Press Release

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Geneva, 19 March 2004 - As the United Nations marks the World Day for Water on Monday, 22 March, attention will focus on water and natural disasters. Floods have become a regular occurrence in the member States of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), witness the events in south-eastern France last autumn and the flooding in Austria, the Czech Republic and Germany in 2002, which caused €15 billion worth of damage, 80% uninsured. But are floods inevitable and is there anything we can do to protect ourselves?

More awareness
According to Kaj Bärlund, UNECE Environment Director, “floods are now a fact of life, but what is initially a natural disaster can be compounded by ‘human error’, such as inappropriate land use or clear-cutting of forests.” Floods cause billions of dollars worth of material damage, but they also have a high death toll, particularly as a result of drowning in cars. There seems to be a misconception among the public that cars are buoyant and provide protection against rising waters. So being more aware of the risks associated with floods is one thing that everyone can do to limit the damage that floods cause.

International cooperation within UNECE
“This year’s World Day for Water is also a challenge for UNECE,” says Kaj Bärlund, “as its seeks to promote international cooperation on natural hazards and industrial hazards with environmental consequences. The two are closely linked. The accident at Baia Mare in Romania in January 2000, which severely polluted the river Tisza and the Danube, was triggered by heavy rainfall and rapidly melting snow.” That accident led to the negotiation of the Protocol on Civil Liability to two UNECE environment conventions, which was adopted in May 2003. Now UNECE is turning its attention to floods.

In June 2004, the Government of Germany will host an international seminar on flood prevention, protection and mitigation. The Parties to the UNECE Water Convention will develop a common European framework for flood management with the assistance of the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, the World Health Organization’s Regional Office for Europe, the World Meteorological Organization and the European Commission.

Based on the 1998 Rhine Action Plan on Flood Defence and the 2000 UNECE Guidelines on sustainable flood prevention, such a framework will include voluntary and legally binding measures. It will propose local, national, transboundary and international measures, and cover such issues as water management, physical planning and urban development, nature conservation and alternative practices in agriculture and forestry. The public at large will be made aware of the need, for example, to cover risk by insurance and to observe limitations on land use. It will also address the media, which have a vital role to play in providing flood information while avoiding sensationalist reporting.

The Secretary to the UNECE Water Convention, Rainer Enderlein, believes that “flood protection is never absolute, but it does offer some degree of safety. The question is what degree of safety is available at what price and how much of the remaining risk will our society have to learn to live with. We need risk management to deal with this challenge.”

For more information on UNECE’s work on flood prevention, please contact:

Rainer Enderlein
UNECE Environment and Human Settlements Division
Palais des Nations, office 313
CH - 1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland

Phone: +41 (0) 22 917 23 73
Fax: +41 (0) 22 917 01 07
E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: http://www.unece.org/env/water/welcome.html

Ref: ECE/ENV/04/P07