EU commissioner says Europe has made ‘significant progress’ on disaster reduction

Europe has made “significant progress” in reducing the impact of disasters across the continent in the nine years since a global agreement was made.

Kristalina Georgieva, the EU’s commissioner for international cooperation, humanitarian aid and crisis response, said this week that progress has been made since the Hyogo Framework for Action, an agreement monitored by the United National Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, according to an article on that organization’s website.

This year’s floods in Europe were worse than those in 2002, but fewer people were killed and damage was contained because of measures that have been taken to reduce vulnerability, Georgieva said while speaking to the European Parliament’s development committee.

“Commissioner Georgieva praised the Romanian response to recent floods which took nine lives but which the country managed without having to call on assistance from the European Union,” the article notes.

“She also cited dramatic improvements in Europe’s ability to handle the impacts of heat waves which are estimated to have resulted in 72,000 deaths in six European countries in the summer of 2003, accounting for the bulk of disaster-related mortality in Europe over the last 10 years.”

Image: European Commissioner Kristalina Georgieva, Martijn Quinn, Member of Cabinet and Margareta Wahlström, Head of the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) at the European Parliament in Brussels, Sept. 16, 2013 (Credit: UNISDR)