The Vatican’s secretary of state has assured participants at the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction that the Holy See stands ever ready to make its own specific contribution as the Forum works to meet the urgent challenges before us.

In a letter addressed to the president of Mexico who is overseeing the Global Platform taking place this year in Cancun, Cardinal Pietro Parolin said that “in the name of His Holiness Pope Francis, I express the hope that the work of the Global Platform will prove useful, fruitful and effective for enabling resilience to go hand in hand with the development of a genuine, responsible and fraternal cooperation grounded in the common good”.

The Platform, which sees the participation of over 5,000 experts, including policy makers and disaster risk managers, is the world's foremost gathering of stakeholders committed to reducing disaster risk and building the resilience of communities and nations.

In his letter Cardinal Parolin recalled the adoption in 2015 of three Plans of Action which he said are profoundly interrelated and significant for the future of humanity: the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction; the Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Agreement on climate change.

The year 2017, he pointed out, represents an important step in the process of determining the most concrete and effective means for their implementation.

The Cardinal emphasized that one of the major challenges is that of integrating activities for disaster risk reduction with initiatives aimed at promoting integral human development, eliminating poverty and social exclusion, mitigating climate change and adapting to it.

He quoted repeatedly from Pope Francis’s encyclicals and addresses and addresses to Seminar’s on issues regarding environmental justice and said it is necessary to take into account the correct order of priorities, such as combating poverty, responding to climate change, advancing the acknowledgment of human dignity and the centrality of the human person.

He said that a correct implementation of the three documents mentioned above demands a change of mentality and of lifestyle pointing out that obsession with a consumerist lifestyle, above all when few people are capable of maintaining it, can only lead to violence and mutual destruction.