Topic: UN's response to Natural Disasters
Country: Japan
Delegate Name: Franklin Thornton
School: Saginaw Arts and Sciences Academy
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All Japan position papers GLIMUN 2013 committees
As a country that has had to deal with natural disasters since the establishment of the Japanese government, we know what natural disasters are like. They can cause damage equating to hundreds of billions of yen, or billions of United States Dollars (USD), to properties and businesses, causing the government to constantly spend its money worrying about the next earthquake, volcano, or typhoon while also repairing the damage from the last. It is not just the properties that are affected by these disasters, but also families. Families are the ones who lose their members and memories to the cruel mistress that is nature. As such, we ask the United Nations to encourage a natural disaster damage prevention system and promote the research of inexpensive ways to reverse the damage done to the land and people affected.
One recent example known by many is the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami causing the accident at Fukushima Daichi, leaving 15,881 of Japanese citizens dead and many without homes. The main issues with natural disasters are not the direct damage they cause, but the damage to the buildings and structures that are harmed in the natural disaster. In the example of the Tōhoku earthquake, the accident at Fukushima Daichi rated a 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale, seconded only by the Chernobyl accident. The damage to the environment will take years to clean up, but the damage to the faith in nuclear power will take much longer. Nuclear energy, our main way of advancing into an era of clean energy, is now being treated as a plague on humankind, when it is meant to be used for good.
We ask of the United Nations, not only to help us return our people to their homes, but to restore their faith in nuclear energy. This kind of clean energy allows Japan to support its large populations without the use of large greenhouse gas emissions, which would contribute to the already horrifying conditions of natural disasters in, not only Japan, but every country in the world. We ask that you aid the people of Japan in their goal of helping the environment, before the environment is past the point of helping.
