A stitch in time saves nine

Although the world is still struggling with attempts to curb climate change, the consequences of this phenomenon are an evident reality. Yet, while climate instigated weather events will continue causing problems in the future, it is possible to minimise the damage caused by them. However, even in terms of contending with natural disasters, prevalent responses remain reactive. The global community’s failure to prepare for natural disasters has compelled the UN’s head of disaster planning to issue a warning of the consequences of impending natural disasters, and the related humanitarian crises which could be unleashed by them. This cautionary tone is unsubstantiated given the fact that floods, heatwaves and landslides have killed thousands of people, displaced millions and caused billions of dollars of economic damage during the past year alone. Consider, for instance, the case of Syria, where climate change became one of the catalysts for brutal and lingering conflict. Years of protracted drought devastated agricultural productivity and led an influx of migrants from rural areas into major cities, which instigated social unrest and became an underlying factor for the civil war which has since torn the country apart.

Droughts, water scarcity and other climate-related disasters can become drivers of conflict across the world. Large parts of Africa, as well as South Asia, where two nuclear-armed and populous neighbours have to share the waters of the Indus, are also very susceptible to such threats. International aid agencies are struggling to cope with the development challenges around the world, and the predicted increase in the frequency of natural disasters will make things harder. A rise in humanitarian crises would make an already stretched international aid community increasingly unable to cope. Besides trying to chide world leaders to cut emissions to a level which can make climate change more manageable, the other sensible thing to do is to try reducing disaster risks and the potential damage that can be caused by them. Despite the enormity of the risk posed by natural disasters, the international community is spending less than 0.5 per cent of the global aid budget on trying to mitigate such risks. Moreover, rather than trying to minimise the damage caused by disasters, the international funding earmarked for contending with them often goes to provide relief and rehabilitation once they have already caused destruction.

In Bangladesh, which experiences devastating floods, thousands of lives have been saved through improved disaster risk reduction planning, and investment in storm shelters and early warning systems. On the other hand, last year’s earthquake in Nepal was an illustration of the fact that international disaster management capacity is still lacking. Lessons learnt from huge international disasters are not being sustained. Take the case of the Indian Ocean tsunami back in 2004, after which much effort and resources went into building tsunami resilience, particularly advance warning systems.

Establishing disaster management agencies which can be activated in times of disaster is clearly not enough. Effective disaster risk reduction requires making sensible broader choices about land and environmental management and how we grow our food, where and how people build homes, what kind of local government capacity exists to manage disasters. There is a need to begin thinking of disaster risk as a core planning activity so that when countries invest in infrastructure, they’re not building a hospital in a flood zone or establishing communities in areas vulnerable to storm surges.

One hopes that disaster management authorities within our own country also pay more attention to implementing a comprehensive approach to disaster risk reduction, and that they can also convince other decision-makers to back these efforts. Minimising disaster risks remains imperative for us as a nation to prevent the sort of devastation that we have witnessed due to the recurrent disasters which have hit different parts of the country over this past decade.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 3^rd, 2016.

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