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JAKARTA - Climate change is contributing to more frequent and deadlier natural disasters, and governments need to speed up measures to mitigate their impact, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, John Holmes, warns.
Holmes, in Indonesia for a two-day visit after a deadly 30 September earthquake off West Sumatra, warned there would be more intense typhoons, flooding, droughts and forest fires because of climate change. “Look at the trend. How many [disasters] there are and how bad they are, not only here but also in Central America, and it's perfectly clear what's happening and that's what scientists said would happen,” Holmes, also the UN’s Emergency Relief Coordinator, told IRIN in an interview on 15 October.
"To me, that means there's a link between climate change and more frequent disasters," he said. Given this, governments should be better prepared, and take measures to reduce the impact, he said. "That means people not living in areas that are flood-[prone]; it means making sure buildings are not in areas that are flood-[prone],” said Holmes.
Holmes also said recent disasters in the Asia-Pacific region made negotiations for a new climate change deal - which are faltering - all the more important. The Asian region has been hit by several disasters in recent weeks, including devastating floods in the Philippines, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Nepal, affecting millions.
About 99 percent of those killed by natural disasters were in the Asia Pacific region, said Holmes. “Obviously it's important to reduce emissions, that's fundamental to stopping climate change in the end. But in the meantime, whatever we do about emissions, the results are already with us for the next 50 years,” he said.
Separately, Holmes urged disaster-prone Asian countries to spend one-tenth of their development funds on efforts to reduce disaster risks. The international community spent US$12 billion on disaster relief last year. "A 10 percent figure of what you are spending on response or even on development should go into disaster-risk reduction because that is a good investment," he told reporters.
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