Excerpt of the Address by Mr. Eddy Sembiring, Chief, Political Division, Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia during the Opening Ceremony of the Extreme Climate Events Program International Peer-review Meeting. Asia is the most disaster-prone region in the world, and faces catastrophes like floods, fires and earthquakes. We recently have learned through the media about disasters in India and Cambodia. Disasters affect development in every country. It is important to promote disaster awareness, which is the main goal of this meeting. In this context, ADPC has had years of experience, especially in Indonesia. In the last few years, this partnership has been extended to many agencies. ADPC manages work on four programs in Indonesia: the Extreme Climate Events Program (ECE), Indonesia Urban Disaster Mitigation Program (IUDMP), Program on Enhancement of Emergency Response (PEER), and Disaster Assessment and Needs Analysis (DANA); a community-based disaster management capacity building program will also be started. The ECE Program is important for Indonesia. El Nino and La Nina affect Indonesia in many ways. The forest fires of 1998 and transboundary haze are well known around the world. In the last several years, we have worked to deal with these events. ADPC is in a unique position to participate in an initiative of this kind at a regional level. This meeting will help share best practices in this field, and in future extreme climate events Southeast Asian countries will benefit from their own and each other's experiences.

Excerpt of the Inaugural Address by Dr. Suvit Yodmani, Executive Director, Asian Disaster Preparedness Center, during the Opening Ceremony of the Extreme Climate Events Program International Peer-review Meeting. Thanks to Mr Eddy Sembiring and the Indonesian Embassy, who immediately responded to our invitation to attend because they realize the importance of this program, where experts from around the world will be meeting with the experts from the target countries. There's an ASEAN meeting in Chiang Mai and the governor of Jakarta will be signing an MOU with the governor of Bangkok, so the Indonesian Embassy is rather busy and we're grateful that Mr Sembiring could attend. ADPC got its independence last year from AIT - one and a half years ago. But we began in 1986 as a regional organization that works with governments and communities. Our vision is disaster management for safer communities and sustainable development. Our goal is to try to work with governments and communities to persuade them that disaster is something that can and should be reduced as much as possible. ADPC helps countries build institutions that can coordinate with various agencies in countries to look after disaster, not only in rescue and relief but more so in trying to study ways and means of limiting and reducing disasters. This requires planning and governments being convinced that disasters are true obstacles to development. We work closely with government agencies as well as NGOs. The work we do is capacity-building, technical services, exchange of information and experiences, and trying to translate experts' and scientists' findings into action and practice by end-users and countries in this region. There is a need for an agency to help to do that and ADPC likes to think of itself as that agency. We have seven major regional programs as well as bilateral programs, working with communities to the village level. So the scope of our work is broad, not only in terms of countries, but also target audiences. ECE is the most research-oriented of the programs - it is state-of-the-art in planning but also in disaster management in general. In the last two to three decades, there has been a movement away from rescue and relief to sustainable development - what do we do to manage disaster? I am confident that the outcome of such a meeting will go a long way towards improvement of what we do for the development of our countries, and a good learning experience for ADPC. Weather forecasting and its correct application has an important role in our efforts at trying to plan, manage and reduce disasters.