World Disaster Reduction Day: Early Warning!
13 Oct 2004 05:01:00 GMT
Source: NGO latest
Anshu Sharma, SEEDS
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Sustainable Development and Ecological Development Society (SEEDS) - India
Website: http://www.seedsindia.org
Early Warning!
Today is the International Disaster Reduction Day. To many of us this has very little significance. However, consider the following facts - Over 56 million Indians get affected by natural disaster annually. About sixty per cent of the country is vulnerable to earthquakes, sixty eight per cent to droughts and eight per cent to cyclones. Over forty million hectares of land is prone to regular floods. Even as this article is being written there are people in Assam dying of incessant rain. In the last decade, close to 4,500 persons were killed and 30 million affected by disasters every year. Alarmingly, this trend of disasters in now increasing, especially in less developed countries, where natural disasters tend to have a disproportionate impact, causing much greater losses (in terms of GDP) than in developed countries. Today, October 13th can pass as just another day; it can otherwise be a day to reflect, to learn from the past disasters and a make a fresh resolve to make our world a safer place.
The beginning has to be made by each individual, awakened citizen. Life is precious and we must respect it. Natural hazards may be inevitable, but we can prevent them from becoming disasters. We are the best disaster managers and therefore the onus of taking the right steps lies with us.
The government on its parts needs to bring about policy changes that decentralize disaster management to the level of individuals. Current approaches seem inadequate for a country with immense magnitude and diversity. There is opportunity in the abundant human resources available in the country. The much needed empowering process can best be brought about through partnerships between NGOs, local governments and influential “change agents” within the community. Innovation and adaptability to local cultural context is perhaps the key.
As citizens, we must demand safety. There is enough knowledge available on disaster reduction. However, very little is put to practice. As empowered citizens, we must ensure we demand not just cost effectiveness but good quality. A compromise on the latter can potentially jeopardize our lives – be it the material we use for our house, our workplace or school or the engineer/mason who builds them for us. A strict techno-legal regime may not always succeed, but our own uncompromising stand on quality and safety can.
Our future generation is the most precious. We must focus on school safety as integral part of all education programmes. School facilities, buildings in particular, must meet tough performance standards to withstand disasters. They can become models of risk reduction practices in the community. Children must be able to react naturally to disasters, and teachers and parents ought to be involved in the process.
Education on disaster reduction and sustainable development is the key to creating resilient communities. Unlike environment, disaster management is still confined to conferences and workshops; now is the time to reach out to people through education. We need an education system that recognizes traditional knowledge and coping mechanisms through best practices, yet promotes greater learning, self-reflection and empowerment. In a communication age, “on-line learning and on-site testing” is the most suitable mechanism for delivery of such education to remote communities and development workers.
Finally, the concept of sharing our experience and learning from others is the essence of us being part of a larger humanity. With our robust democracy and innumerable examples of multilateral cooperation at the grassroots, India is well placed to serve humanity, especially countries in central and south Asia. Disaster reduction could well be a prominent component our India’s bilateral aid to many countries. At the same time, India can learn much from disaster “resistant societies” in the west and the disaster “resilient” communities elsewhere in Asia.
The UN World Conference on Disaster Reduction, coming up next January in Kobe, Japan could well be a fresh start bringing citizens, NGOs and governments together, as it happened ten years ago in Yokohama. A time to wake up and take action before the next big one hits us.
SEEDS
D-6, Panchsheel Enclave, New Delhi – 110065, INDIA
Tel: (91-11) 26498371, Fax: (91-11) 26498372, Email: info@seedsindia.org
Web: www.seedsindia.org
[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]
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