2027 Sendai to Host U.N.-Led Disaster Risk Reduction Conference; Government Hopes to Use Opportunity to Develop Sendai Framework Successor

The Yomiuri Shimbun

15:57 JST, April 19, 2025

The Asia-Pacific Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction, organized by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), is expected to be held in Japan for the first time in the autumn of 2027. The host city will be Sendai, and the UNDRR and the Japanese government are expected to announce a formal agreement soon, according to government sources.

The conference, which in principle is held every two years, aims to reduce damage from disasters across the Asia-Pacific region by giving participating countries a forum to share insights and initiatives. The previous conference was held in the Philippines and attracted over 7,000 participants from 70 countries, including government delegations, NGOs and disaster prevention-related businesses.

This event is positioned to be the first major international disaster-related conference after the planned establishment of Japan’s new Disaster Management Agency in fiscal 2026. The government intends to use the occasion to share lessons learned from the Great East Japan Earthquake and the Noto Peninsula Earthquake. In his policy speech this January, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba stated that Japan would “share its disaster management knowledge and technologies with the world and make them pillars of a new industry,” in hopes of drawing attention to Japan’s cutting-edge disaster prevention technologies.

This will be the second U.N.-led disaster risk reduction conference to be held in Sendai, following 2015’s Third U.N. World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction. The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, a set of international guidelines adopted at the 2015 conference, is set to expire in 2030, so the Japanese government aims to lead discussions at the 2027 ministerial meeting to formulate a successor framework.