Prof. Koike Toshio, the director of the International Centre for Water Hazard and Risk Management (ICHARM) under the auspices of UNESCO, visited IWHR and IRTCES on October 19.

Entrusted by Prof Peng Jing, President of IWHR, Prof. Liu Yi, the Vice President of IWHR, presided over the meeting, while relevant persons in charge and experts from International Cooperation Department, Flood Control, Drought Mitigation and Disaster Prevention Research Center and IRTCES took part in the meeting.

Prof. Liu Yi reviewed the good cooperation history between IWHR and ICHARM, and expressed his appreciation to ICHARM, as a UNESCO category II organization, for its active role in international cooperation on water-related disaster mitigation. He introduced the new concept of disaster prevention, mitigation and relief of "two persistence, three transformation" put forward by General Secretary Xi Jinping, and the "four-point initiative" put forward by Minister Li Guoying at the UN Water Conference. He said that the IWHR is willing to rely on the platform of affiliated international organizations to further strengthen the dialogue and cooperation mechanism with the ICHARM and other United Nations agencies, and join hands to implement the United Nations Water Action Agenda, the Sendai Framework and other international initiatives, so as to jointly promote sustainable water-related disaster risk management.

Prof. Koike Toshio expressed his appreciation for the scientific research achievements and international partnership network of the IWHR, and agreed with China's concept and practice of coordinating the development of water conservancy and the elimination of water-related hazards. He pointed out that mitigating water-related disasters involves multidisciplinary and cross-sectoral collaboration, and that raising public awareness of disaster prevention and preparedness is also a key part of water disaster risk management. In the face of the challenge of frequent and strong extreme weather events brought about by climate change, industry-wide and multi-disciplinary cooperation in disaster prevention and mitigation is imperative. He expressed his hope that the two sides would make use of domestic and international resources and work together to promote joint research, exchange and cooperation on international water hazards.

Group photo of visiting the IWHR

Subsequently, Prof. Koike Toshio visited the IRTCES. As members of the family of UNESCO category II centers, the two parties reviewed their cooperation since the signing of the Memorandum of Cooperation in 2009, and had in-depth exchanges on the implementation of UNESCO IHP flagship projects, project cooperation in areas of interest to UNESCO, organization of international conferences, international training, building of international journals, open science and open data, and so on.

Group photo of visiting the IWHR

Prof. Koike Toshio also gave a lecture on "An Integrated Challenge for Research, Education, and Information Networking" at the Global Vision Forum of IWHR.

Prof. Koike Toshio is giving a lecture