In three weeks' time, UN bureaucrats and NGOs will gather in Kobe, Japan, for a meeting on disaster reduction. They will undertake a 10-year review of a lofty-sounding 'framework' called the "Yokohama Strategy and Plan of Action for a Safer World", created in 1994.

So far (and unless amended in light of this week's Asian tsunami tragedy), the meeting's agenda is highly self-referential; little if any discussion is planned of policies that might actually help poor countries to better cope with disasters. Though specific disaster policies are in order, many policies that enable people to best cope with disasters are those which empower people: property rights, effective legal systems to uphold property rights and contracts, and other institutions -- combined with good governance -- that are fundamentally lacking in most poor countries. The UN would do well to consider their role, instead of undertaking another talkfest.