Robert Glasser at King's College London - My thoughts on this afternoon's seminar

I attended a short presentation and Q&A session with Robert Glasser (Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction and Head of the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction) today at King's College London. The event was organised by Mark Pelling on behalf of King's College London and the UKADR.

Given the short time we had, Robert (to his credit) managed to cover a variety of issues and allowed a considerable amount of time to answer questions from the audience. Below is a small taste of the discussion:

• He provided a broad update on the work being done on indicators and their use during the implementation of the Sendai Framework. He detailed several of the hurdles that have been overcome in order to get this far including giving some insight into a debate on whether to include missing persons when calculating deaths caused by a disaster.
• He spoke passionately about the interlinkages between DRR and climate change adaptation.
• He provided some thoughts on how the agendas of development, humanitarian response and DRR might be better addressed if viewed as having shared goals instead of being viewed as silos. He also briefly touched on how these silos can create funding difficulties.
• He elaborated on his view that the role of conflict, as both a cause and an outcome of disasters, should be given more prominence but also recognising the difficulties Member States had in including such complex subjects within the Sendai Framework.
• Finally, he told a well-received joke on PowerPoint presentations (he spoke without one if you're wondering) and how, after the initial launch of the software he had used a meeting to see how many effects and flashy graphics he could get away with including without being noticed (it turned out to be a lot).

Overall the hour was a relaxed and informal session with a senior UN official speaking candidly and answering audience questions.  I know I appreciated the time and I am sure the Masters students and PhD candidates who are just starting in the world of DRR, also appreciated it.