Disaster preparedness to be incorporated into UK development programs, DFID report says

"Preparing a country for disaster will become a core part of the UK government's development programmes around the world to ensure a faster and more efficient response to major disasters," the Department of International Development (DFID) said on Wednesday in an official response (.pdf) to Lord Paddy Ashdown's independent review of humanitarian disasters that was issued in March, the Guardian reports.

According to the report, the UK will incorporate disaster risk reduction plans into all of its country programs by 2015, "call for an overhaul of U.N. leadership to ensure a more co-ordinated response to disaster relief"; increase funding to the World Bank's fund for disaster risk reduction and consider increasing donations to other non-governmental organizations involved in disaster aid; "appoint a team to identify and develop innovative responses to disaster," including satellite mapping; send more specialists, such as physicians, scientists, weather experts, in disaster relief teams; "begin discussions with Brazil, China and the Gulf states to find ways to work together in a crisis (this could be expanded to include India and Russia); and examine strategies to include the private sector, the newspaper notes (Ford, 6/15).