As 194 nations meet in Buenos Aries to discuss climate change, Salvano Briceño, director of the U.N. International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, says it’s time to put natural disasters high on the agenda.

Weather-related hazards have caused two-thirds of all disasters in the past 10 years. More than 300 out of 380 natural hazards recorded in 2003 were related to hydro-meteorological phenomena alone, affecting over 249 million people out of a total of 254 million people touched by natural hazards in the same year.

Disasters triggered by hydro-meteorological hazards are among the most frequent and severe disasters, and will probably remain so in the future if trends continue. The severity of the last hurricane season in the Caribbean that killed more than 2,800 in the region, the unusual and violent typhoon season in Japan, the sudden and devastating effects of flash floods in Britain’s Cornwall and the recent storms in the Philippines are just a few examples of the sorts of disasters we can expect to see more of in the near future.

The melting of glaciers and of sea ice noted by a recent study made by The Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) is another worrying problem. ACIA reckons that in recent decades average temperatures have increased almost twice as fast in the Arctic as they have in the rest of the world. Melting snow and ice and increasing ocean temperatures are raising sea levels, inevitably bringing about new hazards. Nearly 3 billion people or almost half of the world’s population live in coastal zones.

It is now well established by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a global body set up to asses the impact of climate change, that greater concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases are highly likely to warm the Earth and lead to other changes in the climate over the coming decades and centuries. These include a likely increase in the intensity of drought conditions, high rainfall and the El Niño phenomenon.

When dealing with the complex subject of climate change, some issues are now Generally accepted by most scientists – not least that temperatures are increasing globally, although these increases are not evenly distributed across the planet. As the atmosphere becomes warmer, we will experience more climate variability and more frequent extreme weather events.

In the climate change agenda, discussion of natural disasters is high on the list of priorities. Yet this is also one of the most complex issues, and possible consequences are difficult to predict. The combination of high impact and high uncertainty means that disasters and disaster reduction should be central to the scientific and policy debates on climate change.

The talks that that are taking place now in Buenos Aires on the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Kyoto Protocol are an important step forward. Delegates and ministers from all over the world will speak about the source of the problem -- greenhouse gas emissions. They will also consider for the first time the other side of the issue -- how to adapt to and live with the new and increased risks that climate change is likely to bring.

Disaster reduction, early warning and preparedness are key tools to coping with weather and climate extremes, now and in the future.

The World Conference on Disaster Reduction that will take place in the Japanese city of Kobe on 18-22 January is another opportunity to show how disaster reduction and risk management can help societies adapt to climate change. It is clear that many countries and communities are not resilient to the existing natural variability of the climate. Now is the time to integrate emerging trends into disaster management strategies. We should give priority to managing risk now, rather than wait and act only once a disaster strikes.

Any opionins expressed in this article are those of the author and not of Reuters.