ULAN BATOR, July 3 (Xinhua) -- Officials and experts from the Asia-Pacific region met here on Tuesday to discuss ways to reduce disaster risks and share experiences.
"It is a great honor for Mongolia to host this conference," said Mongolian Deputy Prime Minister Ulziisaikhan Enkhtuvshin, as the Second Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction opened in the Mongolian capital.
"Three years have passed since the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 on preventing new disaster risks and reducing existing ones was agreed by member states, much progress has been made in reducing disaster risks," he said at the opening ceremony of the conference.
"Now, we have to intensify efforts to reduce and prevent disaster losses through implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030," he said at the conference co-organized by Mongolia's National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) and the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction.
During the four-day conference, over 3,000 officials and experts from more than 50 countries in the Asia-Pacific region are expected to touch upon a wide array of topics, including developing national disaster risk reduction strategies, creating disaster resistant infrastructure, and promoting public-private partnerships on disaster risk reduction.
Also, the participants will share experiences on disaster risk reduction and present how to use innovation in disaster risk reduction.
Although the Asia-Pacific region is achieving great progresses in social and economic development and poverty reduction, it remains the most disaster-prone region in the world.
The Asia-Pacific region has lost nearly 1.3 trillion U.S. dollars due to disasters over the last 50 years, averaged 26 billion dollars a year, but losses in the region could exceed 160 billion dollars annually by 2030, according to NEMA.
