U.S. Participation in International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction

Abstract

The United Nations' International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction has now concluded. The time has come to take stock. Decade framers set forth three targets for each nation: hazard identification and risk assessment; a mitigation strategy, couched in terms of plans for sustainable development; and improved warning and dissemination. By this yardstick, the U.S. experience was moderately successful. Public awareness of natural hazards is growing rapidly. Correspondingly, national policies toward natural disasters are shifting dramatically—aligning better with the nature of the problem as experts currently understand it. The 1990s saw natural hazards lose much of the element of surprise; today, natural extremes are forecast and their threats anticipated more successfully than ever before. However, despite this progress, losses in the United States due to natural disasters continued to rise sharply during the decade. More ominously, the nature and profile of disasters and their losses appear to be