Natural disasters can be reduced and avoided

Updated: 2015-04-17 07:21

By Mayling Chan(HK Edition)

  Print Mail Large Medium  Small 分享按钮 0

Cyclone Pam in Vanuatu, Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, floods in Southern Africa: Disasters like these described as the strongest of their kind in the last 50 or 100 years have become increasingly common. Over the last 30 years, not only has the number of weather-related disasters trebled, they have also affected more people and caused more economic losses, mostly in low to middle-income countries. However, much of this could be avoided through disaster risk reduction (DRR).

The aims of DRR are twofold: To reduce the risks that natural disasters pose to people and build up the resilience of these communities. Local organisations, communities, and of course, governments play a critical role in achieving this, yet funds and support for local-level DRR measures are often lacking. This is why leaders and representatives from various sectors joined the World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction, which presented an unparalleled opportunity for the international community to bring about a step change in efforts to reduce the risks vulnerable and marginalised people all over the world face. Their common goal was to ensure the impact of natural hazards in the next 15 years is less deadly and damaging than those in the last 10.

The conference, held in Sendai, Japan last month, opened one day after Cyclone Pam hit Vanuatu, which battered the archipelago with winds of up to 340 km/h and devastated the island nation. The speech His Excellency Baldwin Lonsdale, the president of Vanuatu, made was timelier than ever. He pleaded with the international community for financial support and stronger commitments in helping them manage climate and disaster risks. In the face of disasters, it is always the developing countries that suffer most. Damage in these countries is often worse and there is limited financial and technical capacity to prevent these disasters.

The lack of proper DRR measures have left vulnerable and politically marginalized groups disproportionately affected. These include women, people with disabilities and people living in poverty, precisely because they are poor and disempowered. Small island developing states, like those in the Pacific, also face a disproportionately high risk from hazards and the impact of climate change, due to their size, location and economies.

Without comprehensive DRR measures in place, we have seen Asian countries - especially those that are most prone to disasters and lacking in resources - paying the price. As if paying with these people's lives was not enough, the international community's lack of commitment has forced these people to pay through their noses. Asia has borne roughly half the estimated global economic cost of all disasters, which comes to a grand total of almost $53 billion annually over the past 20 years. These losses from disasters have significantly outpaced growth in GDP, while flooding-related harvest losses alone in Southeast Asia amount to an estimated annual value of $1 billion.

While it is too simplistic to assume an overarching cost-benefit ratio for DRR work, studies have shown time and again that appropriate prevention saves lives and money. For instance, one study showed that in Kenya, resilience building activities to reduce disaster risks costs, on average, $1 billion per year less than the humanitarian response to the East Africa drought in 2011.

This is telling evidence and a challenge to individual donors, the private sector and governments, which often focus only on financing disaster relief efforts to show solidarity to affected countries. Though helpful, it does not come close to the effectiveness of investing in DRR, preparedness and response capacities.

With this in mind, attendees at the Sendai conference were able to come up with new agreements that feature a stronger emphasis on the impact of disasters on vulnerable groups, and highlight their role as agents of change in strong and effective risk reduction efforts. This is a critical commitment that Oxfam will be actively supporting to implement and will use to hold governments accountable to in the coming years.

However, these agreements do little to motivate bold action or create meaningful accountability as wealthy countries failed to make concrete commitments around additional financial and technical support to developing countries. In particular, the seven targets that form the core of the agreement are not sufficiently robust. These targets include reductions to disaster mortalities and the number of affected people, economic losses as well as damage to infrastructure and basic services. Though arguably a good start, such insubstantial targets place little real influence on the main stakeholders to demonstrate significant improvements in reducing disaster risk.

The author is the international programme director at Oxfam Hong Kong.

(HK Edition 04/17/2015 page12)