Disaster risk preparedness in agriculture: good practice samples from Asia
In the recent past, most Asian countries have greatly improved their capacities to monitor hazards and to warn, evaluate and provide emergency relief to victims of disasters. As a result, the number of lives lost to disasters such as floods, storms and extreme temperature has decreased significantly. However, the vulnerability within the agriculture sector has continuously increased due to its high level of exposure. It is essential to re-align all disaster management programmes in the agriculture sectors from response to prevention and preparedness. It means in effect, to shift from the current focus on relief and mitigation activities to all-round early warning, prevention, preparedness, relief, rehabilitation and sustainable recovery activities. It is also required to integrate disaster prevention within the agricultural development processes. There are many examples of farmer's led participatory disaster risk management initiatives at pilot scale in Asia. However, efforts are required at much greater scale to mainstream these pilot scale efforts at the national and regional levels. Although disaster risk reduction is now widely adopted, it still remains a challenge to fully integrate it into agriculture sector development planning.