Disaster risk reduction, early warning systems and global health: critiquing the current systems-based approach

A primary, overarching, goal of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–20301 (Sendai Framework) is for increased multi-sectoral, multi-hazard engagement, and integration, including between law, science, and technology which is the focus here. This goal is illustrated by paragraph 27(a), namely to ‘[m]ainstream and integrate disaster risk reduction within and across all sectors and review and promote the coherence and further development, as appropriate, of national and local frameworks of laws, regulations and public policies which, by defining roles and responsibilities, guide the public and private sectors’. In practice, however, as this chapter will demonstrate, much progress remains to be made in this regard.4 Indeed, even in the context of ‘strengthening disaster risk governance to manage disaster risk’ (Sendai Framework Priority 2, within which paragraph 27 is located), the concept of ‘governance’ is commonly approached by the scientific and technological communities with little or no reference to available legal tools which could complement and further strengthen existing policies, practices, mechanisms, and so forth. Such practices, indicating generally poor levels of legal integration, are unsurprising when, even at the global level, the potential enab- ling role of law is not generally well understood and/or reflected within non-legal circles. This is illustrated by major studies, such as the recently published European Union publication Science for Disaster Risk Management 2017: Knowing Better and Losing Less (EU DRM report) which, issued since 2015, should fully reflect key Sendai Framework priorities, including the progression of multi-sectoral engagement; and the 2011 Global Framework for Climate Services Implementation Plan, which was developed during the period of the less expansive Hyogo Framework for Action 2005–2015 (Hyogo Framework). Both studies make only brief and general references to law through a more traditional and narrow, non-multi-sectoral, policy lens (for example, general references to environmental policy)