Additional Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister, Dr P K Mishra has said that disaster risk reduction is no longer a local phenomenon and global targets, regional plans, local strategies and implementation are required to address the issue. Inaugurating a day long SAARC regional workshop on sharing best practices on disaster risk reduction in New Delhi today, he said that countries responding collectively are more important than responding individually. <br/><br/>He also expressed concern that there is always a huge gap between the discussions and implementation. Mr Mishra said, there has been talk about disaster risk reduction, but in practice we have not been able to show successful examples. He said that efforts should be made to quantify the outcomes and targets should be defined in numbers. Mr Mishra also said that fund-mobilization is not an issue these days, which used to be for decades earlier.<br/><br/> He said that at the time of appraisal of a project, disaster risk impact should be done along with the environment and social impact assessment and target should be to prevent the future risk and mitigate the existing risk. He said, the exercise is an outcome of the directions by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to have regional exercises for response. Mr Mishra added that it will help in coordinating efforts and showcasing solidarity.<br/><br/>He said, this exercise should not be limited only to response, but should address the entire spectrum. Arjun Bahadur Thapa, Secretary General of SAARC , Member Secretary of NDMA R.K Jain, DG, NDRF O.P. Singh also spoke on the occasion. The aim of the Regional workshop is to provide a platform to member countries for sharing best practices in the field of disaster risk reduction, experience sharing on Nepal Earthquake April 2015 as well as deliberating upon the outcomes of the South Asian Annual Disaster Management Exercise, SAADMEx -2015.