated sustainable development strategies:

 

• Develop the capacity to forecast, prepare for and mitigate the potential impacts of natural and man-made hazards; promote vulnerability reduction; adopt and enforce better building codes and standards; ensure appropriate land-use practices; inventory and evaluate the vulnerability of critical facilities and infrastructure; estimate climate change variability and sea-level rise and assess their possible impacts; and in pursuit of the above, create the requisite legal framework and establish the cooperative mechanisms to access and share advances in science and technology and their application in the early warning, preparedness for and mitigation of these hazards;

• Promote the exchange of information on the vulnerability of infrastructure exposed to disasters as well as the early warning capacity, particularly in the border areas of the countries of the Americas, in order to design specific prevention measures in the fields of engineering and legislation with the aim of reducing the socio-economic impact of natural disasters;

• Establish or strengthen, where appropriate, partnerships with all relevant actors, including the private sector, technical professional associations, regional institutions, civil society, educational and research institutions and other multilateral coordinating agencies such as the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), in the development and implementation of disaster management policies and programs at the national and community levels, and promote greater awareness and effective integration of these policies and programs among national policy makers, local authorities, communities and media, and promote the insurance and reinsurance of the social and economic infrastructure as well as the decentralization of information and decision-making;

• Promote the exchange of knowledge and experiences regarding the combat against inappropriate practices in the exploitation of natural resources and unsustainable patterns of consumption, including the problems of waste management, which increase the vulnerability of the people to natural disasters;

• Promote the development of telecommunications for humanitarian assistance; actively encourage greater use and interoperability of telecommunications and other technologies and information systems that allow the observation and monitoring of different natural phenomena; use early warning systems such as remote sensing imagery, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) based data necessary to address and prevent emergencies; promote the compatibility of these systems in the planning and response to emergency operations among governments, specialized agencies, relevant international organizations, and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), and, in this spirit, consider signing and ratifying, ratifying, or acceding to, as soon as possible and as the case may be, the Tampere Convention on the Provision of Telecommunication Resources for Disaster Mitigation and Relief Operations;

• Establish information networks with the involvement of the Inter-American Committee on Natural Disaster Reduction (IACNDR) and other relevant regional and international organizations to exchange scientific and technological knowledge and experiences; encourage further regional and subregional action to reduce risks and improve response to natural disasters; promote joint research and development technologies and contribute to strengthen coordination of national prevention and response agencies in natural disasters; to achieve this, draw on the work of ECLAC on the improvement, up-dating and implementation of its damage assessment methodology and continue to promote natural disaster mitigation and risk reduction awareness and preparedness;

• Consider the creation of a hemispheric system for prevention and mitigation of disasters that would include, among others, a specialized database containing the best information available on the characteristics, experiences, strengths and weaknesses of national and regional agencies responsible for disaster prevention and mitigation and provide a new framework for technical cooperation and research aimed at creating a hemispheric culture of prevention and solidarity;

• Adopt and support, as appropriate, initiatives aimed at promoting capacity building at all levels, such as the transfer and development of technology for prevention – risk reduction, awareness, preparedness, mitigation – and response to natural and other disasters, as well as for the rehabilitation of affected areas;

• Promote mechanisms that incorporate risk management and risk reduction methods in public and private development investments;

• Convene within a year a hemispheric meeting on disaster preparedness and mitigation with the support of the IACNDR and the participation of a wide range of government entities, regional and MDBs, private entities, NGOs and the research, scientific and technical communities, to discuss and develop cooperative efforts to facilitate implementation of Summit mandates on disaster management;

• Request the IDB to undertake a feasibility study in partnership with the OAS, the World Bank, the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) and other relevant inter-American organizations, as well as the private sector, including insurance companies, on measures to reduce and/or pool risk in a manner that results in reduced premiums on catastrophic insurance, and mechanisms to facilitate contingent re-construction financing and the immediate release of funds to resolve urgent needs of the affected country; this study would examine the relationship between re-insurance and national and community disaster management capacities, as well as trends toward dis-investment and job losses in those economic sectors requiring costly catastrophic insurance coverage and the role such measures might play in this regard; share with the private sector experiences in the development and application of risk management tools such as risk transfer instruments, vulnerability assessment methodologies and risk reduction incentives for the private sector;