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UNITED NATIONS, March 6 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations office dedicated to disaster risk reduction on Monday called for urgent support to improve disaster risk management in Haiti, following a damage assessment of Hurricane Matthew six months ago.
"Hurricane Matthew revealed disturbing truths about least developed countries which lack the capacity to respond adequately to climate change and the rising intensity and frequency of weather-related disasters," the UN secretary-general's special representative for disaster risk reduction, Robert Glasser, said in a press release.
More than 900 people were killed when the hurricane hit the Caribbean country in October 2016, and Haiti was the worst hit in the region at a time when the country has still not fully recovered from the 2010 earthquake. The economic lost totaled 2.7 billion U.S. dollars, or 32 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), according to the UN assessment.
Glasser made his appeal on the eve of the 5th Regional Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction in the Americas, which opens in Montreal, Canada, on Tuesday.
"While the government's civil protection system prevented many deaths, it is unacceptable that over 600 people should have died in a hurricane that was so well-forecast," he added.
Meanwhile, Glasser urged strong support for the three-year recovery plan developed by the Haitian government, the UN and other partners that seeks 2.72 billion U.S. dollars.
He said that Haiti demonstrated how implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030, the global plan to reduce disaster losses, has to take into account the role that poverty plays in driving disaster risk.
In 2012, it was estimated that 58 percent of the 10 million people live below the threshold of 2.4 U.S. dollars per day while 24 percent live in extreme poverty or less than 1.23 dollars per day. Haiti is estimated to have lost on average two per cent of its GDP to weather-related disasters every year between 1975 and 2012.
