The Sendai Framework and community preparedness

The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 was adopted by United Nations member states in March 2015 at the World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Sendai, Japan, and endorsed by the UN General Assembly later that year. It replaced the earlier Hyogo Framework and set a goal of substantially reducing disaster risk and losses in lives, livelihoods and health, and in economic, physical, social, cultural and environmental assets.

The framework has four priorities for action: understanding disaster risk; strengthening disaster-risk governance; investing in risk reduction and resilience; and enhancing preparedness for response and building back better in recovery. It also sets seven global targets, including substantially reducing disaster mortality and the number of affected people by 2030 compared with 2005–2015, reducing economic loss relative to GDP, and substantially increasing access to multi-hazard early warning systems.

India's alignment with Sendai is visible in its National Disaster Management Plan, first released in 2016 and updated since, and in programmes for early warning, school safety and resilient infrastructure, including the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure launched by India in 2019. The framework is voluntary, not a treaty with penalties, so its force comes from national plans, budgets and reporting rather than enforcement.

The community level is where Sendai succeeds or fails. A warning system that reaches a district headquarters but not a fishing hamlet, a school that has never practised an evacuation, or a hospital built in a floodplain all undermine national targets. Local knowledge — which lane floods first, which families need help to move, where boats are kept — is data that no satellite can replace, and involving communities in planning is cheaper than rescuing them afterwards. Including disaster lessons in school curricula and training local volunteers gives a community a response capacity that survives transfers of officials and gives young people a practical role in protecting their own neighbourhoods.