National Action Plan for Disaster Risk Reduction 2016-2021 (Revised).

This National Action Plan (NAP) seeks to enhance national and local capacity to effectively prevent, reduce the impact of and recover from human induced and natural disasters. It sets out priority activities and essential tasks to be carried out. The Plan shall apply and effectively implement all legal and institutional frameworks and innovative technological approaches to reduce national and local community vulnerabilities (community resilience) and disaster risks within the context of sustainable development. 

In line with the Liberia Vision and Mission for Disaster Risk Management System, the DRR Framework (in Annex 2), the Hyogo Framework for Action and the Africa Regional Strategy for Disaster Risk Reduction, the National Action Plan has the following five objectives: i) To create an effective and functional legal and institutional framework on DRM; ii) To strengthen disaster preparedness for effective emergency response; iii) To improve risk identification and assessment of disaster risks in the country; iv) To enhance information and knowledge management for disaster risk management; v) To contribute to national risk management applications for poverty reduction. Each objective is further split into outputs. The number of outputs varies per objective. 

Under each output, several key activities are formulated. Capacities required to achieve each output are listed and they form the basis for calculation of the inputs i.e. the approximate costs per output. The National Disaster Management Commission (NDMC) will encourage establishment of networks and technical theme groups at different levels with participation of all stakeholders to enhance the implementation of the NAP. A strategy for women, youth, People Living with HIV/AIDS and other vulnerable groups’ active participation and benefits from DRR will be developed by NDMCS. Gender equality in DRR should be one of the major priorities by all stakeholders implementing the NAP.

The Plan also deals with (reduction of) economic and environmental vulnerability and climate change. Environmental vulnerability concerns the extent of natural resource depletion and the state of resource degradation. Environmental vulnerability includes loss of resilience of the ecological systems (degraded land, polluted water and air and resultant food insecurity and access to water, etc.). Loss of biodiversity and exposure to toxic and hazardous pollutants are also important elements that shape environmental vulnerability.