Five years ago, on March 18, 2015, then United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon declared that "sustainability begins in Sendai" as he launched the U.N. World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, one of the areas hardest hit by the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami.
With the adoption of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, the conference laid the foundations for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development as a raft of agreements followed, including the Paris Agreement on climate change and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Ban's successor, Antonio Guterres, has since made crisis prevention a priority, recognizing that ambitious action on disaster and climate risk is crucial to eradicate poverty (SDG 1) and eliminate hunger (SDG 2).