Disaster Resilience: Why We’re Not Reaching the Most Vulnerable
Denika Blacklock Karim
Cyclone Pam tore through the Pacific in March 2015,
the second largest cyclone to make land fall in recorded history. The cyclone
affected four countries, lefts dozens of thousands homeless, destroyed
infrastructure including hospitals and schools and resulted in severe flooding
in some areas. And yet only 10 people died, which is a dramatic reduction in
the loss of human life if we compare to Cyclone Haiyan which devastated parts
of the Philippines in December 2013 in which more than 6,000 people died. This
is an impressive indicator of how much early warning and disaster preparedness
components of disaster risk management have improved over the course of the
past 10 years. Nonetheless, lives and communities were destroyed in Pam’s wake
and we must ask ourselves why we, in the development community, have not seen a
comparable increase the risk reduction aspects of disaster risk management - in
the ability of communities to increase their resilience to disasters, and to
mitigate the impacts of disasters such as cyclones, flooding and landslides?
Understanding Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience
In 2005, following the Indian Ocean tsunami that
killed over 240,000 people in 14 countries, the international development
community united in Hyogo, Japan to develop to Hyogo Framework for Disaster
Risk Reduction – a 10 year strategy to systematically introduce a culture of
risk reduction in development planning processes at the international, national
and local government levels. Despite promises by donor countries to channel USD
100 billion in funding for developing countries to adapt to climate change and
reduce emissions by 2020[1],
the impacts of such financing are not being seen; indeed more and more
developing countries, particularly small island developing states, are
experiencing the devastating consequences of inaction. A majority of financing
for ‘disaster management’ (an umbrella term covering preparedness, disaster
response and disaster risk reduction) tends to be channeled to middle income
countries, and most of that channeled to disaster response and recovery – not
risk reduction (international financing for DRR has totaled less that 0.4% of
all international aid[2]
most of which tends to go to national level policy and strategy development,
rather than to activity implementation at the local level).
This aside, somewhere the point of DRR is getting
lost. DRR is not just about commitments to mainstream the concept into
planning, and it’s not just about commitments to financing. It is about who is
planning for DRR, and how it is being planned. It is also about how DRR is
being financed and who decides how the financial resources are being used. And
it is about actually undertaking DRR on the ground – how activities are
implemented and monitored at the community level.
DRR needs to be about communities – what they need
based on their experiences and traditional adaptation knowledge and practice.
They need the support of their local governments to finance DRR (and climate
change adaptation – CCA) activities. Local governments in turn need support to
help communities better understand the risks and vulnerabilities to climate
change and natural hazards that they face, to facilitate planning processes and
disburse the necessary financial resources to make sure the priority activities
identified by the communities based on the above can be realized. This
tri-party approach – communities, local government and the knowledge that both
parties bring to the table – is DRR. It is DRR (and CCA) in practice, not just
a framework or a policy or a law. Effective DRR is community driven and local
government lead. It is an approach that ensures the most vulnerable are reached
and, importantly, the most vulnerable are included.
However, the international architecture for DRR and
CCA predisposes both processes to be internationally driven and lead. It starts with the Hyogo
Framework (and its successor, the Sendai Framework, approved in March 2015) and
then works its way down to national government policy making, legal drafting,
regulatory drafting, planning and budgeting… and then to the local government…
and finally to the communities. At which point space for community knowledge
and aspirations is minimal. What are the ramifications of this?
Cyclone Pam, DRR
and CCA and Reality in the Pacific
Cyclone Pam – a category 5 storm – tore through the
Pacific and impacted four countries to varying degrees: Kiribati, Tuvalu,
Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. They are all archipelago countries vulnerable to
storms such as Pam, and the side effects that it wrought: flooding, landslides,
destruction of infrastructure and agricultural land, housing and clean water
sources.
The thing is, communities in the Pacific are used to
cyclones – perhaps not as strong as Pam – and have a spirit of resilience which
can only be capitalized on. The focus on preparedness under the international
disaster management framework also made an impact – early warning systems,
evacuation shelters; all were ready and resulted in very few lives lost. Conversely,
very few efforts have been made to reduce disaster risk and mitigate their
impacts at the community level. Indeed, reducing disaster risk and increasing
resilience may well have served communities who were directly impacted by
Cyclone Pam but waited days, even weeks, to receive aid due to the remoteness
of Pacific islands, and the damage to transport and communications
infrastructure. The practice of DRR (and CCA) in the Pacific is a very
different story, however.
In Kiribati and Tuvalu, the authority for DRR and CCA
rests with the central government. DRR is implemented by the President’s Office
in Kiribati, and the Prime Minister’s Office in Tuvalu, while CCA is
implemented by the respective Ministries of Environment in both countries. The
Offices of the President and Prime Minister, respectively, have DRR committees
which include local government, but they have a very nominal role. Consequently,
financing for DRR and CCA is sourced mainly through international donors and is
channeled through the central government, without input from local governments.
Most financing goes towards meeting commitments made by the respective
countries under various international conventions on climate change. A flagship
project on DRR and CCA is the Kiribati Adaptation Project[3],
financed by Australia, the Global Environment Facility
(GEF) Least Developed Country Fund (LDCF), the Japan Policy and Human Resources
Development Fund, the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery, and
the Government of Kiribati aims to adapt to and mitigate the impacts of sea
level rise on vulnerable communities. Nonetheless, these are top-down processes
and projects lacking regulated participation and leadership by local government
and communities. This means final decisions on DRR and CCA activities are taken
at the central level, which local government and communities have little to no
influence over how financial resources are allocated for these activities – and
no access to those resources themselves.
In Solomon Islands, authority for DRR and CCA reside
with the provincial governments – each province is required to have a
Provincial Disaster Council (PDC). However, due to unfunded mandates, PDCs are
very poorly funded and many do not even operate unless a disaster occurs,
meaning that in reality they limit themselves, by necessity, to response rather
than prevention and risk reduction. UNDP is financing Risk Resilient Disaster
and Planning Officers in three pilot provinces with the intention of the
provincial governments taking over the funding of those positions in two years’
time. Funding for DRR and CCA is concentrated at the national level, through
the National Disaster Management Office. Donors put money into the National
Disaster Fund which can be used by the NDMO as well as NGOs. However, there are
three issues at play. The first issue is that funding for DRR and CCA remains
at the national level, and a significant portion is implemented outside of the
government budget through NGOs and donors who fund larger projects directly. Only
UNDP works through local (provincial) government level[4].
The second issue is that government processes are slow, particularly at the
local level where government capacity is weak, while NGOs and other donors work
outside the government and thus do not coordinate with government. This impacts
on how resilience is built in communities – if at all. Which leads to the third
issue - competing understanding of ‘resilience’ – understanding resilience as a
reliance on community structures, knowledge and practice; and understanding
resilience as a responsibility of the government. Common understanding of what
‘resilience’ means in the Solomon Island context is necessary. Promoting
differing approaches is detrimental to any activities that are undertaken, and
undermines the ability of government to have a coherent strategy. For example,
historically ‘resilience’ in the Solomon Islands has meant family networks and
support. Promotion of concepts by outside actors such as NGOs and donors which
focus on a reliance on government is counter to what has worked historically
and undermines one of the most effective ways of building resilience to current
and future climate risks and vulnerabilities. Local governments need to
determine how to integrate local knowledge and practice into the DRR and CCA
planning processes.
In Vanuatu, which received the most devastating
impacts of Cyclone Pam, authority for DRR and CCA is not explicitly assigned to
either central or local government level. Most central government ministries
have programmes on CCA and DRR, and all activities are coordinated (in theory)
through a Project Management Unit in the Prime Minister’s Office. Most DRR and
CAA activities (central and local levels) are funded through donor project
funds[5]. The
government encourages donors to channel funds through the government, however
if donors prefer to provided funding through an NGO, then the donor and NGO must
coordinate with the Project Management Unit in the Prime Minister’s office. The
focus on coordination is important – it reduces overlap and ensures that as
many communities can be reached as possible. While there have been a large
number of complaints by the Government of Vanuatu related to a lack of
coordination of the recovery from Cyclone Pam[6], it does
present an opportunity to clarify roles and responsibilities between central
and local governments on DRR and CCA. The impacts of the cyclone have presented
communities and local governments an opportunity to make their case for more
leadership by local governments and direct financing to local government to
ensure that the unique needs of the diverse communities in Vanuatu can be
accommodated in DRR and CCA implementation as part of long-term recovery
processes.
Making DRR Local
– Local focus, Local financing
At the recent World Conference on Disaster Risk
Reduction in Sendai, Japan, there was a lot of talk about important things such
as questions about
the sort of economic policies, fiscal tools and insurance mechanisms that
countries need to spur resilience; how local governments can access to funds to
build their resilience; and how to make sure that women, smallholders and
small-business owners have access to micro-insurance and insurance[7].
Yet despite
repeated calls to put local government at the centre of DRR[8],
it was not a central focus of the eventual Sendai Framework agreed at the end
of the conference. Rather the document focused on a
substantial reduction by 2030 in global disaster mortality, the number of
affected people worldwide, direct disaster economic loss in relation to global
gross domestic product, and disaster damage to critical infrastructure through
resilience development, a substantial increase in the number of countries with
national and local disaster risk reduction strategies by 2020, improvement of
international cooperation with developing countries by supporting their
national action plans, and increase in availability and access to multi-hazard
early warning systems and disaster risk information and assessments[9].
We cannot reach the most vulnerable of the DRR and CCA
architecture continues to be molded around a global framework, where the
communities are at the end of the knowledge and decision making chain, rather
than at the beginning. It promotes a financing culture of funding national
strategies and plans rather than direct financing to local governments to
implement DRR and CCA activities based on local knowledge and need, with
visible impacts months rather than years in the making. Top down planning and
decision making leaves little space for the integration of local knowledge and
practice based on historical practices in risk management and adaptation to
change.
There are always fears that direct financing to local
governments will result in a mismanagement of funds due to a lack in capacity
to plan, budget, implement and monitor activities. Channeling funds to
communities outside of government is an option, but it is local government that
will be there in the long term, and will continue to lack capacity to plan,
budget, implement and monitor DRR and CCA activities unless given the explicit
opportunity to do so using their own systems, with technical assistance and rigorous
accountability and transparency mechanisms tied to funding.
We need to see change take place as soon as possible –
visible change to increase community resilience within months, not years, which
is what will happen if DRR and CCA continue to be globally-lead, top-down
processes. More action needs to be taken to lobby and advocate for direct
financing to local governments for community-based CCA and DRR activities,
which will not only increase community resilience, but also increase local
government capacity so that reliance on outside support can be lessened in the
long term. The Sendai Framework falls short in this respect, but opportunities
are still available at the Financing for Development conference in Addis Ababa
in July 2015, and through the dedicated trust funds for DRR and climate change
(such as the Green Climate Fund).
[1] ‘Vanuatu
won't be the last poor country devastated by climate change inaction,’ Mark
Goldring, Friday 20 March 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/mar/20/sendai-climate-change-inaction-poor-countries-vanuatu-cyclone-pam?mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRokvavIeu%2FhmjTEU5z14u4tUaC%2FgIkz2EFye%2BLIHETpodcMTcVkMb%2FYDBceEJhqyQJxPr3DJNUN0ddxRhbkDQ%3D%3D
[4] Email with Melanie Phillips, Legal Advisor to the Ministry of
Provincial Government and Institutional Strengthening, Solomon Islands
Government, 7 April 2015
[5] Email with Karibaiti Taoboa, Programme Manager, Commonwealth Local
Government Forum Pacific Programme, 8 April 2015
[6] ‘Vanuatu slams lack of aid coordination,
says food running out,’ Glenda Kwek, http://news.yahoo.com/vanuatu-slams-lack-aid-coordination-says-food-running-004819612.html?mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRokvarAd%2B%2FhmjTEU5z14u4tUaC%2FgIkz2EFye%2BLIHETpodcMTcVkN7%2FYDBceEJhqyQJxPr3DJNUN0ddxRhbkDQ%3D%3D, 19 March 2015.
‘Cyclone Pam: Vanuatu
slams aid agencies,’ Shane Cowlishaw
and Siobhan Downes,
‘Vanuatu island
frustrated at disaster surveys,’ http://www.radionz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/269328/vanuatu-island-frustrated-at-disaster-surveys, 23 March 2015.
‘Aid co-ordination
difficult says Vanuatu government,’ http://www.radionz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/269062/aid-co-ordination-difficult-says-vanuatu-government, 20 March 2015.
[7] ‘At Sendai, meaningful steps toward mainstreaming disaster risk
reduction,’ Manola De Vos, https://www.devex.com/news/at-sendai-meaningful-steps-toward-mainstreaming-disaster-risk-reduction-85729, 17 March 2015.
[8] ‘Sendai
Conference to Move From Managing Disasters to Risk Prevention,’ Jamshed Baruah and Katsuhiro Asagiri, http://www.ipsnews.net/2015/03/sendai-conference-to-move-from-managing-disasters-to-risk-prevention/, 20 March 2015.
[9] ‘Post-Sendai: Toward a more 'solid' and
'people-centered' DRR framework,’ Lean
Alfred Santos, https://www.devex.com/news/post-sendai-toward-a-more-solid-and-people-centered-drr-framework-85747,
19 March 2015.
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