Disaster Prevention
Coping With New Challenges

By Krishna Chandra Chalisey

IN SPITE of technological advancement and innovation, the world is becoming increasingly vulnerabl to natural disasters. Disasters, either from natural or non-natural causes, have claimed the lives of millions of people each year. Moreover, victims of man-made disasters like war, civil war, ethnic riots are facing the brunt of the problems and glights.

Vulnerable

Environmental and climatic changes have made us more vulnerable. New catastrophic disasters like El Nino and La Nina are appearing. The major natural disasters are earthquake, drought and famine, flood, landslide, volcano, high wind (hurricane, cyclone, typhoon, storm, tornado), avalanche heat and cold waves, insect infestations, epidemics and forest fire. Disasters with a non-natural trigger are accident, technological accident and urban fire. Climatic change is expected to bring many unwelcome environmental accidents and disasters in the new century. Global warming has been a prominent factor behind the many catastrophes.

Many small island states are just a couple of metres above sea level. Such states have become endangered nations. The Maldives is an example where Male airport is sometimes covered by high tides. There is a possibility that many coral atolls will be uninhabitable as saline water penetrates the shallow layer of fresh rainwater on which residents rely for drinking water.

Another result of climatic change is coastal flooding. Half of the global population live in coastal zone over a dozen of the word’s largest urban conglomerations are on coasts. It is due to green house effect that the temperature of the seawater has risen. The volume of water is also increasing due to snow melting. Coastal floodings have rendered more homeless than any other floodings. Diseases once declared as eradicated are coming back. Warm weather has invited too many infectious diseases like dengue and yellow fever.

The loss of natural vegetation particularly forests, around the world is a major cause of preventable natural disasters. The towering mega-cities are posing threats to disaster management and mitigation efforts of urban authority. Human settlement and housing patterns are not disaster resilient. Flood is another major killer in many countries. Structural and non-structural measures are equally important to deal with damaging floods. The idea of small is beautiful" is being promoted in flood control and management.

‘Hurricane Mitch’ with torrential rains brought catastrophic floods and landslides in Central America in 1998. El Nino is a fluctuation in the distribution of sea surface temperature and atmospheric pressures across the tropical Pacific Ocean leading to world-wide impact on regional whether patterns. Ei Nino has brought non seasonal heavy rains and flooding in Latin America whereas the West Pacific and South East Asia suffer from severe drought.

Developing countries lack disaster-resilient structure. Fragile infrastructure increases vulnerability and risk. Global aid to fight natural disasters is diminishing but number and intensity of disasters is increasing. The poor of the developing world have become more threatened by environmental and associated hazards. About one billion people live in unplanned urban shanty towns. Humanitarian spending is waning. About 90 per cent of natural disasters and 96 per cent of death from disasters take place in developing world where the risk of death from disasters in 12 times greater than in the industrialised countries. Developing economies lack the resources to invest in robust infrastructures and disaster prevention measures. Globalisation is not likely to increase developing nation’s resilience to natural hazards. Globalisation only tends to encourage new and durable form of division, inequality and instability.

We completed the International Decade for Natural Disasters Reduction (IDNDR) last year. Though IDNDR sought to promote a culture of prevention for a safer 21st century, we have achieved little. Prevention becomes possible only when it is characterised not as the work of specialist emergency service, but as a part of ongoing professional and civic responsibility. We have not been able to sensitise the people and concerned organisations in this way.

A major development in the field of disaster management and preparedness by the end of 20th century was the arrival of many organisations at global, regional and local level. The increase in the number of responding organisations along with rise in cases of disasters is a good sign. But this is not sufficient.

Many shortcomings have been witnessed in the response system and its effectiveness to provide relief service. In spite of Code of Ethics to work in disaster operations, there is utter lack of co-ordination among the responding organisations. Global efforts need to be directed towards harmonising the activities of the organisations working in the field of disaster management.

Principle

No doubt, international assistance and expertise are required to deal with the situation in the aftermatch of disaster. But the guiding principle in disaster preparedness should be "thinking globally, acting locally." Response system suited with local tradition and self-driven measures and essential. Dependency reduction and capacity building of the local community should be another motto of disaster preparedness. The year 1998 witnessed 92 big disasters. According to World Disaster Report-1999, 59,261 people were killed and 126,759,013 affected in 1998. Similarly, 496 people were killed and 20,332 affected during the same period in Nepal.

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