KOBE, Japan (AlertNet) - Our intrepid correspondent, Tim Large, solicits key quotes from heavy hitters at the World Conference on Disaster Reduction in Kobe, Japan, on topics ranging from the sorry state of tsunami-ravaged farmland in Indonesia to the U.S. delegation’s fear that the issue of climate change could distort debate on disaster prevention.

On education and early warning:

Many people reported that just before the tsunami hit they saw the sea water recede. The president of the Asian Development Bank is 70 years old, and he told me that in his childhood, children in Japan who lived near the coast were warned that if the sea recedes, run away as fast as you can. But it was clear that in the tsunami in December, very few people knew that or remembered that.
Geert van der Linden, vice president of the Asian Development Bank

One of the hopes for the next 10 years is that every child will be taught through school and through family about the natural hazards that surround them and how to prevent the casualties.
Jan Egeland, U.N. under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs

What is needed is a better way of communicating accurate information to the people in need of such information.
Jan Egeland, U.N. under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs

On weather-related hazards

More than 90 percent of deaths are due to hydro-meteorological disasters, and we believe that we can reduce that number by half. Hazards will always remain, but they don’t need to turn into disasters if appropriate measures are taken.
Michel Jarraud, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organisation

On technological hazards

In terms of preparedness -- especially on the local level -- the more technical oriented disasters must have the same attention. We must have the same warning system. We must have the same preparedness, and education of the people.
Klaus Toepfer, executive director of UNEP

On urban dangers:

The most frightening perspective is to have a truly megadisaster in a megacity. Then we would have not only a casualty rate like we’re seeing now with the tsunami at the end of last year. We could see a hundred times that, in the worst case.
Jan Egeland, U.N. under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs

On climate change, after the U.S. delegation sought to eliminate references to it in the conference’s draft outcome document:

Climate change is not a movie or science fiction development. It is calculable. It is already happening. (The result is) the short-term increase of extreme weather conditions. It is not only a quantitative increase. It is also a qualitative increase. The amplitude of those extreme weather conditions is higher. So we have more and more intensive storms, hurricanes and cyclones. We have more intensive flooding with very heavy raining. We have more intensive droughts.
Klaus Toepfer, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)

It's childish. It's infantile to say if you don't name it doesn't exist. You cannot look at disaster risk reduction in the world today without looking at climate change.
Ben Wisner, hazards expert at London School of Economics

Variability of climate is quite relevant to natural disasters. Clearly talking about climate is pertinent here, but it’s well known that there are controversies about the issue of climate change, about the Kyoto Protocol in other venues of the U.N. It’s our desire that this controversy not distract from this conference.

Our only suggestion is let’s not let something which has been a legitimate, serious, substantive debate about how to grapple best with climate change to skew a very important conference. Matters of climate change and environment are certainly pertinent to the kinds of hazards that exist today, and the United States would not deny that.
Mark Lagon, deputy assistant secretary, Bureau of International Organisation Affairs, U.S. State Department

There is a clear link between greenhouse gases and disasters, and disaster reduction is not possible without reduction of greenhouse gases.
Khurshid Alam of ActionAid’s international emergencies team

The trouble is you get big, powerful governments putting their foot down on some of these issues, and in the end you get the lowest common denominator
Sarah La Trobe, Tearfund’s public policy officer

On the destruction of coral reefs and mangrove swamps:

You have to use the environment (to help prevent) natural disasters. The conviction has grown that we need the integration of nature in the early warning system.
Klaus Toepfer, executive director of UNEP

On tsunami damage to farmland in Indonesia:

Over a two kilometre zone it has really caused the land to be degraded significantly. The question is whether any farming is possible in the next year, two years, three years. It may not be. The population that used to live here, in order to survive, may need to be relocated a bit away from the coast.
Geert van der Linden, vice president of the Asian Development Bank

On resettling people:

It’s much more straightforward to repair a railway line in the same place it was than to develop completely new settlement areas.
Geert van der Linden, vice president of the Asian Development Bank

On the use of the military in tsunami relief:

Every country beyond its own share of world GDP has something it can offer. As it happens, the United States has a pretty substantial military capacity, one of lift and so on. And the United States is very willing to apply that when welcome for humanitarian efforts. The United States pledged $350 million dollars for tsunami relief, but on top of that every day the United States, it’s been calculated, spends about $6 million on the application of its military assets toward tsunami relief.
Mark Lagon, deputy assistant secretary, Bureau of International Organisation Affairs, U.S. State Department

It is a concern because in some tsunami areas there are conflict zones, and the Red Cross really must stay neutral and be very careful. We definitely give priority to private-sector assets in this regard. But actually there are cases when if the army is on a humanitarian mission and not wearing weapons, they can be used temporarily.
Markku Niskala, secretary-general of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

On donor obligations:

We will remind the donors to pay up, because it is the least you can do when you promise.
Jan Egeland, U.N. under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs