An Enabling Environment for Disaster Risk Reduction
Definitions of the concept of enabling environment are numerous, and range from all-encompassing to narrow ones. This chapter intends to highlight the current understandings of how an enabling environment works with and through Disaster Risk Reduction (DR
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Andrea de Guttry Marco Gestri Gabriella Venturini •
Editors
International Disaster Response Law
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Editors Andrea de Guttry DIRPOLIS Institute Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna Pisa Italy
Gabriella Venturini Department of International Studies University of Milan Milan Italy
Marco Gestri Dipartimento di Scienze Giuridiche Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia Modena Italy
ISBN 978-90-6704-881-1 DOI 10.1007/978-90-6704-882-8
ISBN 978-90-6704-882-8
(eBook)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012941633 Ó T.M.C. ASSER
PRESS,
The Hague, The Netherlands, and the author(s) 2012
Published by T.M.C. ASSER PRESS, The Hague, The Netherlands www.asserpress.nl Produced and distributed for T.M.C. ASSER PRESS by Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
Foreword
We are living in an increasingly fragile world. The frequency and intensity of natural disasters has increased dramatically over the recent decades. Last year alone brought massive floods in Australia, Thailand, and Pakistan, devastating earthquakes in Japan and New Zealand as well as famine at the Horn of Africa. The tsunami that hit Japan showed the vulnerability even of the most highly developed countries. And we should never think that Europe is in some way immune from natural disasters. Between 1999 and 2009, 100,000 Europeans were killed by natural disasters that cost the European economy €150 billion. Experience shows that the effective implementation of disaster management policies leads to fewer deaths and less damage. In 2009, the Lisbon Treaty gave the EU important new responsibilities in this area: most notably a formal legal base to both humanitarian and civil protection policies. At the operational level, the European Commission brought together its humanitarian aid and civil protection instruments in an expanded DG ECHO in 2010. This has resulted in a single delivery platform that can deploy assistance immediately and in a coherent manner. Making this portfolio the responsibility of a single European Commissioner has also ensured a higher political visibility for disaster management inside the EU system. The instruments we have work well—but there is still room for further improvement. In the area of civil protection we have recently tabled legislation that would move Europe away from the curr
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