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Some level of prediction and probability can be generated for earthquakes
-Shaukat Aziz, Prime Minister of Pakistan
 The morning of 8 th October started as any normal day. But as we got closer to the time of the earthquake, we were not aware what havoc was in store for us. A massive earthquake covering many parts of Pakistan, Azad Kashmir and occupied Kashmir changed the lives of thousand of people. What was built in decades and generations was lost in seconds. We lost seventy three thousand lives, many more were injured and we have thousands of orphans, paraplegics, amputees, quadriplegics and above all traumatized people to care for.
When the earthquake struck, communications were disrupted and supply lines cut and it took a while for the whole system to realize the enormity of the task. However, we moved in quickly and every stakeholder played a major role. We mobilized all assets of the state - the government, the people, the armed forces, the NGOs and civil society. Gradually it became a global exercise and from it we learnt many things. One of the first things we did was that we inducted the army as various entities of the state, moved in.
Next, we created what is now called the ERC, the Earthquake Relief Commission, headed by General Farooq and best decisions were taken without much ado. It was the day after the earthquake when he walked into my office for something totally different but I realized here is the man who can carry this task forward. What we had was an inadequate Disaster management Cell. There were three and a half dozen people, mostly running a warehouse of relief goods with not much capacity to do anything else. So we created this organization overnight in the Prime Minister's office, staffed it with the best people we could find and moved on from there.
The key element in disaster management, is to know whom to access, where to tap because you can't have a permanent group of thousands of people waiting for a disaster. Critically what you require is that you know every paramedic in your country, every medical expert, every volunteer, every trained civil defence worker who can be called at a moment's notice, through media, through whatever other means possible so that immediately the people gather and get on with the task. We will have a core group of people on a permanent basis but all others will be working in a spirit of volunteerism. We also need global cooperation in this.
One of the lessons we have learnt is that at the global level too you need coordination. I must say, and I told the Secretary General when we saw him in New York that the UN family did a superb job but our experience with the earthquake in Pakistan also highlighted what more needs to be done at the global level. What happen in our case as in many others that we were preparing to go for flash appeals. Nothing wrong with that but we were not getting the money. There was the risk that all mercy, humanitarian and rescue flights would be grounded. We asked ourselves: is this the way we want to treat fellow humans, no matter where they are. This was totally unacceptable. So I think the world has to gear up, create this fund and then rapidly respond in case a disaster is really of an intensity or magnitude where extraordinary fund raising is required. What, for instance, we did in November, in Islamabad for fund raising could come later. For the first several weeks of a disaster, specially for emergency relief, there must be a fund available to be tapped urgently.
Disasters we realize know no borders. They can strike anywhere, anytime, anything, anybody, so we should not look at this as an exercise for a few countries and not for others. We need to do this universally. We also noticed another thing, that sharing of the best practices in disaster management is not yet globally institutionalized. There are pockets of excellence but it is not seamless. .
Because of the earthquake, though it was a disaster, we in Pakistan experienced a very unique, very exciting and very satisfying phenomena which was the galvanization of the whole nation, something we had never seen since our independence. People came forward irrespective of their political, ethnic, religious and geographic divide. Our challenge was to manage the outburst of exuberance on the part of the people of Pakistan. We deliberated on it at length. Should we stop the traffic because there were traffic jams to the earthquake areas for miles and miles but we made a conscious decision that this euphoria, this spirit, this commitment, if we interrupted it even a little bit, the people might get disillusioned. So we opted to build on it and use it as strength to overcome various teething troubles. The entire nation was galvanized from Karachi to Khyber.
Once we had arranged temporary shelters, food and medical care, we moved to the next phase during which we had to set up field hospitals and open schools. In hindsight the full opening of schools was one of the most significant things we did at that stage. When you are dealing with trauma and if in a house, in a family, a couple of kids traumatized by earthquake, can go to school quickly even an improvised one in the neighbourhood, it helps reduce their trauma.
Parallel to this medium term activity, we were attending to reconstruction. For that we undertook damage assessment together with all the stakeholders and we learnt a lot in that process. Having done that we convened a donors' meeting in Islamabad where we were able to raise as of today about 6.5 billion dollars, four billion in debt, 2.5 in grants, in cash and kind. That money is coming in on schedule. We will not use all the loans because we will only access those which meet the parameters we have set for debt, which is soft loans only.
As we reached out to the world, some people responded readily, some had to be convinced but in the end what we saw in Pakistan during that period was an unusual gathering of galvanized world community. Countries from Central America, Latin America, North America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Middle East, almost from everywhere came over with spirited zeal to help. In one hospital I remember I spoke to a group, one doctor was from Sao Paulo, Brazil, the second was from Paris and the third was from Brussels. There was such a mix of people as you find at the United Nations.
I would now like to share with you the lessons that we learnt. Twelve in all according to my count. No surprises. Rather you would be familiar with them.
One, participation in a challenge of this magnitude should be universal. Let everybody come in to whether he is a local or a foreigner. True, it might create problems of logistics, of coordination but you can build and cash on the euphoria generated by it. We therefore took a conscious decision and said let the corporate, the individuals, the relief organizations, multilateral, bilateral from north, south, east, west let them all come in.
Two, in a major disaster you have to show leadership and rapid response. As I said earlier lead from the front. Those sixty five visits made a difference. When you go and land in a camp and they see you, it helps reduce the trauma because the government is seen to be acting, the government is seen to be caring and the government is seen to be doing something. So these are very important and you must be visible. That is the key in a situation like this.
Three, which is also very important, is strategic coordination. While you open up and let anybody come in, the coordination mechanism must be clearly world class. All the actors need to be brought in. It took us a while as General Farooq will acknowledge. We had many meetings on this because there were so many stakeholders, local and foreign, but finally that window became a real window otherwise people see the window and walk around it. This was the real window and that is why the whole effort was so successful. Overnight we staffed this organization with the best people. We also put up as an example a call center.
Lesson number four is to have clear mandates. People must know what they are responsible for, what is the Relief Commissioner doing, what is the army unit doing in Bagh, what is ERRA going to do.
The other thing which I would say for us and for the international donors, please do not go for an approach of one size fit all. Every disaster is different, every local factor impacts our people's thinking, the psyche of the people is different, so one size fit all does not work. You have to adapt and adopt to the local scene, their sensitivities, their own demographics, their culture, their physical environment and that takes a lot of local involvement and this was doneSix, another side benefit of this whole fall out, I would say of the earthquake, was the spirit of volunteerism, which was created. It was there latent but it came out and what we have tried to do with some success is to tap it and institutionalize it so that this programme can continue forever. We have started the National Volunteer Movement. There are other activities too. Many NGOs also got energized because they got the support like, Khattak just mentioned
Seven, the role of the media and public awareness. Let me say that the media played a very effective role. We must be open to the media and that is one of the other decisions we took. Some people came to me and said sir, all this foreign media are going to Muzaffarabad and you know how we are concerned, I said let everybody go. If visas are a problem, give them visas at the airport. If they don't have any visas we will try to bring them in without visas. What was the result. Major networks broadcast their evening news or their nightly shows from Muzaffarabad, from Balakot, major anchors were here and they were there for the first couple of weeks. That media blitz, although we were competing with many other events in the world, helped us, create response locally, globally. We got some punches in the process too.
Eight - relations between the government, the donors and the NGOs. That dialogue has to be in relationship with the UN family, with everybody to be seamless. Total openness, seamless ness and a spirit of team work. Sharing and caring must drive the whole effort. If we get into our silos or in our cocoons and work with our own limited agenda, it won't work. We encouraged teamwork and it worked and succeeded to a large extent. Teamwork and coordination gives you more fire power, more punch, more thrust in dealing with major disasters and catastrophes.
Nine - We must have a clear exit strategy. Here comes the difficult issues. When you get all this system wrapped up, what happens in three months, what is road map, where do the people go, are they are going to live in tents all their lives, what happens to this single father with three kids who lost his wife. He now cannot work because these little kids are all alone at home. How do we deal with this. The widows, the orphans, the amputees, what we do with the paraplegics and quadriplegics. They can't even move. They don't even know. In many cases I met quadriplegics who didn't know how badly they were affected. It hadn't been told to them that they are now bed-ridden for life.
Ten, we realized it very quickly, that the process and the institutions responsible for creating and enforcing building codes where the disaster took place were very poor. These were old regulations with lot of discretions. The major thrust of these building codes and policy was that when people go in for design they have to come to you.
One of the major lessons we have learnt is that building codes and engineering solutions can counter any major risk. Therefore it is necessary to have a look at building codes and make them holistic together with seismic input.
Eleven, you must have a permanent Disaster Management Authority in a country. Well staffed and one which must know who to call depending on the disaster. We did not have one. Everything had to be improvised. I would say this is not the way to do it. We in Pakistan are therefore setting up a National Disaster Management Agency so that core competency can be developed in disaster management. You do not need armies of people, you need enough to have that core and then you can tap the resources of the world and the state and the civil society as needed.
Twelve, transparency is the corner stone of all these efforts. Educate the media, take them along. We took hundreds of journalists all over the affected areas. Any money being spent, donated or otherwise, the mechanism for it must be transparent. It is not just an information, it is also the efficacy, correctness and transparency of expenditures. These are moneys given to us in trust and they must be subject to anybody's questioning, scrutiny or whatever.
According to many experts, some level of prediction and probability can be generated for earthquakes. We want to make this a regional center to have some element of forewarning. But it is a probability and probability is not facts. I must therefore caution everybody. It is not that we will know that tomorrow there will definitely happen something. But we will get a general idea that there is a probability. It is never hundred percent as you know.
Secondly, with the help of Norway, Turkey, China and Japan we did a lot of seismic work. Our own engineers also made a lost of seismic surveys of the whole affected areas and now we have identified or classified these areas into low, medium and high risk. Let me say, this is linked to the building codes we reviewed the other day. I am just giving you a flavour of what else is going on because it is not just what you see in the open. There is a lot else going on because we have to learn from this and build for the future so that we have a building code adapted to low, medium and high-risk areas. Engineering solutions can be found, that is good news but the cost will go up.
In parts of the earthquake affected areas, it is recommended that no construction should take place because there are high risks. In order parts, it is arguable. But we are studying the whole range of risks and their engineering solutions. We will share the results with the people. There is no need to panic, because those of you who have gone to San Francisco and Japan would know that they have earthquakes all the time but huge buildings are standing there. So engineering solutions are available.
Nobody obviously hopes that something like this happens. But since it happened, let us create a better infrastructure than what was there and create it with engineering solutions so that if there is another situation like this, those structures can stand the test. Hence the linkage to building codes.
Pakistan is grateful to every Pakistani, and every citizen of every country, every organization for what they did for us. The people, the press, civil society, NGOs, all the donor agencies, they all tried their best. Together we need to learn from this, we need to institutionalize some of the mechanisms and let me appeal to those who are from different governments here that we must build in the United Nations a fund, where if an emergency happens and people are hungry, people are dying, people are freezing, people are without medical care, we just don't go and ask for money and wait and put at risk their lives. Such a catastrophe could hit any country, any people.
Germany – Hub of the World Economy
By Martin Orth, Germany
Innovative products “made in Germany ” have made the country the world champion exporter. Germany ’s large share of the world’s trade is benefiting service providers in the fair, transport, logistics and finance sectors that can now be counted among the international leaders in their fields as a result of booming e-commerce. New Economy and Old Economy are forming a new and successful symbiosis – a report on meeting places, markets and hubs in Germany
Meeting place Hanover : the crowds of trade visitors have difficulty moving from stand to stand on the opening day of the world’s largest technology fair. They slowly throng their way along the aisles – in search of the latest solutions in automation, robotics and energy technology. Every year in April the Hanover Fair presents the very latest technological developments and attracts specialists from all over the world. For decision-makers in trade and industry this event is an absolute must if they want to keep abreast of developments in their field. This year, 155,000 visitors and 5,175 exhibitors, including 2,322 from outside Germany , came to make new contacts, initiate new deals, or simply meet for a personal discussion.
Trade fairs and exhibitions top the list when it comes to business-to-business communication – in other words, establishing and developing contacts with potential business partners. According to the Association of the German Trade Fair Industry (AUMA), 81% of surveyed businesses rely on this marketing channel. By comparision, 79% consider having an Internet website important, but only 39% would sell their products over the Internet. Does personal contact still win out in the increasingly anonymous Internet era?
Not directly. Despite all the prophecies, real and virtual marketplaces complement one another in an ideal way. Here, an in-depth talk, a drink, a handshake; there, detailed information and customer service around the clock across national boundaries and time zones. Old Economy and New Economy are merging. Germany is profiting from this development and becoming the hub of the world economy, a process also favoured by its central location. Germany is already the world’s number 1 in international fairs. And electronic commerce is more popular here than in almost every other country.
Hanover , Frankfurt , Cologne , Düsseldorf – four of the world’s five largest exhibition centres are located in Germany . Two-thirds of the world’s leading fairs in individual industries take place in Germany . Some 10 million visitors and more than 160,000 exhibitors a year flood to the roughly 150 international fairs and exhibitions. A fifth of the visitors come from outside Germany ; in the case of exhibitors, the proportion is even more than half. They appreciate Germany as a marketplace. A fair is barely over and business continues by e-mail and on the Internet. Contacts are followed up, orders confirmed. This development is reflected in impressive figures. As a new study by the German information and telecommunications industry association Bitkom shows, e-commerce sales in Germany last year rose by 58% to 321 billion euros – with 90% of this total involving transactions between businesses. Today, 30% of all the goods and services in Europe traded over the Internet are already sold in Germany . And this boom is continuing. Market researchers predict that e-commerce sales in Germany will double by 2009. Moreover, this also applies to the business-to-consumer sector, which is already achieving an impressive annual turnover of 32 billion euros, mainly with books and CDs.
Let’s look at one example. Last year, Otto, the Hamburg-based mail-order firm, registered a 0.9% sales increase throughout the company as a whole. During the same period, however, the mail-order group sold 30% more goods over the Internet and became the world’s second largest on-line trader, behind book giant Amazon. “E-commerce continues to be the growth engine,” explains Executive Board Chairman Michael Otto.
The goods – and that is the link between the Old and the New Economy – naturally also have to be transported to the customer. This is where the German logistics industry is profiting. Today, it is already by far the largest in Europe . That is confirmed by a turnover of roughly 165 billion euros and a workforce of 2.5 million employees. In Germany , the industry has risen to first place in terms of number of workers and to fourth place in terms of turnover. It utilizes the country’s outstanding transport infrastructure with its closely knit network of road, rail, water and air links.
Panorama Hamburg : 40 metres above the quay, on the Doppelkatzbrücke, the ships look like toys and the trucks like models. In reality, ships of the so-called post-Panamax class, which are more than 40 metres wide and cannot pass through the Panama Canal , are almost unimaginably huge. They can carry 15 containers side-by-side, a total of 6,450 in all. Containers are the units of globalization. And the Port of Hamburg is the crossroads. It connects the rapidly growing markets of Asia with those in Europe . Today, Hamburg already lies second in Europe , after Rotterdam , and the Hanseatic city has moved ahead of Los Angeles into eighth place in the global league table of sea ports. The port has been achieving double-digit growth rates for a number of years; last year, it expanded by 15%. The port company, Hamburger Hafen und Logistik AG (HHLA), plans to invest more than one billion euros to double its transshipment capacity.
Hub Frankfurt : almost every minute, aircraft from all over the world land at Frankfurt Airport . The arrival and departure times are the pulse of globalization. And Frankfurt is a heart pacemaker. More than 52 million passengers take off and land in Frankfurt every year, and over 100 airlines link more than 300 destinations in 110 countries.
However, the highest growth rates are being registered in air cargo. Whereas passenger traffic grew by 6.3% in Germany last year, air cargo volumes rose by more than 9%. Frankfurt Airport is the leading logistics hub in Europe . When measured in terms of the value of goods, 40% of freight is now already handled by air. In Europe , 15% of international air freight passes through Frankfurt . One advantage of the airport is its ultramodern Perishable Center for goods such as fresh fish, flowers and vegetables. Air cargo is a “guarantor of the success of many other industries”, says Frankfurt Airport CEO Wilhelm Bender.
Incidentally, the young Frankfurt Airport subsidiary at Hahn, the former military airfield primarily used by low-cost airline Ryanair, was able to increase air freight volumes by 62% last year, thus making it Germany’s fourth largest cargo airport in record time.
Focus on Leipzig : the grounds of the airport are a huge construction site. The new southern take-off and landing runway and a more than 50-hectare apron for freighter aircraft are planned to be completed by 2007. Last year, the Deutsche Post subsidiary DHL decided to relocate its European logistics hub from Brussels to Leipzig . Leipzig offered the advantage of a 24-hour operating licence and perfect infrastructure. From 2008, 50 aircraft will serve DHL customers from Leipzig .
According to the Association of German Chambers of Industry and Commerce (DIHK, see interview on page 54), Germany is profiting from open world markets and international links like almost no other country. Global trade and crossborder investment are among the most important preconditions for growth, employment and prosperity in Germany . Consider DHL: the logistics service intends to invest roughly 300 million euros in Leipzig and create 3,500 jobs. Or Frankfurt Airport : Fraport CEO Wilhelm Bender would like to build a new runway today rather than tomorrow to prevent logjams and create jobs. With more than 68,000 employees, Frankfurt Airport is already the largest workplace in Germany , even ahead of the Volkswagen town Wolfsburg ; directly and indirectly, the airport expansion could create 100,000 additional jobs – an enormous opportunity at a time of high unemployment.
Investments in transport infrastructure pay off. That was demonstrated yet again by the introduction of the truck toll on German highways at the beginning of 2005. After a difficult start, the state-of-the-art system now functions perfectly and is paying nearly three billion euros a year into public coffers – the fees for 23 billion kilometres travelled on German autobahns, including roughly one third paid by foreign trucks transiting Europe along the north-south and east-west routes through Germany.
The toll has also turned out to be an intelligent traffic control system. “Empty runs have decreased by 15%,” says Federal Transport Minister Wolfgang Tiefensee. “At the same time, the number of containers transported by rail rather than by road has increased by 7%. This demonstrates that the toll is contributing to making transport in Germany more environmentally friendly.” The dynamic growth of the world economy and Germany ’s position as exporting world champion will further increase the flows of goods and strengthen traffic lanes and hubs in Germany . In its six-monthly report on the state of the world economy, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is forecasting global growth of 4.9% this year and 4.7% next year. In the opinion of the experts, the volume of world trade will rise by 8% and 7.5% respectively in the same period. Germany will have a major part in this. Only in January, the IMF stated in its report on Germany that it will retain the largest world market share, even ahead of the USA .
Last year, for the third time in succession, Germany secured the title of world champion exporter. The value of exported goods “made in Germany ” rose by 7.5% to 786.1 billion euros – a record. The export successes were vehicles, machinery, plant and chemical products; the most important buyers France, the United States and Great Britain . Special impetus came from the Middle East . The oil-exporting countries are increasingly investing their dollars in German machinery and plant.
At home, too, the economy appears to be taking off. In April, after years of moving sideways, the Ifo business climate index, which is compiled by the Munich-based Institute for Economic Research (Ifo) and measures companies’ current business position and future prospects, climbed to the highest level in 15 years. The most important German economic barometer is indicating the greatest business euphoria since the reunification boom of the early 1990s.
Mood barometer Frankfurt : at the German Stock Exchange, the largest trading market on Continental Europe, the mood is bullish. The DAX, the German share index, has rallied in the last three years and doubled in value from less than 3,000 to more than 6,000 points. As a result of strict restructuring measures, German companies are again earning extremely well. This year, the 30 DAX companies will be paying some 21 billion euros – more than ever before – to their stockholders in the form of dividends. Near the top of the list is Deutsche Börse AG itself – together with the European Central Bank, the nerve centre of the financial centre Frankfurt – which has been able to increase its own share price by 97% in the last year and is trebling its dividend to shareholders.
The international press has also registered the country’s change of mood. In August last year, the renowned British magazine The Economist dedicated its cover story to “ Germany ’s Surprising Economy”. This April, the British daily The Times continued the story. Berlin correspondent Roger Boyes wrote about the clearly discernible upward trend under the headline “Whisper it softly ... Germany is coming back”.
Praise from the highest quarters is also coming from the World Bank. In the study Doing Business in 2006, World Bank experts acknowledge the success of the Federal Government’s reforms in two respects. Firstly, they say that no highly developed industrialized country has improved the framework conditions for businesses as much as Germany , which now belongs to the top reformers worldwide – in place five. And secondly, as a result of the reforms, Germany has managed to leap into the Top 20 list of countries with the most business-friendly bureaucracies for the first time since the study series began in 2003. That puts it in second place among the industrialized countries of the European Union.
When he commented that “2006 will be a super year for Germany”, Professor Norbert Walter, the chief economist of the Deutsche Bank who is known for his cutting but accurate analyses, pointed to another cause of the current success. “With the football World Cup we will be having an unprecedented marketing campaign dropped on our doorstep free of charge. Millions of people from around the world will be able to gain a picture of what Germany is like and billions will study our country through the open window of television. The world will discover how beautiful the landscapes, how rich the culture and how inexpensive our country is. And the people will take this opportunity. They will buy more than we think. And they will come back to experience our beautiful cities with their rich cultural heritage more intensively on vacation.”
May 19, 2006 [Deutschland magazine, Embassy of Germany]
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