The water-related disasters mainly include floods, droughts, debris flows, storm-induced landslides, dam failure, and earthquake-induced water disasters. Water-related disaster risk is usually regarded as the frequency of a water-related disaster multiplied by the damage. Traditionally, attempts to reduce the water-related disaster risk have focused on structural measures such as the construction of dams, embankments, and river training. Such measures aim at reducing the frequency of water-related disasters.

However, structural measures increase the potential damage as the enhanced capacity of preventing water-related disaster invokes further investment and the concentration of population in the protected areas such as floodplains and deltas. As a result, another way of lowering water-related disaster risk is to minimize the potential damage by nonstructural measures such as legislation, institutional arrangements, raising awareness of risk, assessment and monitoring of risk, developing early warning systems, preparedness, etc. Disaster risk management is based on the fact that since water-related disasters are unlikely to be eliminated completely, human beings must learn to live with risk and try to reduce the risk to the largest extent possible by means of both structural and nonstructural measures.

In January 2005, 168 governments adopted a 10-year plan to make the world safer from natural hazards at the Word Conference on Disaster Reduction held in Kobe, Hyogo, Japan. The Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA) is a global blueprint for disaster risk reduction efforts. Based on HFA, Target 1.2 is set up and its goal is to reduce water-related disaster risk by means of some nonstructural measures of the risk management. To achieve this goal, interested parties are encouraged to present existing and innovative solutions in order to disseminate their successful experiences and help as many countries as possible better understand disaster risk and develop more advanced risk reduction systems. The specific steps for implementation of this target are as follows.

At first, the coordinators of the target will contact and consult with potential contributors to come up with a preliminary action plan for the target.

Then in August 2011 at Stockholm Water Week, sessions will be organized to discuss the preliminary action plan and learn about the comments and suggestions of interested parties about implementation of the target. In addition, a preliminary list of potential countries will be formed.

In fall 2011 the action plan will be finalized.

In March 2012, the target will be refined and endorsed at WWF 6 and a voluntary agreement will be signed by countries.

From the beginning of 2013 to the end of 2015, the implementation progress will be reviewed and measures will be taken to address issues arising in the process of implementation of the target.