Reducing vulnerability & building resilience

Reduce adverse impact and costs and free resources for additional investments where it matters most.

Over the last two decades, most countries have registered significant improvements in human development. Now, vulnerability and the impact of crises and disasters are undermining the hard won progress or slowing down its growth. The annual growth in Human Development Index (HDI) value has declined in Pakistan from two per cent in 2000-2008 to almost zero during 2008-2013. The 2014 UNDP Human Development Report (HDR) 2014 launched in Pakistan demonstrates that progress cannot be sustained without building resilience.

The report highlights two crucial types of vulnerabilities influencing human capabilities: life cycle and structural vulnerabilities.

Life cycle vulnerabilities are the result of peoples’ life histories, with past outcomes influencing present exposure to and ways of coping with vulnerabilities. Lack of investments or poor outcomes at the early stage of life — prenatal and early childhood — have the highest impact on human development than investments made at later stages. Unfortunately in Pakistan, vulnerabilities at the early stage of the life cycle are the highest. In 2011, the national nutrition survey found 43.7 per cent of the children stunted as compared to 41.6 per cent from 10 years ago. Malnutrition in children under five has shown no improvement in the last 46 years. It worsened to 44 per cent in 2011 from 42 per cent in 2001.

The structural vulnerabilities are generated from social, legal institutions, power structures, political traditions and socio-cultural norms. Geographical locations also contribute to structural vulnerabilities. Three quarters of the world’s poor live in rural areas. In South Asia, 86.3 per cent of the multidimensional poor people live in rural areas. Balochistan is among the poorest 15 sub-national regions in South Asia.

Different crises have pervasive adverse impact on human development. The conflict in Swat for example, displaced around 142,000 families. The 2005 earthquake killed 73,000 people and inflicted a cost equivalent to four per cent of GDP. According to the National Disaster Management Authority, over the past 67 years, there have been 21 major floods in Pakistan which have inflicted a cumulative financial loss of more than $37 billion and 115,00 casualties.

Persistent vulnerabilities create a vicious circle where both progress is undermined and resources needed to recover increase. Countries need to build resilience and capacities to address vulnerability and prepare for and recover from crises. Resilience is about ensuring that state, communities and global institutions work to empower and protect people. It is about enabling the disadvantaged and excluded, to realise their rights, to express their concern freely, to be heard ad become active agents in shaping their destiny.

There are at least five lessons from the report and global experience which are central to Pakistan’s future.

First, the provision of basic social services empowers people to live the lives they value. Social protection, including unemployment insurance, pension programmes and labour market regulations, can offer coverage against risk and adversity through people’s lives.

Second, timing of the intervention is critical because failing to support the development of capabilities at the right time is costly to fix later in life. Investment at early childhood and youth has much higher impact on human capabilities than investment at a later stage of life.

Third, unemployment — particularly of the youth of Pakistan — entails high economic and social costs. Policies are needed to support structural transformation, increasing formal employment and regulating conditions of work as well as reducing vulnerabilities and securing livelihoods of the workforce in the informal sector.

Fourth, persistent vulnerability is rooted in historic exclusions. The women in patriarchal societies, black people in South Africa and United States, religious and ethnic minorities in Pakistan, Dalits in India, etc. encounter discrimination and exclusion due to long-standing cultural practices and social norms. Responsible and accountable institutions could prevent conflict and violence, especially in situations of unequal access to resources.

Finally, natural disasters expose and exacerbate vulnerabilities, such as poverty, inequality, environmental degradation and weak governance. Serious investments in community-based disaster risk management in Pakistan and regional cooperation on early warning system between India and Pakistan on disasters like floods can be highly effective.

Pakistan’s investment in resilience today is the ultimate win-win: reducing adverse impact and costs and freeing resources for additional investments where it matters most.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 20^th, 2014.

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