DISCUSSING ABOUT INTERNATIONAL DISASTER RESEARCH AGENDA Discutir una Agenda de investigación internacional de desastres

The United Nation’s International Decade for the Disaster Reduction had diverse impacts within the affiliated countries. There were several open agendas in the fields of research and application of knowledge designed to reduce disasters. It increased governments´ attention to the problem of disasters, although mostly nominally in the case of Latin America and, more specifically, Mexico. In fact, the main problem we are facing nowadays consists in maintaining the existence of disaster research in the social sciences. Thus, the first question we wish to address is the impact that would be brought about by the absence of disaster research in the Latin American context.Obviously, there are many challenges. The first is the formation of cadres of specialists, the human resources that will have to do future research. Second is to generate consensus among Latin American scholars about the need to institutionalize collaborative efforts and research programs with international centers and scholars. Third is the need to define the priorities in lines of research, considering at least three essential aspects at the national and regional level: (i) differences of proneness to disasters, (ii) the state of development of scientific-technical structures for research and (iii) the state of preparedness to reduce disasters.