THE 12/26/04 TSUNAMIS AND THE WORLD CONFERENCE ON DISASTER REDUCTION: POST-CONFERENCE DIRECTIONS The emergency period of this disaster has largely passed and the recovery has begun; it will likely continue for years to decades hence. Unfortunately, mass media in the developed world tend to lose interest at this time and business-as-usual practices reassert themselves, often setting the stage for future disasters. The World Conference on Disaster Reduction (Kobe, Japan, January 2005) was intended to lay the groundwork for preventing this kind of relapse by focusing attention on the long-term reduction of vulnerability to disasters, especially through grass-roots “development” actions in impacted areas, but its agenda may well have been undermined by a (well-intentioned) rush to respond to the tsunami. Governments and private corporations in the USA and Japan now seem enthusiastic about exporting sophisticated satellite-based warning systems to poor South Asian countries and there is also a strong developed-world lobby that seeks to restructure existing arrangements for coordinating overseas disaster relief. Both of these top-down responses might be useful - but only in the context of the broader strategy that was originally on top of the Kobe agenda. Reports from the conference suggest that there has also been strong opposition from some governments to including climate change issues within the purview of future measures for mitigating disasters. (Given the low-lying nature of the Maldives and other Indian Ocean islands, as well as the high level of anxiety about sea level rise that marks their governments, de-linking climate change from disaster planning would have especially serious consequences in South Asia.) Thus, the stage is set for international policy conflicts about the proper way to respond to – and prevent – similar kinds of disasters (of which more are likely.) – James K. Mitchell (January 30, 2005)