Ibrahim Osman is the director of the policy and relations division at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). Here he asks why fewer people are dying from disasters even as more people are being affected.

As the floodwaters receded from across two-thirds of Bangladesh during September and upwards of 30 million stranded people made their way back to destroyed homes and devastated livelihoods, a familiar question reared its head once more: How can we reduce the impacts of disaster?

While floods have dominated the headlines in Asia, large tracts of sub-Saharan Africa continue to be blighted by chronic drought, hunger and HIV/AIDS. Between August 2004 and January 2005, the World Food Programme aims to feed 1.8 million people in Kenya alone who are considered “highly food insecure”.

Last year, natural disasters killed around 68,000 people and affected quarter of a billion more. “Affected” can mean anything from losing a limb to losing your home or your livelihood. So as well as being deadly, natural disasters keep people poor by denying them the chance to develop.

The correlation between underdevelopment and disasters is made clear in this year's annual World Disasters Report, published by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) in Geneva. While natural disasters claim on average 51 lives per disaster in highly developed countries, the figure is a staggering 589 deaths per disaster in countries of low human development.

Clearly, disasters pose a major challenge for development. The ambitious millennium development goals aim for a halving of world poverty by 2015. But, according to Britain's finance minister, best estimates project that this will not be achievable in sub-Saharan Africa until 2147. Meanwhile, the Middle East, North Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and countries of Europe and Central Asia in transition are also predicted to fall short of the target.

The ongoing toll of disasters is sure to make achieving the millennium goals ever harder, unless disaster reduction receives the kind of attention it deserves. Since the 1970s, the number of natural disasters has soared from around 110 events per year to more than 300 per year since 1994. And over 250 million people are now being affected by disasters annually – three times more than during the 1970s.

However, the statistics are not all bad news. Deaths from natural disasters have dropped from nearly two million during the 1970s to around 580,000 over the past decade. Why are fewer people dying from disasters even as more people are being affected? This is a question that the World Disasters Report 2004 seeks to answer.

The reason is partly thanks to better international disaster reduction and response. Improved satellite early warning systems and storm shelters around the Bay of Bengal have significantly reduced deaths from cyclones, for example. But we present evidence that the knowledge and resilience of people at risk contributes far more to reducing the toll of disasters than many of us in the developed world may expect.

Following the massive earthquake that destroyed 85 percent of the Iranian city of Bam in December last year, a major relief operation was mounted. Within two days, 34 international search and rescue teams from 27 countries, complete with sniffer dogs and remote sensing equipment, flew into the beleaguered city and saved 22 lives. Yet local Iranian Red Crescent rescue teams deployed within minutes, despite losing four team members and their headquarters in the disaster. They saved 157 lives with just 10 dogs.

In a sudden-onset disaster such as an earthquake, the first few hours are vital for life-saving. Local teams are not only better placed to perform emergency relief operations – they are also far cheaper. A six-day search and rescue mission from Europe to Iran (six people with five dogs) costs a minimum of $50,000. The same amount of money provides a two-year training programme for three Iranian dogs and their handlers.

Local knowledge and courage are as important as any amount of hi-tech hardware. After an initial tremor shook Bam in the early hours, Red Crescent volunteer Mahmud Ranjbar warned people by phone to get out of their houses. He reached around 25 families – saving at least 100 people – before the fatal quake at 5.28 a.m., which killed him as he sat at his phone.

These stories from Bam show that strengthening the disaster preparedness and response capacities of communities at risk is more likely to save lives than sending in expensive international teams after the event. However, life saving is only part of the story. To ensure that disasters do not derail development, we need to ensure that the vast numbers of people affected by disasters are reduced. Again, we have evidence to suggest that the best approach is to build on the natural resilience of people at the community level.

In the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, for example, between 4,000 and 5,000 farmers have committed suicide in the last six years, according to the state's Federation of Farmers Associations. Advised by experts in distant capitals to grow cash crops such as wheat, cotton and rice, farmers have seen their harvests devastated by pest attacks and ongoing drought. After raising expensive loans to pay for seeds and fertilisers, the farmers have nothing to pay back their debts or feed their families. Despair and destitution are widespread.

But one local NGO has discovered that low-caste village women retain a detailed knowledge of local grains such as sorghum and millet, which are far more drought- and pest-resistant than the cash crops. With the NGOs' support, the women now store and sell these local grains to farmers all over the region. Traditional farming and watershed management methods have been revived. And an annual Biodiversity Festival now tours 65 villages every February, celebrating the success of local seeds.

The lesson from Andhra Pradesh is that while authorities and experts can undermine community resilience by offering inappropriate advice, local people often have the knowledge and skills to craft their own recovery. The challenge for aid organisations and governments alike is to understand and nurture these local resources so that community resilience to disasters can flourish. Yet too often, disaster experts think they know best and fail to find out what resources for response and recovery are already present in the community.

Within both quick- and slow-onset disasters, people often characterized as victims can prove to be far more resourceful and resilient than we may assume. If we are to reduce the toll of people killed and affected by disasters, it's time to put not only the needs but the capacities of disaster-affected people at the centre of our work.

Any opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters.

See also:

Disaster toll tripled in 2003 amid quakes, heatwave

IFRC report attacks myth of helpless disaster victim

GRAPHIC-Global natural disasters 1994-2003

FACTBOX-Recent world disasters by numbers

FACTBOX-Report highlights disaster success stories