Disaster Risk Reduction has More Facets to Mend than Just Vague Rhetoric Policy Statements

By Gracious Timothy, V. M. Salgaocar College of Law, Goa University, Panjim

Natural Disaster occurs when societies and communities are exposed to potentially hazardous events and when people are unable to absorb the impact or recover from the hazardous impact, such as extremes of temperature showing way to droughts and threatening food security in Africa; extremes of rainfall leading to flash floods and landslides inflicting death and destruction; extremes of wind speed with consequential strong hurricanes causing massive economic losses in the USA and Caribbean; and tectonic movements following the bereavement  laid by Tsunami that Indonesia, Southern India and Japan have endured in the recent past years . No country can claim its invulnerability and that the scale of the impact of disasters in turn depends on the choices we make for our lives, the society and the environment. These choices relate to how we live, how we grow our food, where and how we build houses and build infrastructure, what kind of government we have, the kind of financial institution we establish. Each decision and action makes us more vulnerable to disasters- or more resilient to them.  Disaster Risk Reduction involves all parts of the society, all parts of the government, and also every part of professional & private sector.

About 70% of the world’s poor live in the rural areas[1], and this is one of the key factors that shape the risk to hazards such as flooding and drought.  Global Climate change led through by Global Warming brings with it long-term shifts in mean weather condition causing extreme weather events, which is more threatening to the people whose livelihood serve in the rural economy. In Madagascar, which is high on the list of countries at risk from climate change, some of these top needs are being answered in ‘child and eco-friendly schools’. Children not only plan for and practice emergency drills to avoid the worst seasonal floods and storms, but they also learn about their environment and get to work in a sustainable and safe school made from low cost construction materials.  Although we have the caveat that poverty and vulnerability are not always synonymous.  For e.g. in the Indian Earthquake of 2000, many wealthier families were killed far from the epicenter when their houses collapsed. It was found that they had added additional structure to their dwellings-something that poorer people had been unable to do-but had done so without strengthening their foundations, and so increased the vulnerability of their houses to the impact of the earthquake. Also in Sierra Leone during the civil war, it was found that the urban middle class were more vulnerable as refugees in Guinea than poorer rural families as they lacked survival skills such as the ability to build temporary shelters and forage for wild food.

Only 4% of the estimated $ 10 billion in annual Humanitarian Assistance is devoted to Disaster Risk Reduction and yet every Dollar spent or invested on risk reduction saves between $ 5 and $ 10 in economic losses from disasters[2]. But also saves unfathomed lives at the brink of death. The idea is to push beyond vague rhetoric policy statements and improvise a systematic approach to identifying, assessing and reducing risks of all kinds associated with hazards and human activities.  It would be unrealistic to expect progress in every aspect of DRR, for this has to be played skeptically.  Speaking at a side event, at the UN Conference on Sustainable Development, dubbed Rio+20, Antonio Guterres (UN High Commissioner for Refugees), urged international organizations to partner with local communities and national authorities to provide for solutions for those moving into cities in search of better life.