The unusual huge tsunami caused by the 26 December 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake has resulted in about 300 thousand deaths and much economic loss. The event instantly shocked the whole world. Governments and ordinary people then began considering how to unite the whole world so as to cope with serious disasters.

As a global international organization of scientific research academies, the Inter Academy Panel on International Issues (IAP) immediately takes prompt action. On 14th, January 2005, two IAP co-chairmen suggested to adopt joint actions in IAP to deal with the Indian Ocean tsunami and other global natural disasters. Many group members responded immediately to show their enthusiastic support for the suggestions.

Then, in February, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) held a series of meetings, namely, Workshop on “Regional Academies Networking and Mechanism of Disaster Mitigation after the Tsunami” on 19-20th, First meeting of Expert Group of Disaster Program in CAS for IAP Program on 21-22th, First meeting of Working Group of Disaster Program in CAS for IAP Program on 23-25th and finished the Program proposal on" Global Natural Disaster and Disaster Reduction".

As proposed by the CAS, then agreed and approved by IAP Executive Committee Meeting on 26-27 Feb. 2005, the IAP initiative on “Natural Disaster mitigation” is launched as IAP response to the tsunami and more generally to natural disasters mitigation. The CAS will act as a leading academy for the IAP initiative. The Initiative will form a working group under the leadership of CAS (Prof. Guo Huadong, Deputy Secretary General), and IAP member academies from Japan, U.S., Netherlands( Netherlands recommended Indonesia to join in the group), Cuba, Bangladesh and Sweden, who have voluntarily joined the group. All of the six member academies have had a quick response to nominate their experts to join the working group. The IAP initiative is aimed to write a document with a strong didactical content within 4 to 5 months, aimed at decision makers and academies.

According to the IAP EC Meeting’s decision, CAS set up an international project specialist group, a project specialist group and a CAS project working group. The National Center for Disaster Mitigation took the leading role. Prof. Wang Angsheng , director of the National Center for Disaster Mitigation is the chief scientist of this project. In four month, four versions of the draft on interAcademy Panel’s Program “GLOBAL NATURAL HAZARDS AND DISASTER REDUCTION” have been finished, receiving comments both from Chinese and foreign specialists. The fourth version of the draft has come out based on the valuable comments from USA, Sweden, Indonesia, Japan, India, Cuba Bangladesh and China.

From 29 August to 3 September, 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit USA and made another world-shaking catastrophic event in the Would. Some early predictions in damages exceeded US$100 billion. Roughly more than 20,000 people were believed to be missing until September 1, 2005, and more thunsands people were killed by Hurricane Katrina. It shoked all world again, because of natural disaster hit USA which is the strongest country of economy and science-technology in the world, and made so significant damage. Hurricane Katrina let all people again to ponder over how we could make disaster prevention and reduction. This event has been added to the document. And more than fifty photoes on global natural disasters in the history have also been added to the document. Moreover, relevant annex is attached at the end of the document. Now, the work for the first period of the IAP Inititative has been finished. The second period of the IAP Initiative will be initiated in early 2006.