The United Nations conference on reducing disaster risks, to be held in Sendai from March 14 to 18, should serve as an opportunity for Japan to share its experiences in dealing with severe natural disasters, including the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami that ravaged the host city and many other municipalities on the Pacific coastline four years ago.

Japan should do its best to contribute to global efforts to minimize losses from such catastrophes by taking the lead for effective measures to come out of the meeting.

Japan will be hosting the Third U.N. World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction following the two earlier gatherings also held in this country — in Yokohama in 1994 and Kobe in 2005. The last conference was held a decade after the Hyogo Prefecture's capital and its vicinity were devastated in the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake. Since then the nation has endured a series of disasters including volcanic eruptions, landslides caused by torrential rains, as well as the nuclear crisis caused by the meltdowns at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima No.1 nuclear power plant in the 2011 quake and tsunami.

Participants to the 2005 conference adopted the Hyogo Framework for Action, which outlined five priorities — ensuring that disaster risk reduction is a national and local government priority backed by strong institutional basis for implementation; identifying, assessing and monitoring disaster risks and enhancing early warning; building a culture of safety and resilience at all levels; reducing the underlying risk factors; and strengthening disaster preparedness for effective response at all levels.

Ten years on, all of these seem to remain relevant as policy goals. Margareta Wahlstrom, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's special representative for disaster risk reduction, wrote recently that a raft of serious natural disasters that have since taken place show that the world needs an updated version of the action framework because factors that would amplify disaster risks — including weak governance by inappropriate and insufficient institutions — still abound.

Indeed, the greater frequency and scale of extraordinary weather — often associated with the effects of climate change — and the progress in urbanization have exposed more people to disaster risks, especially in developing nations. According to a Cabinet Office estimate, natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, droughts and hurricanes resulted in a total of 1.1 million deaths and caused $1.4 trillion around the world over a period between 2003 and 2012. These disasters have brought particularly heavy losses in poorer countries where anti-disaster systems remain fragile. Greater efforts are needed to ensure that disasters and the risks posed by them don't hamper the sustainable development of these countries.

On the agenda of the Sendai conference will be a new guideline on efforts to reduce disaster risks that would replace the 2005 framework. The participants will discuss whether to set specific targets for cutting the number of related deaths, economic losses and infrastructure damage over 15 years through 2030. If they can agree on numerical targets, it would be the first time for a U.N. conference to spell out specific goals with a timeline on reducing the risks posed by disasters. Such specific targets should prompt the governments of participating countries to make more concrete commitments to their anti-disaster efforts, thereby making implementation of the new guideline more effective. As the host country, Japan is urged to take a strong initiative to craft an agreement for meaningful steps at the conference.

More than 5,000 government officials, Cabinet ministers and top leaders from over 160 countries and international organizations will take part in the main conference alone. Members of nongovernmental organizations, officials of local governments, residents of municipalities hit by the 2011 disasters and others will also be taking part in related events such as symposiums to be held in Aomori, Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures, and the overall number of participants are expected to reach 40,000. These events should help spread the firsthand experience of people affected by the disasters and the lessons they have learned.