[by Scott T. Paul | 3rd WCDRR Sendai | 15 March 2015 | Day 3]

"What do you call a plan with no agreement on how to finance it?" is the question that Scott T. Paul, Senior Humanitarian Adviser for Oxfam America is asking us to start his blog written from Sendai. 

In the US government, Scott says, "the nasty epithet for such a thing is an 'unfunded mandate'. In other spheres, there are simpler descriptions: incomplete, incoherent, and irresponsible. Yet that's precisely the sort of outcome that's shaping up in the final days of negotiations* for the post-2015 framework for disaster risk reduction, in Sendai, Japan. This is extremely worrying given that this new framework is set to become the main international agreement to reduce vulnerability to the growing threat of disasters worldwide."

Read here Scott's full blog about the reluctance of wealthy countries to commit more money to DRR in the negotiations of the 3rd WCDRR in Sendai, Japan, and how Oxfam and other organisations like GNDR had hoped that the Sendai framework would set numerical targets, while "negotiators have instead gravitated towards more vague language that targets 'substantial' improvement on a range of measures."

Scott T. Paul is a Senior Humanitarian Advisor for Oxfam America.