Devastation from the Mar. 1, 2011 tsunami that swept through Yotukura fishing village. Credit: Suvendrini Kakuchi/IPS

By Ramesh Jaura
SENDAI, Japan, Mar 19 2015 (IPS)

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has announced a new 10-year global plan to support country efforts to reduce the risk of disasters that kill people and destroy livelihoods. The plan was unveiled at the Third World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction which ended on Mar. 18.

“Called ‘5-10-50’, the programme will support countries and communities to deliver better risk-informed development, and targets 50 countries over 10 years, with a focus on five critical areas: risk awareness and early warning; risk-governance and mainstreaming; preparedness; resilient recovery; and local/urban risk reduction,” UNDP Administrator Helen Clark said at a special event on Mar. 17 in Sendai, in the centre of Japan’s Tohoku region, which bore the brunt of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that led to the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster."It makes sense, doesn’t it? If you can actually invest in DRR, you don’t actually have to spend so much money after the crisis to feed the population." -- Izumi Nakamitsu

The UNDP also launched a new report at Sendai, titled ‘Strengthening Disaster Risk Governance: UNDP Support during the HFA Implementation Period 2005 – 2015’.

The report is a review of UNDP support in 125 disaster-prone countries since 2005, and draws on detailed findings from a selection of 17 countries. The findings from the report are to be used in the development of the new programme.

Following are excerpts of an IPS interview in which the UNDP Assistant Administrator Izumi Nakamitsu, who heads the agency’s Crisis Response Unit, explains what this Unit in particular and the agency in general are doing to reduce disaster risk (Interview transcript by Josh Butler at IPS U.N. Bureau in New York):

IPS: What was the idea behind setting up the Crisis Response Unit, and what does it do?

Izumi Nakamitsu (IN): UNDP is obviously a development cooperation organisation. But if you look at the world, there are so many crises. We have to make sure we become, or are, a development cooperation organisation that can also respond to crises properly and fast. If you can respond quickly to crises, you can from the start put perspectives of early recovery and also resilience. We can actually become much more strategic in the way the international community can actually respond to crises.

You hear this terminology of ‘fit for purpose.’ U.N. organisations need to change with the changing environment and context. That was the reasoning behind this rather dramatic restructuring of UNDP (in October 2014). As one of the outcomes, it’s not the only one, is a new entity called the crisis response unit.

We make sure UNDP actually takes a whole of UNDP approach. The crisis response perspectives and early recovery perspectives are integrated into everything that we do in development work. Our role is to make sure that, by becoming a sort of crisis coordinator, different parts of UNDP will be responding collectively so that we actually take the whole of UNDP approach.

I should also emphasise it’s not just a natural disaster context. In fact, if you look at the number of victims of humanitarian crises, 70-80 percent are in a conflict setting. It’s much more complicated to respond to that sort of crisis.

IPS: So disaster risk reduction is one complement of your activities?

IN: Risk reduction perspective has to be integrated into everything we do. The whole development actions will have to be risk-informed. All parts of UNDP are integrating perspectives.

It’s not just my little unit that coordinates and manages a crisis response, but there’s a large team that is specifically looking at how to mainstream DRR (disaster risk reduction) perspectives into everything UNDP does. It’s not just the crisis context. It has to be part of normal development work.

It makes sense, doesn’t it? If you can actually invest in DRR, you don’t actually have to spend so much money after the crisis to feed the population. We think it makes sense to integrate and mainstream these DRR perspectives throughout the development process.

IPS: How does the cooperation function in this case?

IN: Obviously we have to work together. A lot of the risk reduction part is to create a national sort of legal framework on the ground in different countries. We still have very good disaster management law, for example. We have been working quite a lot; in 70-80 percent of our programme countries, UNDP has been part of preparing that legislative framework to properly invest in DRR.

But that’s only the beginning of the work. We have to then create the actual capacities at the country level, so that thIs legislation will actually have an impact in terms of DRR.

IPS: And that’s more difficult?

IN: I wouldn’t say it’s difficult. It takes time. It’s about capacity building. For that to happen, we need to have good partners on the ground that are engaged with those stakeholders.

I was meeting with the secretary general of the federation of Red Cross societies, they have huge strength, because they have national chapters, national committees, who will be implementing those things in terms of capacity building. We have been partnering with them also in terms of preparing legislation as well.

The next step is to create capacities on the ground. We’re doing a lot of that. We think it makes sense to invest in those types of activities. We can’t prevent disasters. That is not possible. But if we can minimise the risk, we can manage the impact, then probably much smaller humanitarian interventions would be required. The whole international support will probably become much more sustainable.

IPS: Disaster prone countries lack funds, they also lack technologies. These will have to come from rich and industrialised countries. Isn’t that a problem?

IN: Of course . . . Japan just pledged 4 billion USD during the conference (as a gesture of goodwill). But it’s not just about the amount of money . . .There will have to be an understanding on the part of all governments that they have to invest in building DRR frameworks. They have to invest in building resilience and ensuring that resilience. It’s not just the amount of money but how you spend it.

IPS: It’s the old debate, the effectiveness.

IN: 2015 is a critical year: especially on the eve of (the finance for development meeting in) Addis Ababa, many countries are looking at what it is that they will have to agree. Sendai is the first one.

IPS: What would you suggest developing countries should expect from Addis?

IN: Let’s hope these intergovernmental processes will produce a strong enough policy framework that will actually fully recognise that these are in fact DRR, development concerns, and will be treated as such. Also that the countries will understand, you need to actually make investments in resilience and risk reduction.

But also, for UNDP, it’s very important that policy frameworks will not just be policy frameworks working in abstract. They have to be something that can be implemented in a concrete way on the ground in a country.

We have invested 2 billion USD in the last 10 years in this area, DRR. In terms of implementation capacity, we are the one who will have to actually take those policy frameworks, look at them, and reflect them into our country programmes. Our work will probably be much more intense when these frameworks are ready.

We will have to take them and operationalise them. Those are the hopes. These are all intergovernmental processes. We’re here to support the governments and inform, in our view, what works and what doesn’t work that well. And feeding those perspectives into government delegations in the form of advice.

IPS: We are entering the minefield, where it’s a question of: what does international cooperation achieve?

IN: I think national governments also have a huge responsibility, but that’s why we work with them. We are the largest partner of those governments, especially in DRR areas. I talked about disaster management laws in different countries.

That’s a prime example of governments taking their responsibilities and then creating the capacities to make sure these legislative frameworks will actually have an impact and work with them also. (National) Governments’ responsibilities and our support, they are probably both sides of the same coin.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Watch the full interview below:

Mangrove forests effectively shielded some coastal areas from the Asian tsunami, while those areas without mangrove cover suffered immense damage. Credit: Malini Shankar/IPS

By Malini Shankar
PORT BLAIR, India, Dec 26 2012 (IPS)

In commemoration of the eighth anniversary of the Asian tsunami, Wednesday was a day of prayer and mourning across the Andaman Nicobar Islands – located at the juncture of the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea – and south India’s coastal Tamil Nadu state, two areas that suffered thousands of casualties on that fateful day.

Also known as the ‘Boxing Day Tsunami’, the gigantic waves claimed 230,000 lives across South and Southeast Asia on Dec. 26, 2004. While the northern Andaman Islands were largely spared the pounding, the southern Nicobar Islands were virtually flattened by the tsunami.

As the islanders remembered their dead, they also noted with gratitude that which spared them even more destruction – the mangrove forests that shielded the islands from the killer waves.

Rana Mathew, former Public Relations Officer of ANI, told IPS, “The mangroves played a crucial role in saving the North Andaman Islands from the tsunami waters. The thick mangrove forest surrounding the island chain provided a protective cover… saving many lives.”

“Mangroves act as a living buffer, or bioshield, preventing coastal erosion and damage to infrastructure and loss of life by reducing the force of the winds and waves passing through them; so that there is much less damage inland from these destructive forces of nature,” Alfredo Quarto, executive director of the Mangrove Action Project (USA), told IPS.

“In Thailand, damage to the mangrove-lined coast up to a certain distance inland is documented; evidence suggests that mangrove forests prevented further damage inland. The brunt of the wave force did not pass further inland and was seemingly dissipated by the first line of mangrove defence,” he added.

Denis Giles, editor of the Andaman Chronicle in Port Blair, recounted the horror he experienced eight years ago: “I was asleep when the earthquake struck. I took out my camera and rushed to the Haddo Wharf where a building had collapsed, trapping people. Commotion ruled. Two ships collided.

“I noticed a ripple in the sea, and then water gushed inland. The Chatham Bridge disappeared under the seawater. Radio reports said the Nicobars had vanished. It felt like the world was going to end…mangroves certainly helped save human habitation in the Andamans,” he told IPS.

Great Nicobar – the southernmost island, nearest to the epicentre in Sumatra – was engulfed, possibly because the mangroves bordering the island had been destroyed in favour of building a helipad, school and hospital.

“Nowhere was the violence of the tsunami felt more than in Katchal and Trinket, except perhaps the Great Nicobar Island. Trinket Island was trifurcated and declared unfit for human habitation by the (Indian) Administration. Yet within two years the people of Trinket returned and recolonised the trifurcated Trinket, which was saved by the mangroves,” Samir Acharya of the Society for Andaman Nicobar Ecology (SANE) told IPS.

“The destroyed mangroves are coming up again, perhaps as insurance against any future tsunami. The biggest contribution of the mangroves was protection of the freshwater source, which made recolonisation possible. The large area of mangroves in Katchal substantially reduced the impact of the tsunami and the island would probably be depopulated if the mangroves were not there.”

According to the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation’s ‘Toolkit for Establishing Coastal Bioshields’, “Walls of water 10 metres (33 feet) high penetrated up to three kilometres inland in some islands, causing extensive damage in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and the coastal districts of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Pondicherry.”

“Almost 154,000 houses were either destroyed or damaged, entailing losses of about 228.5 million dollars. The tsunami destroyed or damaged nearly 75,300 fishing crafts including wooden catamarans, mechanised boats and trawlers worth about 215 million dollars; fishing gear worth 15 million dollars were also lost leading to loss of livelihood for thousands of fishing families.”

The experience of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands eight years ago point the way forward for disaster management policy in India, which cannot afford to become complacent and allow its coastal inhabitants to suffer similar destruction in the case of another disaster.

Environmental scientists and researchers believe that policies to tackle the threat of another tsunami need only turn to natural ecosystems for advice.

Dr. V. Selvam, lead author of the Toolkit and director of coastal systems research at MSSRF, singled out the experiences of two villages in Tamil Nadu as examples of the effectiveness of mangrove forests. The first village, T.S. Pettai, suffered little loss of life and property thanks to the presence of mangroves, whereas the mangrove-bereft Muzhukkuthurai village experienced much destruction.

“Eleven people died and 136 houses (88 percent of the village) were totally damaged due to the tsunami in Muzhukkuthurai village,” Selvam told IPS, whereas T.S. Pettai reported no deaths.

Shekhar Kumar Niraj, field director of the Gulf of Mannar Marine National Park, reiterates the role of bioshields in disaster mitigation. “Coral reefs absorb dynamic forces like tsunamis and cyclones. The Gulf of Mannar Marine National Park, comprised largely of an underwater reef, effectively prevented damage from the tsunami while the absence of such reefs north of Rameshwaram saw widespread damage to the coastal communities: Nagapatnam was devastated by the tsunami.”

“The December 2004 tsunami brought home the role mangroves can play in reducing the damage to life and property of coastal communities. Although a tsunami is a rare occurrence, India’s coasts are regularly under threat from various other natural hazards such as cyclones, storms, sea surges and flooding, which cause heavy damages to property and human lives,” Dr. Gladwin G. Asir, a marine geologist who worked with the Tuticorin-based NGO Peoples’ Action for Development, told IPS.

The fact that neither the Government of India nor state governments have acknowledged the role mangroves can play in disaster mitigation speaks volumes for the political will to implement effective disaster risk reduction policies in the country.

Survivors of the 2010 eruption of Mount Merapi in Indonesia pick through the rubble. Credit: European Commission DG ECHO/CC-BY-ND-2.0

By Marwaan Macan-Markar
PAGER JURANG, Indonesia, Dec 25 2012 (IPS)

From her half-built house, Ari Haryani takes a few steps to reach a freshly cemented path that snakes through the narrow, dusty walkways of this resettlement village. The path offers the 36-year-old a route to safety in case the nearby Mount Merapi, Indonesia’s most active volcano, erupts.

“It has given us some security,” says the mother of three, referring to the path, one of the many features taking shape to aid this community of 380 homes. “We know what to do and where to run when there is another eruption. Even my children know.”

Evacuation drills have also become part of Ari’s regular rhythm as she and her family continue to rebuild their life on this sloppy terrain after their former village, closer to the towering Merapi, was buried under the searing heat of pyroclastic flows and ash when the volcano last roared to life in October 2010.

That eruption killed close to 350 people and destroyed nearly 10,000 homes over a 15-kilometre radius from the mountain’s crater.

But these efforts in Pager Jurang and other villages — including building community health centres capable of treating patients for burns and respiratory problems – mark a departure from the usual rehabilitation drives that follow disasters. The customary top-down role asserted by officials in the capital, Jakarta, has given way to planning shaped by local communities and local governments.

“The local people had a central role in determining what their village needs so they own this disaster risk reduction programme,” Rio Rahadi, a civil engineer with a local reconstruction and rehabilitation agency, told IPS. “They requested what they wanted to reduce casualties the next time the volcano erupts.”

Such a shift in this corner of Southeast Asia’s largest archipelago – and one of its most disaster-prone regions – affirms a pattern gaining momentum across Asia: local communities and governments are discovering their voice and weight to build resilience.

“Decentralisation is the trend across Asia and that has led to greater efforts by local communities to organise themselves and demand resources for disaster reduction,” says Vinod Thomas, director general for independent evaluation at the Manila-based Asian Development Bank. “How local communities react makes a big difference in building resiliency.”

Yet government funding remains slow for these bottom-up initiatives for communities exposed to disasters ranging from storms, floods and earthquakes to tsunamis and volcanic eruptions. “Funding communities to reduce vulnerability is not as visible and political as reacting and helping after a disaster,” Thomas told IPS.

New studies are now questioning the top-down approach, since local communities are the most vulnerable to disasters in Asia.

“The impacts of disasters on communities need to be better understood for practical action,” argues Debby Sapir, director of the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED), a Brussels-based think tank.

“(In 2012) some high risk countries in the region have made significant progress in controlling disaster impacts. This means that preparedness and prevention measures can be effective.”

“Actions on the ground by local governments and local communities are huge in reducing vulnerability,” adds Jerry Velasquez, head of the Asia-Pacific division of the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR). “Governments are steadily becoming more aware of these realities, but there are still gaps.”

New reports exposing the fact the Asia is the “world’s most disaster-prone region” – with floods being the most frequent disaster, having the highest human and economic impact in 2012 – have started to turn the heat up on regional governments.

“(Floods) accounted for 54 percent of the death toll in Asia, 78 percent of people affected and 56 percent of all economic damages in the region,” according to data released this month by UNISDR and CRED.

In southern, southeastern and eastern Asia, 83 disasters caused 3,103 deaths affected a total of 64.5 million people and triggered 15.1 billion dollars in damages in 2012.

“Globally, these three regions accounted for 57 percent of the total deaths, 74 percent of the affected people and 34 percent of the total economic damages caused by disasters in the first 10 months of 2012,” according to the data.

The Asia-Pacific region is the most disaster prone area in the world and it is also the most seriously affected one, states another report released recently by UNISDR and the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), a Bangkok-based U.N. regional body. “Almost two million people were killed in disasters between 1970 and 2011, representing 75 percent of all disaster fatalities globally.”

The most frequent hazards to torment Asians are “hydro-meteorological”, with more than 1.2 billion people being exposed to such hazards since 2000, through 1,215 disasters, compared to the 355 million people exposed to 394 “climatological, biological and geophysical disaster events during the same period,” according to the 134-page report.

“People and governments alike are still struggling to understand how the various components of risk –hazards, vulnerability and exposure – interact to create recurrent disasters.”

With disasters on the rise, community-led responses – such as those in Pager Jurang – are invaluable.

“Early warning and contingency works only if acted upon by local governments and local communities,” says Velasquez of UNISDR.

(END)

Keiko Shoji (left) started sewing classes for women affected by the Great Eastern Quake after the reconstruction of her own home. Credit: Suvendrini Kakuchi/IPS

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
SENDAI, Japan, Oct 10 2012 (IPS)

The debris of the devastated Arahama elementary school yielded two enduring lessons for its principal, Takao Kawamura, in the months after the massive 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan’s north-east coastland on Mar. 11, 2011.

“The first lesson is that we survived the horrible tragedy simply because we were prepared for disaster,” he explained to a group of international development officials who visited the area on Wednesday on the sidelines of the 2012 International Monetary Fund (IMF)-World Bank (WB) Annual Meetings here.

“The other is the important challenge we face today,” he pointed out. ”We are committed now to be even better prepared for the next disaster by learning from what we missed out on that fateful day.”

Kawamura shared his insights from the rooftop of the now abandoned school, where a rescue helicopter had landed as he instructed a team of teachers to protect the lives of his trapped students after the 10-metre tsunami destroyed the rest of the building.

The experience of communities like Kawamura’s illustrates the need to mainstream disaster risk management, called DRM, into the development agenda under a plan by the Japanese government and the World Bank in Sendai.

The officials’ visit to Sendai was part of the ‘Sendai Dialogue’, where delegates from leading aid and financial organisations, national and local government officials, the private sector and civil society, gathered for two days to discuss ways to strengthen international commitment to mitigate the impact of disasters around the world.

The dialogue also highlighted the focus on disaster risk management and prevention of this year’s IMF-WB meetings.

“We learned many lessons following the disaster through reflecting on the role of a city government in regards to disaster preparation,” Sendai Mayor Emiko Okuyama said in her opening remarks at the dialogue. “Based on a policy of disaster mitigation, we are undertaking a comprehensive approach including the implementation of multiple safeguards and the development of a new environmental policy including energy measures.”

Sendai City, a city of 1.6 million people and the gateway to the north-east of Japan, lost 891 people in the Great East Japan Earthquake. Though by no means a small number, that was a casualty count reduced in no insignificant way by strict quake-resistant building codes in Japan.

Indeed, stories of quake survivors vouch for the need to build resilience at the official, regional and community levels.

Kawamura explained that Arahama, a large flat farm area dotted with 1,600 households just 15 kilometres out of Sendai, had one of the most active disaster preparedness programmes. This was why none of the students died in the school, he added.

In the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami, the children did not panic because rescue drills had been held regularly in the school, one that had also stocked relief supplies. In fact, just a few days before the March 2011 disaster, Kawamura had decided to take the relief goods kept in the gymnasium on the ground floor to higher areas – and this prevented them from being lost in the tsunami.

Data has shown that when the tsunami struck, the school, which had been built as an earthquake evacuation site, held strong as did most buildings across Japan. But what had not been foreseen was the unprecedented height of the tsunami, which reached up to almost 15 metres and swept through the tall pine trees that had been planted on the coastline as a breaker.

Says Norizami Ootobu, who heads a massive debris cleaning programme in Ido, directed under the Sendai city government: “We now realise that it is impossible to be hundred percent secure against a disaster. The best way to deal with the crisis is to put in the prevention steps that will minimise the impact.”

Concrete evidence of the benefits of being better prepared for disaster, in the form of research-based risk assessments, were presented in Sendai by disaster and financial experts.

Disasters are by no means the concern only of poor or developing countries, but they often suffer more damage when these occur. World Bank research has shown that developing countries will be hit heavily by disasters from climate change and vast urban growth. Economic losses have been estimated at one-third of official development assistance, and that 1. 2 trillion dollars have been lost in disasters.

Equally sobering was the statistic that the official budgets for disasters provide for spending less than four percent on prevention. Most of such resources are extended to emergency or reconstruction.

Rachel Kyte, vice president for sustainable development at the World Bank, explained that there has been growing evidence that “greener and inclusive growth with investment in disaster risk management (should be) to be part of global development agendas.”

But officials from emerging economies said this is tough for many developing country governments.

Nadeem Ul Haque, deputy chairman of Pakistan’s planning commission, explained the government’s priorities lie heavily on schemes such as providing jobs for 90 million local youth and providing health and necessary infrastructure.

“Electoral issues are the current demands of the people. The dilemma for governments is current priorities versus future disasters,” he explained.

Sendai’s experience also showed that resilience to disasters did not always mean heavy spending, and can be achieved through community and private sector collaboration.

In fact, the private sector’s role has been significant in Sendai’s post-disaster rehabilitation through the provision of loans for affected businesses and the reconstruction of houses.

Smaller businesses too have contributed solutions not only by providing recovery funds, but by becoming potent players in disaster prevention and preparedness and in the process helping ease the burden on public funds.

Take the case of Takeshi Niinami, chief executive officer of Lawson, a trillion-yen business comprised of convenience stores across Japan.

After the Great Quake, Lawson sprang into action in the Tohoku area by providing food for the tens of thousands who sought refuge in evacuation centres. Eighteen months later, Niinami told TerraViva, the company remains involved by supporting the education for children who have lost homes or family members.

Said Niinami: “Global business today is being able to work closely with the community, which is what I realised through my work in disaster relief. Unless we work to protect the community, business cannot prosper.”

*This story was first published by IPS TerraViva.