Examination of Witnesses (Questions 213-219)
MR DAVID
PEPPIATT
6 JULY 2006
Q213 Chairman: Thank you, Mr Peppiatt.
You will have heard our earlier discussion. It almost takes off,
I think, where you come in, as it were. One of the obvious things,
and, perhaps, part of the reason why we are doing this inquiry,
is that we have had over the last 12 months a lot of what might
be called high-impact low-frequency disasters. Obviously two concerns
arise out of that. One is that they attract a lot of attention
and, two, that the resources, not that they are not justified,
but they might divert us away from other kinds of things. I am
sorry; I was just having an exchange on the side here with my
clerk about describing the opposite of that which is low-impact
high-frequency. I was questioning the term "low-impact",
because the argument is low-impact in terms of public perception
and media and not in terms of consequences. We are talking about
malnutrition in Ethiopia or the AIDS crisis, which is carrying
off hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people on a continuing
basis, as opposed to one big bang which wipes out a lot of people
overnight and therefore creates a lot more attention. To what
extent do you think our response to those high-impact events actually
distorts the attention we could or should be giving to risk reduction?
Mr Peppiatt: I think it does,
most definitely. We are very drawn to the big ones; so policy
and debate get shaped by 2005 and the quotes relate to the tsunami,
the Pakistan earthquake and Hurricane Katrina, not the other numerous
so-called low-impact events. I think the problem is that while
2005 was very good, because it raised a lot of international interest
and concern for natural disasters, it does rather skew the picture
if we shape international policy on these huge events and do not
recognise that, day in day out, as we have just been discussing,
there are so-called low impact or residual disasters that wear
away people's livelihoods. It is interesting when you look at
some of the studies that have come out, the much more longitudinal
studies coming particularly from Latin America, that the accumulation
of 10 years of local disasters, these low-impact but high-frequency
events, have a greater impact on the poor than a one-off big one,
and I think it is very important to get that perspective right,
particularly after this extraordinary tsunami phenomenon which
should not shape the way we now perceive disaster risk reduction.
Q214 Chairman: I am going to come
to that, but it occurs to me that we have only two ministers in
our Department for International Development, both extremely good,
very active ministers, but it has been pointed out by their own
civil servants that they spend a disproportionate amount of their
time dealing with these high profile things rather than directing
a long-term strategy. That is not a criticism of them. It has
inevitably been, because they are in the public eye, what they
are required to do. By definition, when you have only got two
ministers, the more time they are spending on that, the less time
they are spending on the delivery of the fundamental objectives.
The point I want to ask you now is, given that all this high profile
stuff happens, how do we get back on track or keep on track the
idea that, yes, we have got to deal with those, but in the meantime,
if anything, let us increase our attention on actually ensuring
that we have effective action and effective prevention wherever
we can?
Mr Peppiatt: I think it goes to
the heart of the matter that disaster risk reduction has to become
an every-day part of the development business and development
planning. It is interesting that this particular inquiry is obviously
looking at the humanitarian response side, and this subject of
disaster risk reduction has fallen rather awkwardly for many years
between humanitarian action and development; and often our humanitarian
friends will say, "Well, disaster risk reduction is about
addressing the root causes of vulnerability"—many of
them very long-term structural mitigation issues we have been
discussing this afternoon—"that is not called humanitarian
business. We are here to save lives", and our development
friends will say, "Well, it has got that word `disaster'
in there. It is very much for the humanitarian folk to deal with",
and, as a result, over many years, disaster risk reduction in
terms of policies, in terms of institutional structures has fallen
in the gaps. I think things are changing as a result, as we discussed,
with a new international strategy, the Hyogo Framework, and a
little bit more political attention, but it still sits awkwardly,
and when you talk to development parts of DFID, I doubt that many
of them were aware of the new disaster risk reduction policy that
was launched in March. I know there is a great effort underway,
and when you go down to the country offices and you talk to development
organisations not many will have heard of the Hyogo Framework,
so we have still got a long way to go to make disaster risk reduction
a reality and accessible for development language, but at the
end of the day it is about integrating risk and vulnerability
reduction into the way we plan development.
Chairman: I do not want to pre-empt it,
but this Committee has decided we are going to have an inquiry
into water, and I would like to think some of that is about recognising
that actually delivering clean water will prevent an awful lot
of disasters and there is an integrated approach to that.
Q215 Joan Ruddock: I think you may
have begun to answer the question I was going to put to you, which
is what can be done to ensure that development policies, projects
and programmes do not unwittingly create new forms of vulnerability
to natural hazards. One of the things that was said to my colleagues
(I was not there) in Pakistan was that many school children's
lives might have been saved after the Pakistan earthquake had
it not been for the fact that their schools had been built on
probably the worse bits of land that the village could offer up.
They might have been on steep hills or uneven terrains, places
where the schools are very vulnerable, and that is a Government
development strategy, but I think it goes across the board. How
can we try to ensure that, whatever development programmes are
being put in place, they do not create that kind of situation,
the vulnerability to some other external force?
Mr Peppiatt: I think it starts
with, as you indicate, integrating concerns of risk and vulnerability
right from the outset of development planning. Poverty reduction
strategies play a key role in the international development system.
Donors such as DFID, the World Bank, support long-term development
in developing countries. The World Bank recently assessed 59 of
the PRSPs to date and only nine of those paid any attention to
hazard risk management and of those nine only three were high-risk
disaster-prone countries. The reality is that the international
development system, particularly the development finance system,
has not done very well to date to integrate concerns of disaster
into poverty reduction strategies. I know that this is a particular
priority of concern for DFID in its partnership with the World
Bank to address that very problem, but there is a need. It may
seem yet another issue to mainstream, like climate, like gender,
like environment, but when we plan in ministries of education
to build critical infrastructure—schools—schools should
be resilient as a public building that are safe for school children.
It is totally unacceptable that at nine o'clock on a Saturday
morning 18,000 children should be killed at school, just as across
the Caribbean it is unacceptable that hospitals and health facilities
are built that are not resilient to hurricanes. They are very
small steps that are taken and the additional cost is not so great,
but it needs to be factored in from the outset from poverty reduction
strategies to country programmes, even to Ministry of Education
and planning and so forth. In that sense it has got to become
a development reality and not just a humanitarian concern.
Q216 Joan Ruddock: When I was in
Zambia I was constantly being taken to see schools with their
roofs blown off, and this was a regular feature and they would
be waiting ages for the provision for the roof to be put back
on, knowing that at some stage it would be blown back off.
Mr Peppiatt: The World Bank approved
a loan to Mozambique in the late 1990s for a schools project to
build 480 secondary schools. In 2000, 500 schools were destroyed.
That is a devastating example.
Q217 Joan Ruddock: By?
Mr Peppiatt: By the floods, disasters
eroding in a matter of hours a huge development investment.
Q218 Joan Ruddock: May I ask finally,
do you have any more concrete ideas than our previous witnesses
had about how climate change needs to be built into such strategies?
Mr Peppiatt: I do not feel I have
more encouraging examples than the previous speakers. I think
that there is a tremendous commitment within the climate change
community to link and harmonise efforts with the disaster risk
reduction world, but the real challenge, when it comes down to
it, is what does this mean for organisations? I sit with the programme
that I work on within the Red Cross, and colleagues in the Red
Cross have said to me, "We are forever having to import new
paradigms that are so huge. What does climate adaptation mean
for us in the Red Cross at a very local level with limited human
resources, limited financial resources? How do we do adaptation?"
I think it is much more looking at what we do and what is the
impact of climate change on this? Many communities, in the case
of the Red Cross, are very active in addressing local risks and
vulnerabilities which probably are trying to adapt to the changes
caused by climate, but I think one thing globally and at an international
level that we need to do, now there is tremendous political commitment
to the climate change agenda and there is also this parallel momentum
on disaster risk reduction, I think we need to find ways to harmonise
them, because there is a great cross-over. Two-thirds of the natural
disasters we are addressing are climate related.
Q219 Joan Ruddock: Whereas those
may be more difficult for climate change scientists to predict,
they do say that there will be increasing frequency and increasing
problems with such conditions, but things like rising sea levels
are not in dispute?
Mr Peppiatt: Yes.
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