Predecessor frameworks

Story hook

It is 27 May 1994, in Yokohama, Japan. 155 countries have gathered for the World Conference on Natural Disaster Reduction (WCNDR) — the first global UN summit dedicated solely to disasters. The decade has already been declared the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR) 1990-2000 by UN General Assembly Resolution 44/236 (December 1989) on the initiative of US National Academy of Sciences's geophysicist Frank Press. The decade had a slogan: "From scientific understanding to political will."

At Yokohama, delegates adopted the Yokohama Strategy and Plan of Action for a Safer World — the first international framework to codify disaster reduction. Ten principles, an action plan, and follow-up. It was qualitative, voluntary, modest in funding. But it laid down the conceptual vocabulary — vulnerability, mitigation, preparedness — that every subsequent framework would inherit.

Eleven years later, on 22 January 2005, the Indian Ocean Tsunami (26 December 2004) was still fresh — 2.27 lakh dead across 14 countries. The Second World Conference on Disaster Reduction (WCDR) opened in Hyogo Prefecture, Japan — the prefecture devastated by the Kobe (Great Hanshin) earthquake of 17 January 1995, killing 6,434. Delegates adopted the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-15 — Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities to Disasters. Five priorities. A 10-year roadmap. Annual monitoring through HFA Monitor.

These two predecessor frameworks are not historical curiosities — they are the direct intellectual lineage of the Sendai Framework 2015-30 that India operates under today. For UPSC, examiners reward candidates who can trace the Yokohama → Hyogo → Sendai evolution.

Why this matters for UPSC

This is a comparative + historical sub-topic. Prelims has tested the exact priorities of HFA + Yokohama dates + the IDNDR decade. Mains expects candidates to trace the evolution — which Mains 2018, 2020 explicitly asked. Interview boards probe how each framework changed the doctrinal vocabulary.