The twenty first century has witnessed an increased frequency of natural and man made disasters. The manmade disasters such as wars are mainly attributed to unequal distribution of resources and also the breakdown in democracies leading to dictatorial regimes which provoke the communities to take up arms against their governments. On the other hand, the natural disasters which include floods, fires, hurricanes and wild fires have seen unprecedented displacement of disaster prone communities in the countries that have been affected. The increased frequency of most of these natural disasters is being attributed to negative climate change effects. Most of these disasters can be managed if there is a concerted effort by all relevant stakeholders in developing strategies of how to better prepare for them.

However, in most developing countries, including Uganda, management of disasters, unfortunately, follows ‘a management by crisis’ approach. This is due to lack of planning, networking on the part of the concerned stakeholders. In which case, lack of planning cuts across the whole planning spectrum, covering short term planning, medium term planning and strategic planning. It even inevitably causes the concerned to fail to know and identify early warning systems.

The Conference on disaster preparedness and management therefore aims at providing an active interdisciplinary forum for both researchers and practitioners in disaster reduction and management. Emphasis will to assess their level of preparedness and how to best prepare for future disasters, especially in disaster prone areas.

B. Conference Theme

The theme of the conference is sharing the burden in disaster prevention, preparedness and management to address new disaster challenges in the 21st Century

C. Conference objectives

The specific conference objectives will be:

1. To review and coordinate actions of Civil Society in general, including local NGOs and international organizations ie Red Cross and other organizations in disaster management for more efficiently and effectively.

2. To review, supplement and complement the actions of the Government of Uganda in disaster management.
3. To float the idea of establishment disaster emergency Fund
4. To float the idea of appealing to Government to establish a Disaster Management Authority
5. To review the National Disaster Plans, evaluate their effectiveness in view of the increasing disasters and make recommendations.
6. To propose and agree on the best practices and disaster preparedness prevention and management.

B. Conference /Outcome

1) From objective 1:
• One Memorandum of Understanding signed between government, and Civil Society Organizations in coordinating activities on disaster preparedness and management
2) From objective 2:
• Register Civil Society Members to UCCP as a Civil Society Network for Disaster Preparedness and Management.
3) From objective 3:
• Produce tentative plans on Disaster preparedness and management
4) From objective 4:
• To get Response from government to submit a Bill to parliament for establishment of a National Disaster Preparedness and Management Authority (NADIPMA)

C. Conference Output

Tuesday, 2nd December 2008
House Keeping.
Arrival of conference participants in At Imperial Resort Beach Hotel, Entebbe, Uganda

6:00pm – 7:00pm: Registration
7:00pm – 10:00 pm: Dinner

DAY 2: Wednesday, 3rd December 2008:

8:30am – 10:00am .: Communication from the organizers;
• Chairman Conference Steering Committee
• President UCCP
• Donors’ Representative

10:30am – 11:00 am: Coffee/tea break
11:00 am – 11:45 am: Minister for Disaster Preparedness
11:45pm – 12:00 pm.: Official Opening by the Prime Minister Uganda & Group Photo

Session 1:
12:00pm – 12:45 pm .: Presentation; Review of Causes of disasters (man-made and natural)
12:45pm – 1:30pm: Discussions
1:30pm – 2:30pm: Lunch Break

Session 2:
2:30pm – 3:15 pm .: Presentation; Review of impact of disasters (national & global perspectives)
3:15pm – 4:00pm: Discussions
4:00pm – 4:30pm: Coffee/tea break

Session 3:
4:30pm – 5:30 pm .: Breakout into groups Review national disaster management plans
5:30pm – 6:30pm: Session 4: Revie of best practices in developing effective national disaster managment plans.
6:30pm –10:00pm: Reception Buffet and Poster Session

DAY 3: Thursday, 4th December 2008:

• Visit to the National Meterological Centre (NMC) and Civil Avaiation Operations at the Airport
• Visit Uganda Wildlife Education Center (UWEC) Entebbe and Ngamba Islands
• Visi to the Ministry of Agraicuture Early Warning systems
• For Leisure at Resort and Botanical Beaches

DAY 4: Friday , 5th December 2008 :

7:45 p.m-8:30p,m Official Dinner

9:00 pm: onwards Departure of participants

D. Conferencerecommendations

Recommendations from the conference will be compiled and presented to the participants for their agreement. This document, called the National Manual to Address Disasters, will be presented to the Prime Minister to present to cabinet for approval.

Submission of papers

Manuscript for submission should be written in English and have no more than 1000 words. Electronic version of the papers in PDF or postscript files should be sent to info@uccpuganda.org before the submission deadline on 20th October 2008.

Important dates

Call for papers: 1st September 2008
Deadline for submission: 25th October 2008
Notification of acceptance: 30th October 2008
Copy of final version: 20th November 2008
Deadline for registration : 1st November 2008

Evaluation of papers

Each paper will be reviewed by 3 members of the program committee according to the paper’s technical relevance and quality. The final decision lies in the conference chairs with consideration of the comments and recommendations made by the program committee members.

Publication of the proceedings

Accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings. For each accepted paper, at least one of the co-authors is required to register to the conference and present the paper at the workshop. Immediately after the conference, authors of accepted papers will also be invited to submit a thoroughly revised and expanded version of the paper for consideration of publication in a journal special issue on the same theme of the conference.

Conference language

The conference language will be English.

Equipment for presentations

The conference facilities will comprise an overhead projector, a slide projector, a computer, and an LCD projector (‘beamer‘) for PowerPoint presentations. In order to avoid any technical problems during the conference, participants are requested to send their PowerPoint presentations by e-mail and/or on a CD-ROM to the conference secretariat (see address below) so that the presentations can be installed on the computer before the onset of the conference. The PowerPoint presentations must be submitted by 20th October 2008 at the latest.

Guidelines for Presentations and Papers

It is suggested that the presentations on topic do not exceed 10 minutes, which will leave 10 minutes for questions & answers.

Contributions.

Participants can contribute to the conference by:
1) Responding to the Call for Papers and Presentations by 10th October 2008
2) Providing relevant evaluations to the organizers for the preparation of synthesis papers
3) Participating in the workshop discussions as part of the audience

Attendees.

Stakeholders with interest in environmental issues from bilateral and multilateral donors, policy makers, academia and research community, NGOs and civil society. Participation will be limited to about 300 persons.

Registration.

Registration can be accessed online at www.uccpuganda.org/disaster. There are registration fees and but participants are expected to cover their own travel and expenses. The organizers are working on securing scholarships for half tuition or full tuition for those participants from developing countries.

The registration fees :

The Secretariat of the International conference invites interested professionals to contribute papers and presentations on building capacity in adaptation to climate change among small holder farmers of Sub-Saharan Africa. Proposals must be submitted by 10th October 2008

Organizational arrangements and venue:

The Secretariat of the Uganda Coalition for Crisis Prevention is in charge of the logistic and technical preparation of the conference. For any questions, please contact:

For more information, contact:
Secretariat of the International conference
Uganda Coalition for Crisis Prevention
Plot No. 27 Nakasero Road
Kampala, Uganda
Office Phone Number: +256-414-234550
Mobile phone number: +256-772-585605 / +256-751-650945
E-mail: info@uccpuganda.org

The conference venue is the At Imperial Resort Beach Hotel, Entebbe, Uganda.