Conclusions and recommendations of the Inter - American Conference on Natural Disaster Reduction

ABSTRACT

Disasters are nor more than the materialization of certain risk conditions that, in their turn, depend not only in a disturbing or shattering agent -- in this case the natural or technological phenomenon -- but on vulnerability conditions that are the facilitating agents that encourage the crisis in the occurrence of the event. these social and environmental conditions are usually the results of applied development styles and of the debt which has been generated with nature due to a gestation or incubation process. In other words, disasters are unsolved problems of development, which need to be analyzed from the point of view of political economy and not only as simple facts of nature explained exclusively in a technocratic way. Vulnerability, in its different forms, is no more than a development deficiency and reflects an envirionment negative balance towards which prevention efforts, from the planning pint of view, must be directed in order to reduce or avoid the social, economic and environmental consequences. This is one of the conclusions reached by the representatives of the governments of the Americas, regional and sub-regional organizations, institutions and agencies, from both governmental and non - governmental sector, professionals, professors and researchers of public and private entities at the Inter - American Conference on Natural Disaster Reduction, held in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, at the end of March (AU)