Disastrous disaster management
High time that our policy makers transcend their conventional fire-fighting and reactive mode of disaster management.
Although natural disasters are nothing new, the ability of states to manage them has been receiving increased international attention over the past few years. To contend with the potential devastation, caused in large part by natural disasters brought on by climate change, the United Nations has set up a new entity called the United Nation’s International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR).
This new body has expressed its concern about the severe floods currently ravaging many countries across Asia. This latest wave of flooding has claimed hundreds of lives and adversely affected millions of people in Thailand, Cambodia, Bangladesh, the Philippines, India and Pakistan.
The governments of developing countries are, therefore, being urged to increase their investments in disaster risk reduction. The UNISDR rightly points out that a range of technologies do exist to alert communities before floods arrive, so that they can be evacuated in time. It is, however, equally important to realise that natural catastrophes, such as floods, cause much less death than damages to public assets, as well as to the livelihoods and homes of poor people. It is this latter damage that causes long-term, adverse effects on people and their well-being, long after the actual flood waters recede.
Pakistan has witnessed major impacts of climate change consecutively during these last two years. Climate experts consider this unexpected change, a part of broader regional climate changes which will increase the frequency of major floods and droughts.
Although Pakistan has formulated a national climate change policy, there are many obstacles to implementing any such policy. Besides economic constraints, ineffective governance is also responsible for the resulting lack of public awareness of the climate crisis. Pakistan should pay closer attention to policy making efforts in neighbouring countries like Bangladesh, India and Nepal, which have all come up with climate change action plans which are actually being implemented.
There is also urgent need to review why existing disaster management entities in the country have not been able to achieve their mandated goals. Several experts have pointed out that the effects of the latest floods in Sindh, could have been prevented if efficient disaster risk reduction mechanisms had been installed in flood-prone areas after last year’s disastrous floods. Why this did not happen merits serious attention.
It is high time that our policy makers transcend their conventional fire-fighting and reactive mode of disaster management, to respond to climate change through tangible disaster prevention and mitigation measures. For instance, evident steps must be initiated to prevent illegal canal breaches by landlords to divert water away from their lands and residential encroachments along canal banks to minimise future flood damages. Constructing check-dams and other barriers to harness the floodwaters, could in turn, help contend with impending droughts.
The cost of not seriously taking these needed steps is plain to see. The floods of last year and of this year have cost Pakistan billions of dollars in terms of crop, livestock and infrastructure damage. Given the increasing international mistrust of our country, as well as the growing sense of disaster-fatigue, even international aid agencies are finding it very difficult to raise sufficient funds to meet the immediate needs of those affected by the floods. The resulting insufficient mobilisation of resources, coupled with the lack of capacity of our own cash-strapped government, has led a thoroughly inadequate emergency relief and recovery response in the flood-affected areas.
Such a dismal state of affairs translates into untold suffering for the disaster victims, many of whom were already leading lives of extreme deprivation. We simply cannot afford such a lackluster attitude towards disaster management and must be better prepared before the next monsoon season, or when another form of natural disaster strikes.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 7th, 2011.
This new body has expressed its concern about the severe floods currently ravaging many countries across Asia. This latest wave of flooding has claimed hundreds of lives and adversely affected millions of people in Thailand, Cambodia, Bangladesh, the Philippines, India and Pakistan.
The governments of developing countries are, therefore, being urged to increase their investments in disaster risk reduction. The UNISDR rightly points out that a range of technologies do exist to alert communities before floods arrive, so that they can be evacuated in time. It is, however, equally important to realise that natural catastrophes, such as floods, cause much less death than damages to public assets, as well as to the livelihoods and homes of poor people. It is this latter damage that causes long-term, adverse effects on people and their well-being, long after the actual flood waters recede.
Pakistan has witnessed major impacts of climate change consecutively during these last two years. Climate experts consider this unexpected change, a part of broader regional climate changes which will increase the frequency of major floods and droughts.
Although Pakistan has formulated a national climate change policy, there are many obstacles to implementing any such policy. Besides economic constraints, ineffective governance is also responsible for the resulting lack of public awareness of the climate crisis. Pakistan should pay closer attention to policy making efforts in neighbouring countries like Bangladesh, India and Nepal, which have all come up with climate change action plans which are actually being implemented.
There is also urgent need to review why existing disaster management entities in the country have not been able to achieve their mandated goals. Several experts have pointed out that the effects of the latest floods in Sindh, could have been prevented if efficient disaster risk reduction mechanisms had been installed in flood-prone areas after last year’s disastrous floods. Why this did not happen merits serious attention.
It is high time that our policy makers transcend their conventional fire-fighting and reactive mode of disaster management, to respond to climate change through tangible disaster prevention and mitigation measures. For instance, evident steps must be initiated to prevent illegal canal breaches by landlords to divert water away from their lands and residential encroachments along canal banks to minimise future flood damages. Constructing check-dams and other barriers to harness the floodwaters, could in turn, help contend with impending droughts.
The cost of not seriously taking these needed steps is plain to see. The floods of last year and of this year have cost Pakistan billions of dollars in terms of crop, livestock and infrastructure damage. Given the increasing international mistrust of our country, as well as the growing sense of disaster-fatigue, even international aid agencies are finding it very difficult to raise sufficient funds to meet the immediate needs of those affected by the floods. The resulting insufficient mobilisation of resources, coupled with the lack of capacity of our own cash-strapped government, has led a thoroughly inadequate emergency relief and recovery response in the flood-affected areas.
Such a dismal state of affairs translates into untold suffering for the disaster victims, many of whom were already leading lives of extreme deprivation. We simply cannot afford such a lackluster attitude towards disaster management and must be better prepared before the next monsoon season, or when another form of natural disaster strikes.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 7th, 2011.