Lesotho is among the countries that adopted the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction recognizing the increasing impact of disasters and their complexity in many parts of the world. The country is affected by recurring drought, localized floods, strong winds, heavy snowfall, as well as hailstorms impacting people's lives and their livelihoods adversely. The country is currently grappling with food insecurity as a result of the El Nino drought that affected the Southern African region which has resulted in about 700, 000 people being declared as food insecure.
Under the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk reduction and Programme of Action, Lesotho has achieved the following:
- Training of stakeholders/sectors to upload data into the Sendai Framework Monitoring system (SFM) was conducted, and stakeholders/sectors have already started inputting data into the system.
- Developed a tool that will assist stakeholders to collect data on damage and losses.
- Integrated DRR into the curriculum at primary school level.
- Developed National DRR strategy.
- Lesotho has entered into partnerships with the Adaptation Fund, European Union Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid (ECOH) and the Green Environment Facility in pursuance of Target F of the Framework.
- Furthermore, Lesotho has, through the Disaster Management Authority (DMA), entered into a Bi-lateral cooperation with the Republic of South Africa's National Disaster Management Centre (NDMC), whereby a Memorandum of Understanding was formally signed in September 2022.
- Target G; the country has augmented its Early warning system capacity through a project called Early Warning Systems 2, which provided high performance computers used for weather furcating accompanied by the installation of automatic weather stations.
It is however difficult to quantify the economic losses in relation to GDP as per Target C of the Sendai Framework. This is because of the challenges in coordination and feedback mechanisms as this involves different sectors to compile economic losses and institutions still do not collect such data. The other challenge is that comprehensive data collection across sectors is still fragmented, inadequate and inaccurate at times which leads to challenges in quantifying and costing damage to critical infrastructure as per Target D specifications.