Landslides are a serious geological hazard. More landslides can be expected as climate change exacerbates rainfall intensity. The long-term trend of the last forty years has seen the number of major recorded extreme weather events almost double, notably floods, storms, landslides, and wildfires.

Unfortunately, there is still not a great public understanding and awareness of landslide risk and the way it interacts with other drivers of disaster risk such as land use, the loss of protective drainage systems from deforestation, and the use of marginal lands on unstable hillsides to house poor people. This is despite the fact that global warming has led to a dramatic increase in extreme weather events over the last twenty years which in turn increases the likelihood of landslides in hazard-prone populated areas.

Landslides with high death tolls are often a result of failures in risk governance, poverty reduction, environmental protection, land use, and the implementation of building codes. Understanding the inter-relationships between earth surface processes, ecological systems, and human activity is the key to reducing landslide risk.

The tragic result is that many people lose their lives and their homes every year from landslides, which underlines the importance of including landslide risk in the national and local strategies for disaster risk reduction.

The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 is the global plan to reduce disaster losses adopted by UN Member States in 2015. It stresses the importance of scientific and technological work to facilitate effective decision-making in disaster risk reduction. 2023 marks the midpoint in the implementation of the Sendai Framework and Sustainable Development Goals, providing a major opportunity to review and bolster the implementation of the Framework moving towards 2030. In May 2023, we concluded the Midterm Review of the Sendai Framework which culminated in the adoption of a Political Declaration by the United Nations General Assembly.

The Political Declaration reiterated the instrumental and cross-cutting role of science, technology, and innovation in strengthening the effectiveness and efficiency of disaster resilience building and accelerating the implementation of the Sendai Framework and its four priorities.

To that end, the work of the Sendai Landslide Partnership 2015–2025, facilitated by the International Consortium on Landslides (ICL), is a significant contribution to reducing disaster risk.

The Partnership, which is featured on the Sendai Framework Voluntary Commitments online platform, provides practical tools, education, and capacity building, to help countries develop solutions to reduce landslide risks.

UNDRR fully supports the work of the Sendai Landslide Partnerships and ICL, and we hope to see other members of the scientific community follow in their steps to strengthen the science-policy nexus. We need more successful efforts to reduce disaster losses if we are to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Mami Mizutori,

Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction, Head of the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR)