The regional context: a problem shared

Countries with similar hazards, similar building stocks and with similar cultural backgrounds may benefit considerably from sharing experiences in disaster mitigation. Encouraging international linkages at a regional level helps to pool disaster expertise.

This has been successfully developed in regional disaster mitigation projects such as the Balkan seismic risk project involving Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Turkey and Yugoslavia (UNESCO), and in the South East Asian disaster construction project (UNIDO). The OAS (Organization of American States) also provides cooperation in natural hazard management to its member states through its Department of Regional Development.

Regional cooperation projects may also extend to joint mitigation measures, particularly regional hazard assessment for large scale hazards like cyclones and earthquakes, regional warning stations, such as the tsunami warning network around the Pacific rim, and even financial defences, like the regional disaster fund established by a consortium of island nations in the South Pacific Bureau for Economic Cooperation.