Indonesian president fears that disasters could push millions into poverty

UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction: The President of Indonesia, Dr. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, said today that the UN High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda which met last month for the first time, shares the view that "natural disasters and other crises could push millions of people back into poverty."

Speaking at the opening of the 5th Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction, President Yudhoyono, who co-chairs the UN High-Level Panel with President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia and Prime Minister David Cameron of the UK, said: "I am glad that there was a common view in the Panel during the first meeting on the importance of factoring in natural disasters in the development agenda.

"The Panel viewed that natural disasters and other crises could push millions of people back into poverty. The Panel also underlined that we must safeguard the MDG gains from setbacks caused by natural disasters and climate change." Global economic losses from disasters last year were $380 billion. The Panel meets again in London next month.

...President Yudhoyono, who is also the first UNISDR Global Champion for Disaster Risk Reduction, said that Indonesia was committed "to ensure that the post-2015 development agenda takes into account the natural disaster dimension."...

A land rights protest in Jakarta by farmers in 2004, shot by Jonathan McIntosh, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license