The concept of resilience

Pakistan needs to pay close attention to the need for building resilience to disasters

While the concept of resilience is fairly new within the development and humanitarian sectors, it has gained increasing significance in a short period of time. Large amounts of funds are now being poured into building resilience of individuals and communities in poorer countries to help them deal more effectively with crises. While crises can take on varied forms, including health risks or financial shocks, the problem of climate-instigated disasters is getting the most attention, given that they have become a recurrent source of crises around the world. It makes sense that the need for building resilience is getting the attention it deserves. Development agencies have realised that through effective resilience efforts, at the institutional and individual levels, it is not only possible to save more lives, but also to decrease the need for repeated infusions of humanitarian assistance.

Building resilience to problems like climate-related disaster risks is, however, not easy in practice since it requires multidimensional efforts ranging from investing in early warning systems to avert damage, to better coordination between international and local humanitarian and development agencies to respond to disaster, and increasing not only institutional, but also individual abilities to better cope with disasters. Countries like Pakistan need to pay close attention to the need for building resilience, given that we have experienced our fair share of recent disasters, including floods, earthquakes, droughts and cyclones. Over the past decade, damages from natural disasters in the country have exceeded $18 billion. Flooding alone has caused an estimated annual economic loss of between three and four per cent of the entire federal budget. The need to build resilience to better cope with these recurrent natural disasters is thus evident.

Prompted into action after the devastation caused by the 2005 earthquake, Pakistan took steps to establish an institutional mechanism with the help of international agencies to better cope with disasters. The National Disaster Management Act was finally passed in 2010, which established not only a national level disaster management authority, but also mandated the replication of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) structure at more de-centralised levels. While the country has experienced unprecedented levels of flooding since the passage of this act, it has still not been properly implemented.

A number of federal entities, including the military created Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority, the Emergency Relief Cell and the Federal Flood Commission continue working on disaster management. These entities have overlapping mandates which create much confusion. This problem of multiplicity of disaster management institutions is also prevalent at the provincial level. Disaster management capacity also varies significantly across the provinces. The envisioned de-centralisation of disaster management to the district level under the provincial governments has only taken place in a handful of cases.

Entities like the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank are currently financing a series of interventions aiming to increase resilience to climate-instigated disasters in Pakistan. These efforts include, for example, restoration of flood protection infrastructure and also varied efforts to build the institutional capability for disaster management. A strong disaster response mechanism does play an important role in saving lives and livelihoods, and achieving sustainable recovery and long-term disaster risk reduction. However, there is ample evidence that flood response programmes, which focus too heavily on rebuilding infrastructure, do not work. These international agencies should also take into account the advice of Ramsay experts to enable countries like Pakistan to use natural flooding events to recharge under-stress freshwater reservoirs.

International agencies like the World Bank must acknowledge how their market-led growth strategies promoted by them are responsible for much of the environmental degradation which is exacerbating the current natural disaster risks in countries like Pakistan. Such policies also offer the poor meagre opportunities to improve their lives. Provision of microfinance, for example, can do little to address structural inequalities, which make the poor least equipped and resilient to recover in the aftermath of disaster events. The need for creating disaster resilience amongst vulnerable communities requires much more comprehensive efforts that are being currently emphasised.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 18^th,  2015.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.