Disaster prevention experts from Japan and abroad will once again gather in the city of Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, the biggest city in the Tohoku region devastated by the Great East Japan Earthquake in March 2011, to share their knowledge on disaster risk management, process of recovery and response to natural calamities.
The World Bosai Forum (WBF), launched in 2017 in partnership with the International Disaster and Risk Conference (IDRC) in Davos, Switzerland, is set to be held from Nov. 9 to 12 at Sendai International Center and Kawauchi Hagi Hall at Tohoku University.
The biennial forum will look into lessons learned from the calamitous magnitude 9.0 earthquake and giant tsunami of 2011 that took the lives of more than 15,000 people, and the importance of passing down the experiences to future generations. It also aims to come up with practical solutions for reducing disaster risks around the globe.
We hope the forum will be a place for people to pass on their knowledge and wisdom gained through experiencing natural disasters. We also want this to be a place where we can discuss new issues and ways to solve them, said Kanayo Kousaka, secretary-general of the World Bosai Forum Foundation.
The second WBF, organized by the World Bosai Forum Local Organizing Committee and World Bosai Forum International Steering Committee, is expected to see around 1,000 general public and disaster prevention specialists from various sectors such as research institutions, government organizations, private sectors and international organizations.
Under the slogan Sharing Bosai wisdom globally Contributing to the Implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and Achievement of the Sendai Targets, in Particular Target E, this year’s forum is set to promote implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, which is a guideline for global disaster prevention efforts adopted by U.N. member states in 2015 at the third U.N. World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction that was also held in Sendai. Among seven targets stipulated in the guideline, Target E aims to substantially increase the number of countries with national and local disaster risk reduction strategies by 2020.
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