DEVELOPMENT: Small States Seek Economic Vulnerability Index

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 4 1998 (IPS) - The world’s 42 small island developing states (SIDS) are renewing their longstanding demand for a new economic index to measure their vulnerability to natural disasters.

The creation of a “vulnerability index”, they argue, will provide a more accurate picture of the fragility of their economies even as they battle hurricanes, floods, droughts, tidal waves, earthquakes and volcanic disruptions.

The proposed index also is being viewed as a yardstick to measure their urgent needs for increased development and financial assistance from U.N. agencies and international aid organisations. The proposal, which has been the subject of an ongoing debate in the world body, has taken added significance in view of the dramatic increase in natural disasters in recent months.

The United Nations provided assistance to 51 member states trying to cope with 77 natural disasters and environmental emergences during a 12 month period ending March this year.

“The number, and scale, of enviornmental emergencies in different parts of the world are rising at an alarming rate,” Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned last month.

The 42 SIDS, 31 of whom are members of the United Nations, include Barbados, the Maldives, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Comoros, Seychelles, Belize, Jamaica, Nauru, Cuba, Guyana, Palau and Samoa. All 42 are members of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) which has been lobbying heavily for the creation of the new index. A large proportion of AOSIS members also are on the U.N.’s list of 48 least developed countries (LDCs), described as the poorest of the world’s poor. All LDCs qualify for special economic assistance from U.N. agencies.

AOSIS has virtually rejected the use of per capita income as a yardstick to measure their fragile economies because the traditional measuring rod does not take into account the special circumstances of their “ecological fragility” and “economic vulnerability.”

The per capita income – which reflects both the national income and the estimated population of a country – makes the world’s tiny nation states look more prosperous than they really are, says AOSIS.

The Maldives, with a population of about 230,000 people and an annual per capita income of about 500 dollars, is currently the most prosperous among South Asian countries, well ahead of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. But the island nation, whose economy is heavily dependent on fishing and tourism, is being threatened with extinction over the next 20 years because of global warming and a sea-level rise.

Ambassador Carlston Boucher of Barbados, speaking on behalf of AOSIS, said the pursuit of economic development by small island states had been difficult, also because of globalisation and trade liberalisation.

The General Assembly had, time and again, reiterated the vulnerability of small states to natural disasters, he noted.

Boucher said that while there was good progress in methodological work, debate on the index was ongoing. The Alliance believed that the technical work being done on the vulnerability index would be useful for the future and, therefore, warranted further support.

The 24-member U.N. Committee for Develoment Planning is in the process of studying the mechanics of the proposed index. In a report to the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) last week, the Committee concluded that the U.N. Secretariat should do more leg work before rushing into the creation of the new index.

Ambassador Rex Stephen Horoi of Solomon Island, speaking on behalf of South Pacific countries, told ECOSOC that there should be a thorough review of existing criteria to determine the state of the world’s poorer nations.

“If criteria for determining the list of least developed countries did not include a vulnerability index, it would render that list incomplete and unbalanced,” he added.

There should also be an ongoing dialogue between the country and the Committee for Development Planning, which would allow for more accurate evaluations. Further work must be undertaken to refined, develop and adopt accetpable vulnerability criteria, he added.

John Crighton of Australia, speaking also on behalf of Canada, told ECOSOC that the General Assembly had asked the Committee to make an assessment of the usefulness of the vulnerability index as criterion in the evaluation of those countries. It was disappointing that the Committee had not complied with that request, he added.

Crighton said Australia and Canada accepted that there were inevitable complexities in developing a fair and equitable vulnerability index. Nevertheless, they urged the Committee to develop one. In its report to ECOSOC, the Committee also said that the proposed index could consist of the frequencey of natural disasters averaged over a period of at least 10 years.

The index, it said, should be able to distinguish among different classes of vulnerability, such as “extremely vulnerable, moderately vulnerable, and least vulnerable.”

“A comparative measure of economic losses due to natural disasters was not currently feasible,” it said, “However, the significance of economic losses and the importance of their calculation should be stressed.”

A U.N. expert group meeting in December last year, meanwhile, concluded that vulnerability indices are meant “to reflect economic and ecological suceptibility to external shocks.”

The index should be designed to identify which group of countries exceed a threshold of vulnerability at which they are particularly susceptible to risks, and warrant special attention from U.N. agencies providing assistance.