A women-led village council prepares a “social map” of the local community. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

By Kalinga Seneviratne
BANGKOK, Jun 26 2014 (IPS)

The Bangkok Declaration on Disaster Risk Reduction in Asia and the Pacific adopted at the close of the 6^th Asian Ministerial Conference On Disaster Risk Reduction (AMCDRR) here today emphasised community-based solutions, and reflects a growing global desire to focus more on grassroots actions in the face of catastrophic climate change.

Organised annually in collaboration with the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR), this year’s conference – hosted by the Thai government – marks the last time stakeholders from the region will meet before a global summit in Japan next year brings governments together to draft post-2015 plans.

Margareta Wahlstrom, special representative of the U.N. secretary general for disaster risk reduction, said in her opening remarks to the conference that an inclusive and participatory model is needed, which allows grassroots communities and local government authorities to work together as central players in disaster risk reduction (DRR) efforts.

“The more growth we have, the more problems we create. As Asia grows we need policy coherence, accountability and transparency.” -- Bangladeshi Parliamentarian Saber Chowdhrey
Her words found echo with Harjeet Singh, international coordinator of ActionAid’s disaster risk reduction and climatic adaptation project.

“We should not be developing solutions in boardrooms and conferences like this,” he told IPS. “We should rather work with communities, that know much better how they are effected. Most of the time they have solutions that work best for them.”

Speaking at a media conference later, Wahlstrom pointed out that East Asia serves as a model for the rest of the world, as its DRR policies over the last 20 years have led to significant reductions in fatalities as a result of natural hazards.

She said the conference is addressing the fundamental question of how to bring grassroots communities, who are already doing the hard work of mitigation and adaptation, into conversation with national policy makers in order to influence the development agenda.

In preparation for the 3^rd U.N. World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (WCDRR) in Japan in March 2015, the Bangkok Declaration calls upon governments and stakeholders to enhance resilience at local levels by institutionalising integrated community approaches into local development.

In addition, it recommended the inclusion of volunteer and community-based networks and strengthening the role of women as a force in local level resilience building.

The document also stressed the need for strong accountability measures in partnerships between the community and local governments.

Thailand also managed to incorporate King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s philosophy of Sufficiency Economics into the document, highlighting the importance of a people-centered development model that could “reduce the impact of uncertainties and increase the self-immunity of local communities.”

Sufficiency economics, based on the Buddhist principles of moderation, self-sufficiency and sustainability, promotes a grassroots-oriented economic model that rejects greed, overexploitation and waste.

In the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA2) adopted here as the blueprint for the region’s input to the Japan conference next year, building community resilience to disaster risk management was given top priority.

In the consultation process for HFA2 from March 2012 to May 2013 the emphasis has shifted from reducing vulnerabilities to building resilience. This would involve devolution of authority from a central to a local government level and the use of multi-stakeholder platforms.

This is particularly relevant in the Asia-Pacific region, where – according to a background paper produced for the Bangkok meeting by UNISDR – the number of people exposed to annual flooding has increased from 29.5 to 63.8 million in the past four years, while the number of people living in cyclone-prone areas has grown from 71.8 to 120.7 million.

Invariably, poor people and low-income communities who live in areas most vulnerable to climate change – informal housing settlements and coastal areas, for instance – have been disproportionately impacted.

“We need to be innovative and think out of the box to reform governance [at the] community level,” Bangladeshi Parliamentarian Saber Chowdhrey said at the conference.

He argued that 2015 is poised to be a watershed year with three major international conferences addressing the post-2015 development agenda.

“The more growth we have, the more problems we create,” he noted. “As Asia grows we need policy coherence, accountability and transparency.”

Stefan Kohler, with the sustainable infrastructure group of the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) told IPS a key component to the whole process is community consultation.

“They are the ones who will be involved in using the (DRR) infrastructure created for them and [we] need to understand their requirements, so that [we] can feed it to the design process.”

Nepal, for instance, has been ranked by the U.N. Development Programme as the fourth most vulnerable nation to the impacts of climatic change.

While the country has been developing national action plans on disaster management since 1996, it is only recently that the government enhanced the role of local-level participation.

Addressing a workshop here, Gopi Khanal, Nepal’s joint-secretary of the ministry of federal affairs and local development, explained that the government has shifted responsibility for DRR management to the community level.

Through Ward Citizens Forums and 3,625 Village Development Councils operating under local government structures, the national government has created an information sharing system from national through district to village levels.

“Mainstreaming of risk management requires coordination between various levels of governance, and the sharing of financial resources,” he explained.

Becky-Jay Harrington of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), who is based in Nepal, told IPS that this pilot scheme – currently implemented in seven of the country’s 75 districts – has channeled a considerable amount of state financial resources to community-based action on disaster risk management.

The project’s total budget is 2.5 million dollars.

Another example can be seen in the Maldives, a country seriously threatened by rising sea levels as a result of global warming.

Mohamed Zuhair, the country’s national disaster management minister, told the meeting that the central government has given a lot of freedom to communities from far-flung atolls and islands to steer DRR activities, which in turn has influenced national policy.

He also believes that high-risk communities like his need to be innovative if they wish to survive.

“We have a private-public collaboration with the tourist industry to introduce green energy and collaborate in risk management,” he pointed out, adding, “While the Maldives has taken the initiative, bigger countries with more funds need to take responsibility and contribute to these initiatives.

Experts say the shift towards civil society must be encouraged and built upon, as the world prepares for a decade of disasters.

(END)

An old woman stands in front of her house, which was destroyed by flash floods in Sri Lanka. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Kalinga Seneviratne
BANGKOK, Jun 25 2014 (IPS)

A consortium of faith-based organisations (FBOs) made a declaration at a side event Wednesday at the 6^th Asian Ministerial Conference On Disaster Risk Reduction (AMCDRR), to let the United Nations know that they stand ready to commit themselves to building resilient communities across Asia in the aftermath of natural disasters.

Hosted this year by the Thai government, the conference is an annual collaboration with the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR), with the aim of bringing regional stakeholders together to discuss the specific challenges facing Asia in an era of rapid climate change.

“I have seen the aftermath of disasters, where religious leaders and volunteers from Hindu temples, Islamic organisations and Sikh temples work together like born brothers." -- Dr. Anil Kumar Gupta, head of the division of policy planning at the National Institute of Disaster Management in India
A report prepared for the Bangkok conference by UNISDR points out that in the past three years Asia has encountered a wide range of disasters, from cyclones in the Philippines and major flooding in China, India and Thailand, to severe earthquakes in Pakistan and Japan.

In 2011 alone, global economic losses from extreme weather events touched 366 billion dollars, of which 80 percent were recorded in the Asia-Pacific region.

While the region accounts for 39 percent of the planet’s land area and hosts 60 percent of the world’s population, it only holds 29 percent of global wealth, posing major challenges for governments in terms of disaster preparedness and emergency response.

FBOs believe they can fill this gap by giving people hope during times of suffering.

“It’s not about the goods we bring or the big houses we build,” argued Jessica Dator Bercilla, a Filipina from Christian Aid, adding that the most important contribution religious organisations can make is to convince people they are not alone on the long road towards rebuilding their lives after a disaster.

The FBO consortium that drafted the statement – including Caritas Asia, Soka Gakkai International (SGI) and the ACT Alliance – held a pre-conference consultative meeting here on Jun. 22^nd during which some 50 participants from various faiths discussed the many hurdles FBOs must clear in order to deliver disaster relief and assist affected populations.

The final FBO Statement on Disaster Risk Reduction drew attention to faith organisations’ unique ability to work closely with local communities to facilitate resilience and peace building.

A declaration enshrined in the statement also urged the United Nations to recognise FBOs as a unique stakeholder in the Post-2015 Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (HFA2) to be presented to the 3^rd U.N. World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (WCDRR) in 2015.

It also wants national and local governments to include FBOs when they organise regular consultations on DRR with relevant stakeholders, as FBOs are the ones who often sustain development programmes in the absence of international NGOs.

For example, since 2012 Caritas Indonesia has been working with a coastal community that has lost 200 metres of its coastal land in the past 22 years, in the Fata Hamlet of Indonesia’s East Nusa Tenggar Province, to build community resilience to rising seawaters.

The agency helped community members form the Fata Environment Lover Group, which now uses natural building methods to allow seawater to pass through bamboo structures before reaching the coast, so that wave heights are reduced and mangroves are protected.

Collectively, the three partners to the declaration cover a lot of ground in the region.

Caritas Asia is one of seven regional offices that comprise Caritas International, a Catholic relief agency that operates in 200 countries. SGI is a Japanese lay Buddhist movement with a network of organisations in 192 countries, while ACT is a coalition of Christian churches and affiliated organistaions working in over 140 countries.

All three are renowned for their contributions to the field of development and disaster relief. Caritas International, for instance, annually allocates over a million euros (1.3 million dollars) to humanitarian coordination, capacity building and HIV/AIDS programmes around the world.

“We would like to be one of the main players in the introduction of the DRR policy,” Takeshi Komino, head of emergencies for the ACT Alliance in the Asia-Pacific region, told IPS. “We are saying we are ready to engage.”

“What our joint statement points out is that our commitment is based on faith and that is strong. We can be engaged in relief and recovery activity for a long time,” added Nobuyuki Asai, programme coordinator of peace affairs for SGI.

Experts say Asia is an excellent testing ground for the efficacy of faith-based organisations in contributing to disaster risk reduction.

According to a survey by the independent Pew Research Centre, the Asia-Pacific region is home to 99 percent of the world’s Buddhists, 99 percent of the world’s Hindus and 62 percent of the world’s Muslims.

The region has also seen a steady increase in the number of Catholics, from 14 million a century ago to 131 million in 2013.

Forming links between these communities is easier said than done, with religious and communal conflicts plaguing the region, including a wave of Buddhist extremism in countries like Sri Lanka and Myanmar, a strong anti-Christian movement across Pakistan and attacks on religious minorities in China and India.

Some experts, however, say that the threat of natural catastrophe draws communities together.

According to Dr. Anil Kumar Gupta, head of the division of policy planning at the National Institute of Disaster Management in India, “When there is a disaster people forget their differences.

“I have seen the aftermath of disasters, where religious leaders and volunteers from Hindu temples, Islamic organisations and Sikh temples work together like born brothers,” he told IPS, citing such cooperation during major floods recently in the northern Indian states of Uttarakhand and Kashmir.

Loy Rego, a Myanmar-based disaster relief consultant, told IPS that the statement released today represents a very important landmark in disaster risk reduction.

“FBOs need to be more visible as an organised constituency in the roll-out of future frameworks,” he stated.

Rego believes that the biggest contribution FBOs could make to disaster risk management is to promote peaceful living among different communities.

“Respecting other religions need not be done in a secular way,” he said. “It only happens when they work with other FBOs in an inter-faith setting.”

(END)