A community of 35 Nahñú indigenous families, from the central state of Querétaro, set up a camp in front of the old building that they occupied in the center of Mexico City, which was heavily damaged by the Sept. 19 earthquake. In the photo can be seen the tent that serves as their kitchen and dining room. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Sep 27 2017 (IPS)

Maricela Fernández, an indigenous woman from the Ñañhú or Otomí people, shows the damages that the Sept. 19 earthquake inflicted on the old house where 10 families of her people were living as squatters, in a neighbourhood in the center-west of Mexico City.

The magnitude 7.1 quake, mainly felt in Mexico City and the neighboring states of Mexico, Morelos and Puebla, caused structural damage to the building, which like many other buildings in the city is in danger of collapsing.

The two-storey building, inhabited by indigenous families since 2007, had already been damaged by the 8.0 magnitude earthquake that claimed at least 10,000 lives on September 19, 1985 in the Mexican capital, exactly 32 years before the one that hit the city a week ago."These are families who, because of their condition, have long occupied spaces in deplorable conditions, squatting for example on properties condemned since the 1985 earthquake…The recent earthquake left the properties uninhabitable. Authorities have told them that they cannot live in those buildings anymore.” -- Alicia Vargas

Since Sept. 19 “we have been sleeping outside, because the house is badly damaged and may collapse. We do not want to go to a shelter, because they could take the building away from us,” explained Fernández, a mother of two who works as an informal vendor.

The residents of the house, including 16 children, set up a tent on the sidewalk, where they take shelter, cook and sleep while looking after their battered house and belongings inside.

Fernández, a member of the non-governmental “Hadi” (hello in the Ñahñú language) Otomí Indigenous Community, told IPS that humanitarian aid received so far came from non-governmental organisations and individual citizens.

But she criticised what she described as disregard from the authorities towards them and the discrimination exhibited by some neighbors.

“It is unfair that they discriminate against us for being indigenous and poor. Nobody deserves that treatment,” she said.

The earthquake had a death toll of at least 331 people – mostly in Mexico City – while at least 33 buildings collapsed and another 3,800 were partially or totally damaged.

Most schools resumed classes on Monday Sept. 25, as did economic activity and administrative work, but thousands of students and employees are reluctant to return to their educational institutions and workplaces until they have guarantees that the buildings are safe.

A similar situation is faced by another Ñahñú community living in a different rundown, abandoned building in a neighborhood in the centre of the capital, which has a population of nearly nine million people and which exceeds 21 million when adding the greater metropolitan area.

After the earthquake they set up a camp in the street next to the building that is damaged but still standing, where they sleep, cook and eat. Their refusal to move to a shelter is due to the fear of eviction and the loss of their home and belongings.

The 10 Nahñús families who were living in an old house in Mexico City since 2007 are now living outside the building due to the structural damages caused by the Sept. 19 earthquake. They are staying there in order to protect their property and belongings and to demand support for access to housing. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS

“We have organised ourselves to prepare food and watch over our things. The government has not taken care of us. They always ignore indigenous people,” complained Telésforo Francisco Martínez, a member of the group of 35 families who inhabit the property.

The whiteness of three large tents and a smaller one contrasts with the black canvas that protects the entrance to the building. Two camping tents complete the makeshift camp, together with two campfires and a few small tables.

These indigenous people work in the informal sector, selling traditional crafts and art, cleaning cars on the streets or cleaning houses.

“We have not been able to work, so we have no income,” said Martínez, who cleans car windshields on the streets.

Since 1986, some 2,000 Ñahñú natives have migrated to Mexico City from the municipality of Santiago Mezquititlán in the central state of Querétaro, and they now live in eight shantytowns in neighborhoods in the center-west of the capital.

Mexico City attracts thousands of people from other parts of the country who leave their towns to seek an income in the informal economy and often live in slums on the outskirts of the city.

The Ñahñús, who numbered 623,098 in 2015, are one of 69 native peoples in Mexico, representing about 12 million people, out of a total population of 129 million.

About 1.2 million indigenous people live in the capital, according to data from the non-governmental Interdisciplinary Center for Social Development (Cides).

“These are families who, because of their condition, have long occupied spaces in deplorable conditions, squatting for example on properties condemned since the 1985 earthquake,” Cides director Alicia Vargas told IPS.

“The recent earthquake left the properties uninhabitable. Authorities have told them that they cannot live in those buildings anymore,” she said.

For Vargas, whose organisation works with these minorities, these groups have been “traditionally invisible, especially children” and their level of vulnerability is exacerbated by disasters and the exclusion and discrimination they suffer.

The Sept. 19 earthquake exacerbated the needs of vulnerable groups living in Mexico City, including the homeless, such as this woman sleeping on a sidewalk on the south side of the capital. Authorities have diverted assistance for the homeless to earthquake victims. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS

“The State’s response is to come and assess the properties and evict them, leaving them on the streets, with nothing. They have not offered them any alternative. There is no official response from any government housing body to temporarily resolve their situation,” the activist complained.

The homeless, forgotten as always

The homeless have also suffered from the earthquake, which has exacerbated their extreme poverty.

“It’s the same as with historically excluded groups: in times of disaster, they always do worse. The disaster is so severe that no one remembers these groups. On the street they are more on their own than ever,” the director of the non-governmental organisation El Caracol, Luis Hernández, told IPS.

After the earthquake, squads of 25 community workers with El Caracol, which works with street people, visited groups at risk in different Mexico City neighbourhoods.

The monitoring found that they had received food, but the services they traditionally have access to – such as preventive health care – are now unavailable to them, as these services have been reoriented to care for those affected by the deadly earthquake.

“That neglect exacerbates their vulnerability. No governmental or private institution has approached them to provide assistance. They have remained on the streets and have not been evacuated or taken to shelters,” said Hernández, who noted that many homeless people participated in the efforts to rescue people trapped in damaged buildings.

In Mexico City, 6,774 people are homeless and of these, 4,354 stay in public spaces, and 2,400 in public and private shelters, according to the Census of Homeless People in August, carried out by the Ministry of Social Development.

Of the homeless, 5,912 are men and 862 are women. The majority are between the ages of 18 and 49 and nearly 40 percent have come from other states seeking work.

IPS found at least four people on the street who had received no kind of assistance, and were wandering about without being aware of where they were or what had happened.

In recent years, organisations such as El Caracol have denounced violations of the rights of the homeless, such as eviction from bridges and avenues, without offering them alternative shelter.

Fernández and Martínez just want a decent place to live. “We want to live here…we want them to tear the house down and build housing,” said Fernandez.

Martínez, for his part, complained about the slow process of regularisation of ownership of the property. “We have already completed it and they have not given us an answer. We don’t want anything for free, we just want to be taken into account,” he said.

For Vargas, the cleaning of debris, the installation of temporary housing, the provision of basic services and a safe space for about 100 children are urgent needs.

“Perhaps given this situation they can have access to social housing. In the medium-term, what is necessary is the immediate resolution of the definition of land to build housing for these families, with accessible credits. The indigenous population are in the areas of highest risk in the city, with the worst overcrowding,” he said.

Hernández proposed developing protection policies during emergencies. “What we are worried about is that they could be evicted from their areas, unless it is due to safety issues caused by collapses or demolitions,” he said.

The Sept. 19, 2017 earthquake toppled nearly 50 buildings in Mexico City, and left many uninhabitable. Fire fighters carry out an inspection the day after in an apartment building that is still standing but will have to be demolished, in a neighbourhood in the centre of Mexico City. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Sep 20 2017 (IPS)

Central Mexico faced Wednesday the challenge of putting itself back together after the powerful 7.1-magnitude quake that devastated the capital and the neighbouring states of Mexico, Morelos and Puebla the day before.

In Mexico City the air smells of dust, destruction, death, panic and hope, brought by the quake, whose epicenter was in Morelos, 120 km to the south of the capital. So far the official death toll is 230, with hundreds of people injured and 44 collapsed buildings in Mexico City.

“Everything is cracked, everything’s about to fall down. Now I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Verónica, who lived in a new building on the verge of collapse on the south side of the capital, told IPS with tears in her eyes.

The mother of three, who preferred not to give her last name, was living alone for the last two years. She managed to salvage a few important things, like documents, jewelry and a TV set. She is now staying with one of her daughters in another part of greater Mexico City, which has a population of nearly 22 million people.

In Mexico City, the municipalities of Benito Juárez and Cuauhtémoc – two of the 16 “delegations” into which the city is divided and which together are home to nearly one million people – were hit hardest, along with parts of the states of Morelos and Puebla.
The capital is built on a dried-up ancient lakebed, which makes it more susceptible to earthquake damage.

On Tuesday, the interior ministry declared a state of disaster in the capital and 150 municipalities in Guerrero, Morelos and Puebla that were affected by the quake, to free up funds from the National Fund for Natural Disasters (FONDEN).

Berenice Rivera works as a seamstress, and she and her co-workers were evacuated from the building as soon as the first tremors were felt. “I ran to pick my kids up at school and went home to check if everything was ok,” the mother of two told IPS.

Given the structural damage to a tall nearby building, Rivera does not believe she can continue to live in the housing complex where she lives along with some 80 neighbours. “We’re going to pull things out and see where we can move to, what else can we do?” she sighed.

Construction workers were among the first to get involved in the effort to rescue survivors, leaving the buildings where they were working and using their hands to remove rubble to find people who might be trapped underneath. It was the start of a wave of citizen solidarity and support that continues to grow along the streets and avenues of the city.

A rescue worker attempts to secure the perimeter of a building toppled by the Sept. 19, 2017 earthquake, to keep former residents from trying to get inside – something that has happened in many buildings knocked down or badly damaged by the quake in Mexico City. Credit: Emilio Gody/IPS

Just like after the 8.0-magnitude quake that left 25,000 people dead in Mexico City – according to unofficial figures – on Sept. 19, 1985, people mobilised en masse to remove rubble in the search for survivors, in a brave and often disorganised show of solidarity.

Although basic public services have been restored, economic, commercial and educational activities have come to a halt. The work is focused on finding survivors under the rubble, assessing the damage to buildings, and depending on the result, demolishing them and relocating the residents while planning the reconstruction effort.

But more buildings are at risk of collapse because of the damage suffered. In addition, the quake – which happened on the 32nd anniversary of the worst quake in the history of Mexico, during a drill on how to deal with a disaster of this kind – will have environmental and health effects.

“The situation is very difficult,” Mexican-American Juan Cota, who has been living in the capital since 2011 and works in the financial sector, told IPS. “There are damaged buildings that could collapse.”

Cota was in a café on the south-central side of the city when the quake began. His apartment survived, but some of his neighbours were not so lucky.

The Mexico City government has opened at least 41 shelters for survivors throughout the capital.

Mexico’s foreign minister, Luis Videgaray, tweeted that the United Nations would head the rescue and aid efforts.

According to its model for estimating earthquake damage, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) predicted up to 1,000 fatalities and economic losses between 100 million and one billion dollars.

The USGS stated that “Extensive damage is probable and the disaster is likely widespread. Estimated economic losses are less than 1% of GDP of Mexico. Past events with this alert level have required a national or international level response.”

The quake has further stretched the country’s disaster response system, already overwhelmed by the 8.1-magnitude quake that hit on Sept. 7, with an epicenter off the coast of the southern state of Chiapas, and which also affected the state of Oaxaca and Mexico City.

Over two million people were affected by that quake, including some 90 people who were killed, according to government statistics.

In August, the World Bank Group issued its largest ever catastrophe bond to Mexico.

The bonds are divided into three categories of insurance: Atlantic Ocean hurricanes, Pacific Ocean hurricanes and earthquakes, providing Mexico with financial protection of up to 360 million dollars against losses.

Similar bonds were issued in 2006, 2009 and 2012.

Each year, this Latin American country dedicates some 1.5 billion dollars to the reconstruction of public infrastructure and social housing affected by natural disasters. Between 2014 and 2015, FONDEN disbursed 137 million dollars to address the damage caused by hurricanes, heavy rains and flooding.

The earthquake has fanned the flames of the debate about the construction standards in force in Mexico City, which were upgraded after the 1985 tragedy. “They say they’re stricter, but look at that building. It’s new and it’s about to come down,” said Verónica.

Cota believes the standards are not always enforced, mainly because of corruption. “They ignore them…they have to be revised and enforced, because the earth will continue to shake and there will be more damage,” he said.

Tuesday’s earthquake occurred near the area where the Cocos Plate, off Mexico’s Pacific coast, is pushing underneath the North American Plate – a phenomenon that points to further quakes.

Juna Bhujel (looking at the camera) at the Mankha VDC office to complain about non-payment of disaster relief funds to reconstruct housing. She lost her home in Nepal’s April 2015 earthquake. Credit: Renu Kshetry/IPS

By Renu Kshetry
KATHMANDU, Feb 21 2017 (IPS)

Juna Bhujel of Sindupalchowk District, 85 kilometres northeast of Nepal’s capital Kathmandu, lost her daughter-in-law in the Apr. 25, 2015 earthquake. Fortunately, she managed to rescue her two-year-old grandson, who was trapped between her mother’s body and the rubble.

Soon after the devastating earthquake, her son, the family’s sole bread-winner, left for Malaysia to seek work, taking out a loan with high interest rates to fund his trip. He has neither returned, nor sent any money back home.“Since 65 percent of the total income of Nepali people goes to food consumption, these programs should be linked with food security." --Janak Raj Joshi, former vice chairman of the Poverty Alleviation Fund

Bhujel, a member of the Mankha Village Development Committee (VDC), now lives in a makeshift dwelling with a family of five. Their only source of income is when her husband gets menial work in home construction. To make matters worse, she has not received any money from the government to build a house.

“I was already poor, with a small plot of land that produced enough food for only three months, and now I don’t even have a house,” said Bhujel, 55. “If my government does not support me, then who will?”

Bhujel is just one of tens of thousands of earthquake victims who lost their family members and homes, but are still waiting to be formally identified as “poor” by the government.

Nepal has set a target of reducing poverty to five percent by 2030, per the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals. In this central Himalayan country, 25.2 percent of the population now lives below the national poverty line.

The government is planning to distribute Poor Identity Cards to 395,000 families in 25 districts starting in April, providing social security entitlements and benefits with the aim of achieving the targets.

Hriday Ram Thani, Minister for Cooperatives and Poverty Alleviation, told IPS that with this new identity card, the government will be able to implement more concentrated programs. The ministry is planning to expand the distribution of identity cards to 50 more districts. Nepal has 75 districts.

But the government’s ambitious plans to alleviate poverty face the challenge of weak programming, planning and coordination between various line ministries to successfully implement the proposed programs.

Nepal already has 44 programs to alleviate poverty run by various ministries. For example, the Poverty Alleviation Constituency Development Program run by the Ministry of Federal Affairs and Local Development has a budget of Rs one billion (9.29 million dollars), and the 9,290,000.00 USD 9,290,000.00 USDPoverty Alleviation Fund under the Prime Minister’s office has a Rs 3.82 billion (2.6 million) budget for this year.

The Youth Employment Fund under the Finance Ministry has Rs 90 million (836,100 dollars), and the Poor with Bishweswor program under the Ministry of Local Development has Rs 160 million (1.486 million) for this year with the mandate to run programs in 483 VDCs in 75 districts.

While the Youth Council Program aims to provide one industry per 10 youth under the Ministry of Youth and Sports, the Rural Independent Fund run by Nepal Rastra Bank under the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock also has a similar aim to reduce poverty.

Minister Thani said that in order to achieve the target and make it more results-oriented, he has already asked Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal to integrate all these poverty-related projects so that the outcome can be measured — or else to close down the ministry.

“Apart from results documented in reports from any of these ministries, the impact cannot be observed in any of their target areas,” he said.

He added that there is a need to establish a high-level poverty alleviation board under the chairmanship of the prime minister and the Poverty Alleviation Ministry should be the focal ministry that links all the projects under various ministries. “There is a need for an internal expert team within the ministry with 3-5 subject group experts,” he said.

While the Poverty Ministry is complaining about a lack of programs and projects, high-level officials at National Planning Commission said that since poverty is a cross-cutting issue, all the ministries are running their own programs and discussions are being held with the Poverty Ministry on how to integrate these programs.

Apart from these initiatives, about two to three percent of the government budget is spent on nine categories of Social Security Entitlements each year for 8 percent of the total population.

Janak Raj Joshi, former vice chairman of the Poverty Alleviation Fund, said that it is sad that the government’s programs have been expanding but failed to go deeper and lack sustainability. He also blamed various international organisations for launching time-bound poverty alleviation projects.

“Since 65 percent of the total income of Nepali people goes to food consumption, these programs should be linked with food security,” he said. “The government lacks a vision of proper distribution of resources and the programs have failed to address the core issues. Each program should directly link to the people living under the poverty line.”

Around two-thirds of Nepalis rely on agriculture for their livelihood, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). The National Planning Commission (NPC) aims to introduce various programs to help improve the overall development of agriculture from this year.

Mahesh Kharel, Under-Secretary of the NPC’s Poverty Alleviation Division, said that they have planned an Agriculture Development Strategy from this year. He said that under the prime minister’s chairmanship, the project will focus on agriculture, infrastructure, local development and agricultural roads, livestock and irrigation to promote marketing of agricultural goods.

The government has allotted Rs 58 billion (541 million dollars) for the project. Similarly, the government has also allotted Rs six billion (56 million) to focus on an Agriculture Modernization Project. The program has already started in Kailali, Jhapa and Bara districts, where super zones of wheat, rice and fish have been announced.

Kharel agreed that poverty alleviation needs an integrated approach with some focused programs that directly affect the poor and bring positive changes to their lives. “By making improvements in the agriculture sector, we can help improve the living standards of people living under the poverty line,” he said.

A family stands beside a damaged house near Naglebhare, Nepal. The housing sector bore the brunt of the April earthquake, accounting for three-fifths of all damages. Credit: Asian Development Bank/CC-BY-2.0

By Zhai Yun Tan
WASHINGTON, Jun 17 2015 (IPS)

The 7.8 magnitude earthquake that shook Nepal in April, and the numerous aftershocks that followed, left the country with losses amounting to a third of its economy.

As this South Asian nation of 27 million people struggles to get back on its feet, a major donor conference scheduled for Jun. 25 promises to bring some relief, but the extent of the disaster means that Nepal will be dealing with the fallout from the quake for a long time to come.

“The economy of Nepal took a huge hit from these earthquakes and there is a danger that many of the country’s impressive gains in overcoming poverty could be reversed." -- Annette Dixon, vice president for the South Asia Region at the World Bank
The country’s post-disaster needs assessment reported damages of 5.15 billion dollars, losses of 1.9 billion dollars and recovery needs of 6.6 billion dollars. The housing sector bore the brunt of the disaster, accounting for three-fifths of the damages and half of the country’s most pressing needs.

Nepal Finance Minister Ram Sharan Mahat has called this the worst disaster in Nepal’s history. Over 8,000 lives were lost, 22,000 people were injured and over 1,000 health facilities were destroyed, according to government data.

“One in three Nepali people have been affected by the earthquakes. One in 10 has been rendered homeless,” the foreign minister said. “Half a million households have lost their livelihoods, mostly poor, subsistence farmers.”

An additional three percent of the population, which amounts to roughly a million people, has been pushed into poverty because of this disaster, according to the World Bank.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on its website that 8.1 million people are in need of humanitarian support and 1.9 million require food assistance.

Only 129 million dollars of the 422-million-dollar humanitarian appeal by United Nations have been raised.

Nepal, a developing country saddled with debts up to 30 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) and dependent on external aid, had nonetheless been making developmental and economic gains before the disaster struck.

For instance, government data indicate that the percentage of people living in poverty fell from 42 percent to 23.8 percent within the last 20 years.

“The disaster has dealt a severe blow to our aspirations,” Mahat said.

The donor conference later this month, to be held in Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, is expected to tackle strategies for reconstruction and the provision of financial support.

“The economy of Nepal took a huge hit from these earthquakes and there is a danger that many of the country’s impressive gains in overcoming poverty could be reversed,” said Annette Dixon, vice president for the South Asia Region at the World Bank.

“The country needs resources to pay for the recovery that can be channeled through credible programmes to make itself more resilient to the next natural disaster and ensure that those most in need receive the help they deserve.”

The conference will be jointly conducted by the Nepal government, the Asian Development Bank, the European Union, the government of India, the Japan International Cooperation Agency, the United Nations and the World Bank.

More challenges lie ahead for Nepal as the annual monsoon season approaches, potentially displacing thousands more people. Charity groups such as CARE are scrambling to provide iron sheeting to households and those in temporary shelters to keep them dry, according to the group’s recent update.

“Our biggest priority now is to make sure we get people through the monsoon safe and dry,” said CARE shelter expert Tom Newby in the Jun. 5 release. “Families want to know how to rebuild their homes safer and better and our job is to help them do this.”

Orla Fagan, public information officer at OCHA’s Asia Pacific regional office, said in an email to IPS that providing shelter is a key concern.

“There were around 500,000 families affected and left without homes after the two earthquakes,” Fagan said, adding that greater relief efforts are needed before the country can move on to reconstruction.

Rupa Joshi, communications manager for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Nepal, is concerned about the country’s fragile hillsides.

“The monsoon is already upon us,” Joshi said in an email to IPS. “We feel when the rain comes in, or pour like it did last week in eastern Nepal, our mountains will see numerous large landslides.”

Agencies like UNICEF and the World Food Programme (WFP) are working to help children return to school, provide safe birth-centers and deliver food to people in Nepal’s hard-to-reach mountainous areas.

Meanwhile, groups like Jubilee USA Network, an alliance of over 75 U.S.-based NGOs and 400 faith communities, are fighting to help Nepal obtain debt relief from the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), to which Nepal owes about 54 million dollars.

“The country pays 600,000 dollars a day [to its creditors],” Eric LeCompte, executive director of the coalition, told IPS. “It is a significant amount that can be freed up for relief efforts.”

Nepal could also qualify for assistance under the IMF’s Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust (CCR), which aims to relieve debt burdens of low-income countries like Nepal.

To qualify for the trust, Nepal will have to demonstrate that the natural disaster has directly affected at least one third of its population and destroyed more than a quarter of its productive capacity.

Jubilee USA Network has succeeded in securing similar debt-relief schemes for several Ebola-stricken countries by applying pressure on the IMF.

LeCompte said the Jun. 25 conference is crucial for Nepal.

“The Nepal government is expected to ask for debt relief at the conference,” LeCompte said. “It will push the decision-making process onto the banks.”

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Experts have said for years that Kathmandu is an extremely high-risk city in the event of seismic activity, yet Nepal was caught off guard when a massive earthquake struck on Apr. 25, 2015. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Amantha Perera
COLOMBO, May 8 2015 (IPS)

There has never been any doubt that Nepal is sitting on one of the most seismically active areas in South Asia. The fact that, when the big one struck, damages and deaths would be catastrophic has been known for years.

Indeed, when this correspondent visited Nepal several years ago, and found himself climbing up the narrow, winding stairwell of the Nepal Red Cross Society office in Kathmandu, a poster on one of the doors demanded a close read: “Kathmandu Valley is most vulnerable during an earthquake,” the sign said.

"[This] is one of the poorest countries in the world and resources were woefully lacking." -- Orla Fagan, regional media officer at the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Bangkok
“One study has shown than in case of an earthquake, 40,000 people may die, 95,000 persons may be seriously injured and 60 percent of houses will be totally destroyed.”

Looking out of the window at the densely populated hillsides, dotted with three-storey concrete structures hugging each other in the jam-packed metropolis, it was clear the warnings were not hyperbolic.

Little over a month before the massive earthquake struck on Apr. 25, Mahendra Bahadur Pandey, Nepal’s minister for foreign affairs, warned the world yet again of what was to come.

“It is […] estimated that the human losses in the Kathmandu Valley alone, should there be a major seismic event, will be catastrophic,” he told the United Nations World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Sendai, Japan, in March.

Horrifyingly, his words were prophetic of the tragedy that unfolded not long after.

Caught off guard

Less than two weeks after the 7.8-magnitude quake rippled through Nepal, close to 8,000 people have been pronounced dead, while hundreds are still missing. Families wait for news, while officials wait for their worst fears to be confirmed: that the death toll will likely climb higher in the coming days.

Over 17,500 people are injured, and ten hospitals have been completely destroyed, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

An estimated eight million people, largely in the country’s Western and Central Regions, have been affected by the disaster – representing over a quarter of Nepal’s population of over 27 million people.

The largest cities, such as Kathmandu and Pokhara, have been badly hit; within 72 hours of the quake, over half a million fled Kathmandu to outlying areas.

Despite ample evidence of the damage a disaster of this scale could wreak on the country, Nepal was in many ways caught unawares, and is now struggling to meet the challenges of providing for a beleaguered and petrified population, who weathered numerous aftershocks in the week following the major quake.

Scores of families are still living in tents, while the World Health Organisation (WHO) has issued an urgent funding appeal for the estimated 3.5 million people in need of emergency food aid.

With so many hospitals destroyed, doctors have resorted to treating patients in the street. The U.N. health agency has allocated 1.1 million dollars for medical staff and supplies and has so far treated 50,000 patients in the 14 most severely affected districts.

‘Resources woefully lacking’

But there is a limit to what aid agencies and donor countries can do, and eventually the government will have to shoulder the lion’s share of the recovery effort: something experts feel Nepal is unprepared for.

“It is a massive relief operation, probably the largest in this region that we have launched,” Orla Fagan, regional media officer at OCHA’s office in Bangkok, Thailand, told IPS.

The long-term reconstruction bill could be as high as five billion dollars, while U.N. agencies said last week that they need at least 415 million dollars for more immediate efforts over the next three months.

Fagan said that because the threat levels were known, some degree of coordination and disaster preparedness work was being carried out in the Himalayan country prior to the disaster, mostly relating to training and building awareness.

“There was coordination between the government and U.N. agencies, but it was on a very small scale,” she said, adding, “You need to understand that this is one of the poorest countries in the world and resources were woefully lacking.”

Nepal is considered a Least Developed Country (LDC) and currently ranks 145 out of 187 on the United Nations Human Development Index (HDI). It is also saddled with massive debt – over 3.8 billion dollars owed to donors like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) – and funneled over 217 million dollars into debt repayments last year, money that might have been better spent shoring up its disaster preparation and management systems.

Fagan explained that the main gaps in disaster preparedness levels were in information management, with the government failing to collect data gathered by various actors into a cohesive national data bank. The country was also lacking a tried and tested national blueprint on early response and coordination of relief efforts.

A little known fact is that despite the very real threats of earthquakes, heavy rains, landslides and glacial lake outbursts, Nepal’s disaster response policies are governed by the over three-decades-old 1982 Natural Calamities Relief Act.

Though a 2008 draft act envisaged a National Disaster Management Authority, it is yet to be ratified by parliament.

“The hope now is that with all the international resources and goodwill pouring in, Nepal can build a stronger national disaster preparedness policy and mechanism,” Fagan said.

Learning lessons from the region

Regional disaster experts agree with that assessment.

“First the funds need to be used for recovery interventions,” explained N.M.S.I. Arambepola, director of the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center in Bangkok. “But a part of the funds should be used to develop a road map for a disaster resilient Nepal.

“The document would also identify the roles and responsibilities [of various government agencies] in implementation, ensuring that the government initiates a long-term plan for disaster risk reduction with the support of the development community,” the expert told IPS.

Such a document would specify which branches would issue warnings, which would disseminate them and which would be in charge of evacuations, for instance.

Arambepola also believes Nepal could learn a thing or two from its neighbors, no strangers to natural disasters.

“Nepal should take the example of other South Asian countries such as India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka to develop policy [and] legal frameworks and an institutional set-up for disaster risk reduction,” he stressed.

Sri Lanka in particular presents an excellent case study, since it was just ten years ago that the country was caught in a similar crisis, completely at a loss to deal with the devastating impact of the 2004 Asian tsunami.

Whereas Nepal at least has been aware of the earthquake threat in its densely populated cities for many years, Sri Lanka had no idea that its coast – home to 50 percent of the country’s 20 million people – was in such grave danger.

It found out the hard way on Dec. 24 when the killer waves knocked the stuffing out of three percent of its population, leaving 35,000 dead, over a million destitute, and a reconstruction bill of three billion dollars.

The country’s former secretary to the ministry of disaster management, S M Mohamed, described the tsunami as an “eye-opener”, sparking efforts at both government and civil society levels to ensure that the country would never again be caught off guard.

While the road to stronger management and preparedness has by no means been a smooth one, Sri Lanka has nevertheless made great strides since that fateful day, including setting up the country’s first-ever Disaster Management Centre (DMC).

In the last decade the DMC has evolved into the main national hub for disaster preparedness levels as well as becoming the nodal public agency for relief coordination and early warnings in the event of a natural calamity.

It has district offices in all 25 districts with personnel ready at any time for immediate deployment. In April 2012, the DMC was instrumental in efficiently evacuating over a million people from the coast, due to a tsunami threat.

“The Sri Lankan operation grew from scratch, and now it’s at a somewhat effective level, [though] there are still gaps. Disaster resilience is more about lessons learnt by trial and error,” DMC Additional Director Sarath Lal Kumara told IPS.

Although Nepal’s challenges are unique compared to some of the worst disasters in the region’s history – with 600,000 flattened houses after the quake, compared to Sri Lanka’s 100,000 following the tsunami, for instance – it still stands to take away valuable lessons, that will hopefully prevent unnecessary damages and loss of life in the case of future catastrophes.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Sixty-five-year-old Rita Rai still has not received emergency relief in the remote village of Mahadevsthan in Kavre district, 100 km south of Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu. Credit: Naresh Newar/IPS

By Naresh Newar
KAVRE DISTRICT, Nepal, May 5 2015 (IPS)

Just over a week after a dreadful 7.8 magnitude earthquake rocked Nepal, displaced families are gradually – but cautiously – resuming their normal lives, though most are still badly shaken by the disaster and the proceeding aftershocks that devastated the country.

However, delivery of humanitarian aid and basic relief supplies remains slow, hindered by the scale of the tragedy. With the annual summer monsoon just around the corner – and heavy rains already lashing some parts of the country – experts say the clock is ticking for effective relief efforts.

“We have stopped crying out of fear because we need to move on now and be brave." -- Sunita Tamang, a teenager from rural Nepal who lost her home and school in the recent quake
As of May 3, the death toll was 7,250 in 30 districts, with half of them in Kathmandu and its neighbouring Sindupalchok district, according to the Nepal Red Cross Society (NRCS), the largest humanitarian NGO in the country.

A further 14,122 people have been injured.

Over one million families have been displaced in 35 districts, while over 297,000 houses have been completely destroyed.

The United Nations says close to eight million people – over a quarter of Nepal’s population of 27 million – have been impacted by the crisis.

Of these, about 3.5 million are in need of food aid. The World Food Programme (WFP) has issued an urgent appeal for 116.5 million dollars to deliver aid to those most in need – some 1.4 million people – over the next three months.

The U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), meanwhile, is worried about the plight of the country’s wheat harvest.

The agency had predicted a yield of 1.8 million tonnes in 2015, but is concerned that this forecast will change, as farmers struggle to access devastated fields and deal with severely damaged drainage systems and irrigation canals.

As the government scrambles to meet the needs of its people, the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) announced Tuesday that it had begun to airlift 80 metric tonnes of humanitarian aid to the worst-affected areas.

According to a statement on the agency’s website, “[The] aircraft will deliver water, sanitation, and hygiene supplies, such as chlorination material, diarrhoea and cholera kits, as well as water bladders, to provide clean and safe water supplies as fears of an outbreak of waterborne diseases grow. Also on board are health kits and tarpaulins, with many families having fled to open spaces under threat of further aftershocks.”

Families yearn for normalcy

“We have stopped crying out of fear because we need to move on now and be brave,” 13-year-old Sunita Tamang tells IPS, hugging her best friend – 12-year-old Manju Tamang.

The girls hail from the remote Ghumarchowk village of Shankarpur municipality, 80 km from the centre of Kathmandu city. Both of their families lost their homes, cattle and food stocks in the quake.

Their school remains dilapidated and though they are desperate to resume their classes, they must patiently wait out the month-long government-declared closure of schools in case of further natural calamities.

In this village, which is only accessible after a steep, three-hour uphill trek, most of the 500 homes remain unsafe for residence, a major obstacle for families who are getting tired of sleeping under the stars in their potato and squash farms where they are living in makeshift tents, nothing but thin plastic sheets covering their heads.

This village in Nepal’s Kavre district was one of the worst casualties of the Apr. 25 earthquake that devastated great swathes of this South Asia nation. Credit: Naresh Newar/IPS

The torrential rainfall that is lashing this village makes life in agricultural fields difficult, as the ground becomes too muddy to sleep on.

“I would rather return home and take the risk,” a social worker named Bikash Tamang from the Scout Community Group tells IPS.

The National Society for Earthquake Technology-Nepal (NSET), which aims to create “earthquake safe communities in Nepal by 2020”, has begun a series of assessments of major offices and residential areas across the country.

Chief of communications for the NSET tells IPS in Kathmandu that the organisation is assessing the extent of the damage, to ensure that key service providing agencies within the government, as well as the medical and communications sector, can access those most in need.

But the destruction is so extensive that an exhaustive assessment will take time.

Residents of affected areas are receiving sporadic assistance from local Nepali engineers, who have been volunteering their services to assess damages and safety issues in neighborhoods across the country.

“These engineers are helping us free of charge, and I am so grateful to them,” Shankar Biswakarma, hailing from Bagdol ward in Kathmandu, tells IPS.

But these charitable efforts will not be enough.

Migrant families remain in limbo

The number of residents in Tundikhel, the largest camp area for the displaced in Kathmandu, has halved over the last few days. The remaining families are largely migrant workers, a 25-year-old mother of two children tells IPS.

“Many have left who have relatives and friends to help,” says young Manisha Lama. “Those who come from outside Kathmandu are the ones left here in the camps.”

Her home is in the remote village of Deupur in Kavre district, which is among the most affected districts, nearly 100 km south of the capital.

Kavre also has a record number of destroyed homes – some 30,000 lost to the quake, according to NRCS records.

“The needs of the most affected families are crucial and the response is becoming a huge challenge,” NRCS Chief of Communications Dibya Paudel tells IPS.

He explains that affected people are growing extremely frustrated at the snail’s pace of the emergency response, adding that the government and its relevant agencies are inundated by requests, and under intense pressure to respond to the specific humanitarian needs of million of affected people.

As of May 2, the combined total pledged by the international community to the relief effort stood at 68 million dollars, far short of the required 415 million dollars needed for full recovery, according to estimates prepared by the United Nation’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

To make matters worse, aid agencies are reporting incidents of looting of relief goods before they reach their specified destination; those on the ground say families are getting too desperate to wait for supplies to reach them through formal channels.

“We’re still waiting for relief but I heard the government and agencies are now scared to come because of the incidents of looting,” Sachen Lama, a resident of the affected village of Bajrayogini, 10 km from Kathmandu, tells IPS.

He and his fellow villagers have been asking the community to stay calm when the relief arrives, and let the aid workers do their job so that there is no obstruction in the distribution process.

“But there was looting two days ago by some local people as they were desperate, [so our] relief supplies never arrived here,” Lama says.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

School children in Nepal’s Matatirtha village practice an earthquake drill in the event of a natural disaster. A 7.8-magnitude earthquake in Nepal on Apr. 25, 2015, has endangered the lives of close to a million children. Credit: Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade/CC-BY-2.0

By Kanya D'Almeida
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 27 2015 (IPS)

The death toll has now passed 3,300, and there is no telling how much farther it will climb. Search and rescue operations in Nepal entered their third day Monday, as the government and international aid agencies scramble to cope with the aftermath of a 7.8-magnitude earthquake that struck this South Asian nation on Apr. 25.

Severe aftershocks have this land-locked country of 27.8 million people on edge, with scores missing and countless others feared dead, buried under the rubble.

“Nepal owes 3.8 billion dollars in debt to foreign lenders and spent 217 million dollars repaying debt in 2013.” -- Jubilee USA Network
With its epicenter in Lamjung District, located northwest of the capital, Kathmandu, and south of the China border, the massive quake rippled out over the entire country, causing several avalanches in the Himalayas including one that killed over 15 people and injured dozens more at the base camp of Mt. Everest, 200 km away.

The United Nations says Dhading, Gorkha, Rasuwa, Sindhupalchowk, Kavre, Nuwakot, Dolakha, Kathmandu, Lalitpur, Bhaktapur and Ramechhap are the worst affected areas. In total, 35 out of 75 districts in the Western and Central regions of the country are suffering the impacts of the quake and its severe aftershocks.

Questions abound as to how this impoverished nation, ranked 145 out of 187 on the United Nations Human Development Index (HDI) – making it one of the world’s Least Developed Countries (LDCs) – will recover from the disaster, considered the worst in Nepal in over 80 years.

One possible solution has come from the Jubilee USA Network, an alliance of over 75 U.S.-based organisations and 400 faith communities worldwide, which said in a press release Monday that Nepal could qualify for debt relief under the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) new Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust (CCR).

The IMF created the CCR this past February in order to assist poor countries recover from severe natural disasters or health crises by providing grants for debt service relief. Already, the fund has eased some of the financial woes of Ebola-impacted countries by agreeing to cancel nearly 100 million dollars of debt.

Quoting World Bank figures, Jubilee USA said in a statement, “Nepal owes 3.8 billion dollars in debt to foreign lenders and spent 217 million dollars repaying debt in 2013.”

Nepal owes some 1.5 billion dollars each to the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, as well as 54 million dollars to the IMF, 133 million dollars to Japan and 101 million dollars to China.

“In order for Nepal to receive relief from the IMF’s fund, the disaster must destroy more than 25 percent of the country’s ‘productive capacity’, impact one-third of its people or cause damage greater than the size of the country’s economy,” Eric LeCompte, Jubilee USA Network’s executive director, told IPS. “It seems clear that Nepal will qualify for immediate assistance from the IMF.”

According to Jubilee USA Network, Nepal is scheduled to pay back 10 million dollars worth of loans to the IMF in 2015 and nearly 13 million dollars in 2016. Relieving the country of this burden will free up valuable and limited funds that can be redirect into the rescue and relief effort.

Strong emergency response – but is it enough?

“Time is of the essence for the search and rescue operations,” Under-Secretary-General of Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Valerie Amos said Monday.

“The actions of the Government of Nepal and local communities themselves have already saved many lives. Teams from India, Pakistan, China and Israel have started work, and more are on their way from the U.S., the UK, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, the European Union and elsewhere.”

Early on Sunday morning the United States’ department of defense confirmed it had dispatched an aircraft to Nepal carrying 70 personnel and 700,000 dollars worth of supplies.

But it is unclear whether or not the immediate response will prove equal to the mammoth task ahead.

The U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimates that 940,000 children from areas severely affected by the quake are in desperate need of humanitarian aid.

The World Food Programme (WFP) has been supplying emergency food rations, while the World Health Organisation has sent in enough medical supplies to meet the needs of 40,000 affected people, yet experts say much more will be needed in the weeks and months ahead.

Tens of thousands of people are sleeping in the open air in makeshift tents; almost all are in need of better accommodation, clean water, sanitation, tents and blankets, and improved medical supplies.

A situation report released over the weekend by the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) revealed, “In Kathmandu Valley, hospitals are overcrowded, running out of space for storing dead bodies and lack medical supplies and capacity. BIR hospital [one of the country’s leading medical facilities] is treating people in the streets.”

Scenes of devastation all around the country highlight the need for emergency relief, but do not do justice to the massive reconstruction effort that will be needed in the months and years to come.

“Nepal’s rebuilding efforts will take years and debt cancellation is a recipe for long-term financial stability,” LeCompte stressed.

“Since the IMF has clear rules in place and the financing available with their trust, aid [to Nepal] should come relatively quickly,” he added. “Unfortunately, with the bulk of the debt owed to the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, the rules for debt relief are less clear.

“It’s unfortunate that the World Bank, as a development institution, still has not yet released a plan similar to the IMF to respond rapidly to humanitarian crises. In the short term, the World Bank must offer a plan for grants and debt relief. I hope this crisis also motivates the World Bank to release their plans for a rapid response mechanism,” LeCompte concluded.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

President Michelle Bachelet visiting a shelter on Apr. 3 in Camarones, one of the areas worst-hit by the quake, 2,000 km north of Santiago. Credit: Office of the Chilean President

By Marianela Jarroud
SANTIAGO, Apr 5 2014 (IPS)

Chile appears to have learned a few lessons from the 2010 earthquake and tsunami, and it successfully drew on them the night of Apr. 1, when another quake struck, this time in the extreme north of the country.

Frightened by the intensification of seismic activity in the last few years, local residents fled for the hills, two km away from the Pacific ocean, after a tsunami alert was issued by the Chilean Navy’s Hydrographic and Oceanographic Service.

But despite the fear, nearly one million people participated efficiently in a mass evacuation, and the six people who were killed died of heart attacks or falling debris.

The 8.2-magnitude temblor occurred at GMT 23:46 and was the strongest in a series of quakes that have hit northern Chile since Jan. 1.

“We were in our apartment, which is on the third floor of a building. My daughter and my husband and I all held onto each other. Suddenly, the windows burst and glass started to fall on our backs. It was horrible,” a woman who lives in the northern city of Iquique, and had later evacuated to higher ground away from the coast, told Tierramérica.

“We have learned a lot, and many of the elements that didn’t work right in 2010 functioned perfectly now,” the director of the National Seismological Centre, Sergio Barrientos, told Tierramérica.

Four years ago, “the seismological monitoring system broke down and we were only able to provide information on the earthquake a couple of hours later,” he said.

“On this occasion, even though it was a much smaller earthquake, we managed to deliver the necessary information just a few minutes after it occurred,” he added.

President Michelle Bachelet flew over the most heavily affected areas, Iquique and Arica, 1,800 and 2,000 km north of Santiago, respectively, to view the destruction.

“There has been an exemplary evacuation process, with strong solidarity that has made this a process without major setbacks, which has protected people from a tsunami or other serious problems linked to the quake,” she said.

Tuesday’s earthquake was also a trial by fire.for Bachelet, who took office as president for the second time, on Mar. 11.

The president ended her first term just 12 days after the 8.8-magnitude quake and tsunami that devastated vast areas in central and southern Chile on Feb. 27, 2010.

That time the emergency preparedness protocols didn’t work, and a tardy tsunami alert was blamed for some 500 deaths, added to the destruction of over 200,000 housing units. Bachelet faced legal action, and several members of her first administration are still under investigation.

Four years later, the president decreed a timely state of emergency for the affected regions and called out the armed forces and the security forces to keep public order.

The tsunami warning sirens sounded early enough to allow thousands of people to begin evacuating calmly.

Significant investment in economic and human resources lies behind these changes. In 2012, the National Seismological Centre signed an agreement with the Interior Ministry to strengthen the network of sensors and set up new stations, while creating a robust communications system.

The ongoing investment of nearly seven million dollars has included the installation of 10 new monitoring stations, the purchase of satellite equipment, and training for the staff at the National Seismological Centre and the National Emergency Office.

The disaster preparedness and mitigation strategies are bearing fruit not only in Chile, but in the rest of Latin America as well, according to the regional office of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

Earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions and hurricanes are common in different parts of the region, often associated with conditions of vulnerability, poverty and insecurity.

However, local populations are better prepared today, regional cooperation is effective, and warning and response systems are efficient, UNESCO reports.

“The situation has improved greatly since the 27 February 2010 tsunami that impacted Chile,” said UNESCO which, in alliance with the authorities, is involved in work on education for tsunami preparedness in Chile, Peru and Ecuador.

In Chile, the work has been carried out in 144 schools in areas at risk of flooding – lower than 30 metres above sea level.

“Citizen education is essential in these situations, especially in a country like Chile, where a tsunami can occur 15 or 20 minutes after an earthquake and it takes 10 minutes to analyse the information,” hydraulic engineer Rodrigo Cienfuegos of the National Research Centre for Integrated Natural Disaster Management (CIGIDEN) told Tierramérica.

“People have to react in an autonomous manner; they have to know where to evacuate to immediately after an earthquake of the characteristics of the one we had on Tuesday,” added Cienfuegos, an expert on tsunamis.

One of the biggest challenges now is for people to be prepared to deal with the impacts that follow the quake itself: living in evacuation centres, and putting up with the lack of food, water and electricity.

“The idea is that, once the emergency is over, people will be more ready to live through that complex period,” he said.

According to Cienfuegos, an academic at the Catholic University, this South American country, one of the world’s most earthquake-prone, with more than 4,000 km of coastline, should rethink human settlements in the future.

“We have to be aware of the threat that living so close to the coast means,” he said. “It’s hard to move people away who for years have been living close to the sea, but measures have to be taken when the construction of new human settlements is being studied.”

For now, the people of northern Chile should be ready, seismologists warn. It has been 137 years since the last major quake in the north of the country and the energy that has accumulated is greater than what was released on Tuesday.

*Originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

Map of seismic activity from October 2013 to March 2014 in the state of Nuevo León in northeast Mexico. Credit: Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Apr 3 2014 (IPS)

Scientists warn that large-scale fracking for shale gas planned by Mexico’s oil company Pemex will cause a surge in seismic activity in northern Mexico, an area already prone to quakes.

Experts link a 2013 swarm of earthquakes in the northern states of Tamaulipas and Nuevo León to hydraulic fracturing or fracking in the Burgos and Eagle Ford shale deposits – the latter of which is shared with the U.S. state of Texas.

Researcher Ruperto de la Garza found a link between seismic activity and fracking, a technique that involves pumping water, chemicals and sand at high pressure into the well, opening and extending fractures in the shale rock to release the natural gas.

“The final result is the dislocation of the geological structure which, when it is pulverised, allows the trapped gas to escape,” the expert with the environmental and risk consultancy Gestoría Ambiental y de Riesgos told IPS from Saltillo, the capital of the northern state of Coahuila.

When the chemicals are injected “and the lutite particles [sedimentary rock] break down, the earth shifts,” he said. “It’s not surprising that the earth has been settling.”

De la Garza drew up an exhaustive map of the seismic movements in 2013 and the gas-producing areas.

His findings, published on Mar. 22, indicated a correlation between the seismic activity and fracking.

Statistics from Mexico’s National Seismological Service show an increase in intensity and frequency of seismic activity in Nuevo León, where at least 31 quakes between 3.1 and 4.3 on the Richter scale were registered.

Most of the quakes occurred in 2013. Of the ones registered this year, the highest intensity took place on Mar. 2-3, according to official records.

De la Garza said the number of quakes in that state increased in 2013 and the first few months of this year.

The Burgos basin, which extends through the northern states of Nuevo León, Tamaulipas and Coahuila, holds huge reserves of conventional gas, which began to be tapped in the past decade.

Since 2011, PEMEX has drilled at least six wells for shale gas in the states of Nuevo León and Coahuila. It is also preparing for further exploration in the southeastern state of Veracruz.

The company has identified five regions with potential unconventional gas resources from the north of Veracruz to Chihuahua, on the U.S. border.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) ranks Mexico sixth in the world for technically recoverable gas, behind China, Argentina, Algeria, the United States and Canada, based on examination of 137 deposits in 42 countries.

The recovery of shale gas requires enormous quantities of water and a broad range of chemicals. The process generates large amounts of waste fluids, which contain dissolved chemicals and other contaminants that require treatment before recycling or disposal, according to the environmental watchdog Greenpeace.

The study “Sismicidad en el estado de Nuevo León”, published in January on seismic activity in that state, concluded that the quakes in northeast Mexico are associated with both natural structures and human actions that modify the rock layer and the pressure in the fluids near the surface.

The report, by academics at the Civil Engineering Faculty of the Autonomous University of Nuevo León, attributes several earthquakes that have occurred since 2004 to activities such as the extraction of unconventional natural gas in the Burgos basin.

Other factors mentioned by the study are the overexploitation of aquifers by potato producers along the border between Coahuila and Nuevo León and barite mining in Nuevo León.

The total number of water wells drilled in the basin has risen from just under 5,000 in 2004 to 7,000 today.

A study on the environmental impact of the Poza Rica Altamira y Aceite Terciario del Golfo 2013-2035 regional oil project, which extends across the states of Veracruz, Hidalgo (in the centre) and Puebla (in the south), anticipates a rise in demand for water for fracking in the north of the country, where water is scarce.

The 844-page document, to which IPS had access, was sent by Pemex to the environment ministry for approval on Mar. 10, and enumerates projected works like the construction of roads and installation of large steel water storage tanks.

The study states that over 12,700 cubic metres of water are needed for every 10 multi-stage fracking jobs.

It also estimates that Mexico’s natural gas production will reach 11.47 billion cubic feet a day by 2026, which would come from the higher levels of shale gas production at the Eagle Ford and La Casita deposits stretching across Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León and Tamaulipas.

By 2026, non-associated natural gas will represent 55 percent of total gas production. The rest will come from unconventional deposits in the north of the country, whose production is projected to grow at a rate of 8.6 percent per year up to then.

Production of unconventional gas is expected to be in the hands of private companies, since the energy reform approved in December opened up the oil and electric industry to foreign investment.

Studies carried out in the United States have also attributed earthquakes in that country to fracking-linked wastewater injection

U.S. Geological Survey scientists have found that in some areas, an increase in seismic activity has coincided with the injection of wastewater in deep disposal wells.

“Earthquakes will increase as a result of the higher-scale shale gas production. The government is misguided. Fracking should be banned,” de la Garza argued.

In the face of severe food shortages and with no relief aid, the elderly like Zeinab Wambui, from lower Mukurweini, Central Kenya, are facing very tough times. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah and George Gao
NAIROBI/NEW YORK, Oct 17 2013 (IPS)

Wambui Karunyu, 72, and her seven-year-old grandson are the only surviving members of their immediate family.  Karunyu’s husband and five children all succumbed to the hardships of living in the semi-arid area of lower Mukurweini district in central Kenya.

In 2009, a drought struck parts of central and southeast Kenya, leaving 3.8 million people in need of food aid. Four years later, conditions in the area remain dire. According to the regional Drought Management Authority, while the upper parts of Mukurweini receive an annual rainfall of 1,500 mm, lower Mukurweini only receives 200mm.

A new report by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), a U.K. based think tank, identifies Kenya as one of 11 countries most at risk for disaster-induced poverty. The report, entitled “The geography of poverty, disasters and climate extremes in 2030”, warns that the international community has yet to properly address the threats disasters pose to the poorest parts of the world.

The report includes locations where both poverty and natural disasters will likely be concentrated in 2030; and in many instances, these locations overlap.

Hazards and vulnerability to poverty in 2030
Source: Overseas Development Institute

However, the severity of disasters – such as drought, floods and hurricanes – depends on what “disaster risk management” policies the government has put in place, according to ODI.

In 2010, for example, the magnitude 7.0 earthquake in Haiti killed 11 percent of people who felt its tremors, while the Chilean earthquake – of an even higher magnitude, 8.8 – killed 0.1 percent; and in 2008, Cyclone Nargis killed 138,000 people in Myanmar, while Hurricane Gustav of similar strength killed 153 when it struck the Caribbean and the U.S.

“Slow-onset” disasters – such as the drought afflicting Karunyu and her grandson in Kenya – are often the harshest setbacks for development, especially in poor, rural areas that lack social safety nets, according to ODI.

“I plant maize and beans every season, but I harvest nothing. I never stop planting because I hope that this time will be better than the last time. But it’s always the same, loss and hunger,” Karunyu tells IPS.

Simon Mwangi, a resident of Mukurweini and a service provider with the Dairy Goats Association of Kenya, an association of small-scale goat farmers, tells IPS that Karunyu’s story is not unique.

“Life here is characterised by poverty and hunger. A great majority live in rural areas, and they are farmers. Due to prolonged dry spells, the situation is alarming, since they have no other livelihoods,” he says.

Mwangi notes that unreliable rainfall, frequent droughts and the inability of residents to adapt to harsh climatic changes has affected the growth of a variety of crops, such as maize and beans, which used to grow successfully.

“Lower Mukurweini is no longer a corn zone, but farmers continue to plant maize with no success. There are drought-resistant crops that can do well here, including fruits, such as pineapples and indigenous mangoes. But the lack of extension officers has made it difficult for people here to adapt to the dry climate,” he says.

There is also a lack of NGOs and aid workers in Mukurweini to address the residents’ plight. The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) operated in Mukurweini for nine years, but left in 2011. “Things were much better when [IFAD] ran irrigation and trainings for farmers. Some sub-locations were doing much better, and there was food. But many parts of lower Mukurweini are now at risk of starvation,” says Mwangi.

Ten Worst Natural Disasters Reported in Kenya from 1980 to 2010. Source: United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction

In Kenya, each child born in a drought year is 50 percent more likely to become malnourished, according to the report. And from 1997 to 2007, less than 10 percent of Kenya’s poor escaped poverty, while 30 percent of Kenya’s non-poor entered poverty, partly due to the multiple natural disasters affecting the country.

In July 2012, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon assembled a team of 27 advisers to help him achieve the lofty goal of ending world poverty. Ten months later, the team – known as the High Level Panel of eminent persons (HLP) – produced a report that advised Ban, among other things, to “build resilience and reduce deaths from natural disasters” by a percentage to be agreed.

The HLP recommended this target on disaster-mitigation to be included in the post-2015 development agenda, a list that would replace the eight current Millennium Development Goals –which do not include the word “disaster” once.

The intensity of natural disasters is expected to increase with climate change. ODI predicts that up to 325 million impoverished people in 49 countries will be exposed to extreme weather conditions by 2030.

The regional Drought Management Authority says that Nyeri County, where Mukurweini is located, should expect more prolonged dry spells moving forward.

“During the day, you barely see anyone outside, it’s too hot. Even the earth becomes too hot, you cannot walk barefoot,” says Mwangi.

“Without food or access to water, the elderly starve and fade away quietly,” he says.

A woman and a girl carry water along a road near a painted portion of the Jalousie neighbourhood in September 2013. Four gallons of water weighs about 11.4 kilogrammes. Credit: HGW/Marc Schindler Saint Val

By Correspondents
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Sep 26 2013 (Haiti Grassroots Watch)

Pink, green, blue, red. From a distance, the thousands of brightly coloured houses look like a painting. The observer can’t see the suffering and dangers threatening the residents of the Jalousie neighbourhood – problems that are being ignored by the government, which is spending six million dollars on a massive make-up job.

Last month, experts announced that the hillside slum, home to 45,000 to 50,000 people, sits on a secondary fault.“What we need are water and electricity.” -- A Jalousie resident who lives in a small home with 11 others

“Not only does a fault run through Jalousie, but there is also the serious danger of mudslides in the area,” geologist Claude Prépetit, co-author of a new seismological study of the capital, explained at an Aug. 2 press conference.

Many of Jalousie’s small houses are built into the side of Morne L’Hôpital, on steep inclines or in ravines that serve as canals for rainwater. Every time it rains, walls of water rush down the slopes, where officially it is illegal to build, or even to cut down trees. Due to the lack of vegetation to hold it back, the water and mud can carry away people, animals and even entire houses.

A recent Environment Ministry document notes that more than 1,300 homes should be moved because they threaten both their residents and people living in the city below. In 2012, Minister Ronald Toussaint announced plans to move residents in those homes, but when people protested, President Michel Martelly intervened, cancelling the moves and firing the minister.

Jalousie, one of many slums that ring Haiti’s capital, has no water or sanitation system. According to a recent study from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), home sizes range from eight to 30 square metres and population density “may be as high as 1,800 people per hectare”.

Jalousie’s tiny concrete homes overlook the shops, restaurants, hotels and mansions of Pétion-ville, one of the communities where Haiti’s professionals and elite live, work and play. Every day, residents, including children, have to climb narrow stairways to get fresh water – costing up to 35 cents for a five-gallon bucket – which they then carry on their heads. Five gallons of water weights about 48 pounds or 19 kilogrammes.

“Make-up job”

The Haitian government says it is in the process of spending over six million dollars on the slum, but not to deal with the double-danger or to provide services.

A page from the recent seismologic “microzonage” study showing the areas at risk of mudslides.

Instead, the administration is doing what some have called a “make-up job” – painting the houses in a project called “Jalousie en couleurs” (Jalousie in Colours), as homage to the Haitian painter Préfète Duffaut (1923-2012), who often filled his works with brightly coloured hillside houses.

Phase 1 cost the government 1.2 million dollars. Completed early this year, it coincided with the inauguration of the Hotel Occidental Royal Oasis, a five-star establishment where a simple room costs 175 dollars and a “junior suite” runs more than 350 dollars. Two nights in a suite equal more than most Haitians earn in one year.

The Oasis faces the slum. Phase 1 of the government project assured 1,000 houses were painted, making the view a little more palatable, and allegedly included the “reinforcement” of some homes, although none of the 25 beneficiaries interviewed by Haiti Grassroots Watch (HGW) said their home had gotten more than a paint job.

“Phase 2 will be even bigger,” Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe told a small crowd gathered by a soccer field at the Aug. 16 inauguration. Lamothe said Phase 2 would cost five million dollars.

In his speech, Lamothe said 3,000 more homes would be painted and that the soccer field would get new stands, dressing rooms and synthetic turf. The prime minister also promised a 1.2 kilometre (less than one mile) asphalted street and the improvement of 2.8 kilometres of alleyways.

But as Lamothe sang the praises of the project, two dozen protesters with signs shouted: “We want water! We have no water” and “Schools!” and “We need a clinic!”

Asking for “patience,” the prime minister said: “We’ll deal with all the problems little by little, but you know that you have many problems and we are trying to do a lot with little means.”

A new coat of paint is not the top priority for Jalousie residents, according to HGW’s mini-survey. Asked what was most needed, 24 of 25 said they wanted schools for their children and one-fourth added they wanted better access to water.

At least one resident – who, like most people questioned by HGW, said she would prefer to remain anonymous – is out of patience.

“What we need are water and electricity,” said a woman who lives in a small home with 11 others, including two children who do not attend school.

None of the beneficiaries surveyed reported being consulted even regarding the choice of colours.

Doing laundry by hand on her little porch, one resident said she was not at home when the painting took place, and that she is not satisfied.

“I can paint my own house,” she said. “When I got home, I saw a bunch of splashes of paint on my wall.”

Who benefits?

From afar the colours are striking. But for the houses not facing the hotel, the situation is different: grey cement blocks. Even the houses that benefited only got partial paint-jobs – just the outward facing walls get coloured.

One Jalousie resident, Sylvestre Telfort, has the same opinion as many: the project is meant to cover the slum with a kind of make-up or greasepaint because it sits directly in front of the Oasis and another new hotel, the Best Western Premier.

On its Internet site, the Oasis promises its clients a “magnificent views of the city”. Best Western, where rooms run 150 dollars a night, tells its future visitors that the hotel is “located in the beautiful hills of Pétion-Ville, a well-known fashionable suburb of Port-au-Prince”.

“The project to paint Jalousie is nothing more than a social appeasement carried out by the government to satisfy the bourgeoisie who for years has tried to exterminate us, in vain,” Telfort explained. “They can’t drop a bomb to eliminate people. So they have to took another tack and coloured the outsides of our houses.”

The former minister of the environment is worried. “The Morne l’Hôpital situation is chaotic. It’s a matter of public safety… The concrete constructions prevent rainwater from seeping into the soil,” Toussaint told HGW. “Painting is not the answer.”

Claude Prépetit, coordinator of the seismologic study, is also concerned.

Many residents are in danger “because of the risk of mudslides and earth movements [and] the magnification of vibrations during an earthquake,” the geologist said.

Prépetit thinks the government should “interdict all future construction in the region” and “identify the more hazardous areas and move out everyone whose lives are at risk.”

As a last step, after assuring the population has services, “they can paint the facades of the permitted houses, if they want to make them pretty,” he added.

During his visit to the slum, only 14 days after Prépetit and other experts announced the secondary fault, Prime Minister Lamothe made no mention of the seismic risks.

“You are going to see what we can do to improve people’s lives,” Lamothe promised. “You will be proud! You will be happy!”

After his speech, Lamothe and his entourage got into an SUV to drive back down the mountain. Residents went back to their daily journeys, going up and down stairs to find water, trying to survive one more day in the slum called by Best Western “a fashionable suburb”.

Haiti Grassroots Watch is a partnership of AlterPresse, the Society of the Animation of Social Communication (SAKS), the Network of Women Community Radio Broadcasters (REFRAKA), community radio stations from the Association of Haitian Community Media and students from the Journalism Laboratory at the State University of Haiti.

The full unabridged series in English and French can be found here.

Over 90 percent of the buildings in Kathmandu could collapse in the event of an earthquake. Credit: Naresh Newar/IPS

By Naresh Newar
KATHMANDU, Jul 12 2013 (IPS)

As the chief of building codes and earthquake safety of the Lalitpur Municipality, located about 10 km from Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, Sainik Raj Singh has the tough job of cracking down on builders who fail to comply with the government’s construction regulations.

“One can make many enemies by enforcing the codes but it is high time that we follow the rules strictly,” the official told IPS in his office in Lalitpur.

"I am afraid a major earthquake will happen and we will all look back at this time and ask why more was not done and how many lives could have been saved." -- Moira Reddick, coordinator of the Nepal Risk Reduction Consortium (NRRC).
Singh is not on a power trip – he is simply concerned about the number of unplanned buildings in Kathmandu, which has been ranked the world’s most ‘at-risk’ city for earthquakes by GeoHazards International (GHI).

Situated on top of the active Indian tectonic plate, which is constantly pushing up against the Tibetan tectonic plate, Kathmandu was found to be extremely vulnerable to seismic activity, which can cause landslides and fires as well as quakes.

While the city’s 1.5 million residents are on red alert, the city itself is unprepared for what experts believe is an inevitable disaster: the National Society for Earthquake Technology (NSET) estimates that over 90 percent of existing buildings in Kathmandu and other cities in Nepal are non-engineered.

Over 3,000 non-engineered houses are added every year in the capital, according to the Nepal Risk Reduction Consortium (NRRC), a body comprised of government agencies, donors, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and representatives of the United Nations.

An earthquake measuring a magnitude of 8.0 on the Richter could kill 100,000, injure 300,00 people and displace over a million within seconds, unless disaster preparedness measures are immediately identified and implemented.

Nepal’s National Building Code was introduced in 1994 in the aftermath of the 1988 earthquake that killed 721 people in east Nepal and destroyed a large number of buildings that were not earthquake resistant.

Nearly 25 years later, implementation is gradually becoming a reality, with the government actively supporting municipalities in their efforts to regulate construction, said Singh.

He believes the first step is to ensure that residential, school and commercial buildings can withstand an earthquake of any size and scale.

Learning from Haiti

The 7.0-magnitude earthquake that struck the Caribbean nation of Haiti in 2010, killing 200,000, displacing 1.5 million and destroying 70 percent of all buildings including 250,000 residences and 30,000 commercial buildings, was a major wake-up call for this South Asian country of 30.9 million people.

Many of the buildings that crumbled in Haiti, like those in Nepal, were built without the input of an architect or engineer.

In Nepal, the primary concern is for schools and the safety of children. There are an estimated 82,170 buildings in 33,160 public schools in Nepal, of which 50 percent need to be reconstructed, according to NSET.

Over 2,000 schools are situated in Kathmandu alone, but due to lax imposition of building regulations, 60 percent of them are sitting ducks for the fallout from quakes, which would endanger the lives of 100,000 students.

A recent NSET engineering investigation concluded that the frailty of buildings was due to the use of traditional materials such as adobe, stone rubble in mud mortar or brick in mud mortar, as well as poor maintenance and flimsy roofs.

A school child in Kathmandu is 400 times more likely to die in an earthquake than a school child in Kobe, Japan, another earthquake prone city and site of the 1995 Great Hanshin earthquake, according to GHI.

“We need to start retrofitting all the school buildings for the safety of school children who will be most at risk during an earthquake,” Hima Shrestha, senior structural engineer of NSET, told IPS.

This summer, NSET, with the help of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), began retrofitting 50 of the most earthquake vulnerable public schools.

The entire process, which involves trained masons adding supportive iron rods and pillars between floors, strengthening the foundations and reworking walls and flooring, can take months, and will likely only be completed by the end of the year.

NSET is now conducting a rapid assessment on the status of schools and the 125 major hospitals spread around Nepal with assistance from the World Bank, in the hopes of retrofitting as many buildings as possible.

Government efforts

According to the ministry of home affairs, this past year has seen better preparedness than previous years.

“The government is very serious about preparedness and there is now action on the ground,” said Pradeep Koirala, under-secretary of the home affairs ministry and senior official of the disaster management section.

Koirala’s office is taking the lead in national disaster preparedness through a newly established 24-hour National Emergency Operations Centre (NEOC), which plans to open similar centres in all of Nepal’s 75 districts.

The NEOC will be the first point of contact during emergencies, capable of coordinating domestic and international humanitarian aid and dispatching disaster relief supplies. It is also equipped with early warning systems, and will disseminate alerts to local government offices.

“We have seen an incredible increase in leadership, commitment and confidence from the government in strengthening preparedness at the national and community level,” says Moira Reddick, coordinator of the NRRC.

Today, the NRRC is tasked with implementing the National Strategy for Disaster Risk Management, a five-year initiative that began in 2011 armed with a budget of 195.8 million dollars, whose top priorities are ensuring school and hospital safety by retrofitting buildings, conducting emergency drills and training staff to respond to a crisis.

A national simulation planned for Jun. 20 to test the efficacy of emergency responders was cancelled when floods and landslides struck west Nepal on Jun. 16, killing over 16 people and leaving 875 families displaced, according to the U.N.

Another national simulation, this one led by the Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) and the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN), with support from the U.S. government, is scheduled for September, with the aim of testing the preparedness of the army, police units, hospitals and airports.

The main challenge now is overcoming a severe shortage of donors, experts say.

“Obtaining the necessary resources has been difficult,” Moira said, adding that school and hospital safety alone requires 57 million dollars.

She also highlighted some pressing “institutional blockages”, including the lack of a formal Disaster Management Act outlining the government’s policy on how to strengthen preparedness.

“Without overcoming these blockages and without continued support… from donors, I am afraid a major earthquake will happen and we will all look back at this time and ask why more was not done and how many lives could have been saved,” she concluded.