From the Last Mile to the First: Risk Awareness is the Key

Abstract

Early warning plays a key role in an increasingly dynamic and complex world of natural hazards. Warning systems that take humans as the starting point are only part of the solution, albeit an important one. It is equally important to continue work on optimising technical warning systems. Catastrophe prevention that integrates the people at risk is effective on many different counts, as it develops awareness of catastrophes and keeps people vigilant. Bottom-up and top-down strategies must not be developed in isolation from each other. Only when bottom-up and top-down approaches are pursued simultaneously, interactively and insistently do we have a chance of alleviating the suffering of millions of people and improving their living conditions. We need globally coordinated recommendations, binding political framework agreements and the bundled resources of global stakeholders and institutions. Long-term commitments and partnerships integrating the people at risk are, similar to political will and perseverance, a key to sustainable management of the challenge posed by climate change in our globalised world.