### c. United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT)

UN-HABITAT is a UN funding and planning agency specializing in human settlement issues. Japan has been an active council participant since the foundation of UN-HABITAT, and has taken advantage of its knowledge and land, regional, and residential environment improvement experience to contribute to improving human settlement issues worldwide, with particular focus on the Asian population explosion.

In October 2016, the 20th annual UN conference “HABITAT III”—a UN conference held to discuss international efforts related to human settlements and to summarize the international agenda—is scheduled to be held in Ecuador. A domestic committee (co-chaired by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the MLIT) was established in April 2014 to create and release news reports on other countries (mid-term reports) to be submitted to UN-HABITAT Office.

### d. United Nations Secretary-General's Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation (UNSGAB)

UNSGAB is the Secretary-General’s advisory board for policy and technical advice to address water issues. At the 23rd conference held in October 2014 in Tokyo, special sessions concerning water recycling and water disasters were held. The Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism highlighted the necessity for international cooperation to ensure clean water supply and contributed to the debate regarding water problems, including ongoing discussion concerning water and natural disasters. In addition, Japan also attended the 3rd session (May 2014) and 4th session (October 2014) of the Water Disaster High Level Panel for strengthening water disaster efforts across countries, and shared information about adaptation to climate change and lessons learned from the Great East Japan Earthquake.

### e. World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (WCDRR)

The United Nations World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction is an international conference hosted by the United Nations to discuss international disaster prevention strategy; the conference has been hosted twice by Japan (1st Yokohama, 1994 and 2nd Kobe, 2005). At the third conference held in Sendai in March 2015, the “Sendai Disaster Prevention Framework” was presented as a follow-up to the “Hyogo Action Framework,” the international disaster prevention effort guidelines from the second conference, and the Sendai document was adopted as a political declaration.

At this conference, the Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Ohta attended the Ministerial Round Table Meeting “Recovering Well from Disaster (Build Back Better),” and presented Japan’s lessons learned from the Great Hanshin Earthquake, the Great East Japan Earthquake, and water disasters, sharing his experience and knowledge concerning disaster prevention, mitigation, and reconstruction, and emphasizing the importance of “Taking prevention, mitigation, and reconstruction measures that combine structural and non-structural aspects to prepare for worst-case scenarios,” and “Using the lessons learned from the past to further develop safer communities by making preventative investments.” The “Sendai Disaster Prevention Framework” was adopted on the final day of the conference, and established the following four items as matters to be prioritized worldwide going forward: 1) “Understanding Risk of Disaster”, 2) “Strengthening Disaster Risk Management Governance”, 3) “Creating a Strong Society by Investing in Disaster Risk Reduction,” and 4) “Strengthening Pre-occurrence Preparation for Effective Emergency Response, and ‘Build Back Better’ for Disaster Recovery/Restoration”.

MLIT itself also plans to work on necessary measures based on the “Sendai Disaster-Prevention Framework” going forward.