Countries gathering for a U.N. disaster conference in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, agreed Wednesday on seven global goals to mitigate risks and damage from disasters, and to boost international cooperation amid increasing threats posed by climate change.
In a new, 15-year action plan, which is to be formally adopted at the end of the U.N. World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction, governments of more than 180 countries pledged to substantially reduce the number of victims, economic losses, and damage to medical and educational facilities caused by natural disasters.
They also vowed to boost support for disaster-prone developing countries under the plan, which was drawn up during the five-day event held in a city hit hard by the massive earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.
But negotiations had been dragging on due to differences among the participants over how much commitment developed nations should make on financial aid for less-developed economies, delegation officials said.
The delegates initially planned to adopt the framework on Wednesday morning.
The U.N. conference on disaster management was held in Yokohama in 1994 and in Kobe in 2005. The new framework will replace the Hyogo Framework for Action that covered the past decade.