Invited Written Comment by Dr. Ben Wisner[1]

on the Uncorrected Transcript of Evidence Taken before

International Development Committee

House of Commons

 

Humanitarian Response to Natural Disasters

 

Evidence given 6 July 2006;

This comment 18 July 2006

 

I was asked by Ms. Hannah Weston to comment in writing on evidence given by John Scicchitano, John Twigg, and David Peppiatt on the current state of disaster risk reduction, preparedness, and relief.

On the whole I found what they shared with the committee accurate and important.  My comments may amplify a few points and provide the committee with some further sources and resources they might find useful.

 

I will organize my comments according to the large themes that seemed to be addressed.

 

 

WCDR & HYOGO FRAMEWORK OF ACTION (HFA)

 

I was also present at the World Conference on Disaster Reduction in Kobe, Japan, 18-22 January 2005, and wrote with Peter Walker an NGO perspective on that meeting for the Swiss Government.[2] An NGO caucus was quite impatient with the lack of clear and time bound targets. Indeed, some 600 delegates from Latin America had only two months earlier drafted the "Manizales Declaration"[3] that was circulated in Kobe, pointing out that large contextual issues such as the impact of violent conflict and economic globalization on people's vulnerability to hazards were missing from the UN agenda.

 

Nevertheless, I have to agree with John Twigg that the HFA is becoming a serviceable vehicle for the framing of national policy, and that slow progress toward concrete implementation is taking place.

 

I will provide two examples.

 

School Safety has emerged as one area where all nations can make rapid progress given political will and engagement of communities. The ISDR Cluster Group on Education just launched on 15 June in Paris a two year campaign that will focus on school safety as well as the teaching about risk reduction in schools. Significantly, however, this top down campaign has its complementary counterpart in a bottom up network called the Coalition for Global School Safety[4] that is building on the concrete positive experience of many localities in improving the safety of schools.

 

I was very impressed with the accurate grasp the threat to schools evident in the remarks by committee member, Joan Ruddock.

 

In a desk review that provided the background for the ISDR's 2 year school campaign mentioned above, I discuss data that anyone who advocates "Education for All (EFA)" should know. Experts have calculated that if all school aged children presently NOT in school are successfully sent to school, some 34 million children may be put at risk in seismically unsafe school buildings.[5] Yet the safety of school buildings has not yet been discussed as part of the EFA campaign!

 

Community Risk Assessment (CRA) is also taking place at local level in many parts of the world. Recently the ProVention Consortium collected many of these experiences and systematized them in the form of a tool kit for CRA including methods, case studies, and background guidelines.[6]

 

Both these examples suggest that even in the absence of milestones and bench marks for programming, a good deal of grassroots and neighborhood based progress is being made. I believe this was also one of the points that John Scicchitano was at pains to make as he drew from his considerable field experience in West Africa.

 

Nevertheless, a remaining question is whether the combination of pressure from below (from communities that are increasingly organized around self protection issues) can complement guidance and encouragement from above. I am hopeful that this combination can provide incentives for national governments to take the commitments of the HFA seriously.

 

I differ here a bit from some of what the expert witnesses told the committee. While I completely agree that community based activity is essential, I think that communities have to link up and put pressure on local and national governments for policy change. There is a danger of romanticizing local knowledge and "social capital" and self protection while overlooking the politics of pressure for social protection provided by government.

 

 

VIEWS OF THE UN AND DFID

 

I cannot comment on the criticism voiced by the committee concerning the slow start of UN activities after the Pakistan earthquake. I was not a direct observer. I did, however, review humanitarian action in Sudan last year, and it seems to me that the UN has been quite effective in that difficult situation. Perhaps this comment also reinforces a point that emerges several times in the transcript - that the international community has learned more about managing complex emergencies and other slow onset disasters. Response to sudden, massive events such as the Asian tsunami, hurricane Mitch, the Orissa super cyclone, the Pakistan earthquake is very difficult to coordinate.

 

I have had close contact with the UN-ISDR over the years, and my observation is that it is extremely effective in catalyzing and coordinating - utilizing its working groups and clusters to great advantage and tapping expertise from all over the world. When one considers how small a secretariat is maintained in Geneva and how small the ISDR's regional and satellite offices are in San Jose, Bangkok, Nairobi, New York, and Bonn - its achievements are even more impressive.

 

I was an outside reviewer of DFID's 2004 scoping study[7] that explored the relations between disaster risk reduction and disaster. John Twigg narrates in the transcript a progression from the 1997 White Paper through the National Audit Office report (2003), the aforementioned scoping study, to the recent policy statement, "Reducing the Risk of Disasters: Helping to Achieve Sustainable Poverty Reduction in a Vulnerable World" (March 2006).[8]

 

I share with John Twigg admiration for the rapid learning that DFID has achieved, but also I share the opinion that despite the excellent analyses, reports, and policy statements, disaster risks reduction and "routine" development have not yet been adequately integrated.

 

This is a very difficult task. Even where one would think that adding risk reduction indicators would be completely natural and welcome - for instance, adding them to the parameters being developed by Tsunami Recovery Assessment and Monitoring System (TRIAMS) - it turns out to be an uphill struggle.

 

My own view is that the reason for this is partly that BOTH those working on disaster risk reduction AND those working on "routine" development fail to appreciate the role of economic and political power that permeates the daily life of the poor, and the depth of exclusion and marginalization. Without fully appreciating the concrete daily situation of the bottom-most strata of society, one cannot develop interventions that engage their energy, creativity, and local knowledge. In speaking about the media, John Twigg very accurately says that in most disasters loved ones and neighbors and friends rescue and assist the majority of victims, and that people are very proactive in their own self protection. The other side of this is that my own research in 220 municipalities in six megacity regions shows a common lack of trust between government and such marginalized people.[9]

 

David Peppiatt used the term "root causes" of vulnerability to disasters. My understanding of the term "root cause" suggests one has to address the structures of economic and political power as well as historically inherited fault lines in society to do with race, religion, and gender in order to a impact "root causes."[10] One simple example is the well documented fact that dalits (untouchables) affected by the tsunami in Tamil Nadu have received much less assistance than higher caste fishermen.[11]

 

EARLY WARNING SYSTEMS

 

Despite the mistakes in Niger, the Sahel more generally, and in Malawi, I think the international community is getting better at early warning of slow onset and complex emergencies. There are notable success stories. In the early 1990s there was a southern Africa-wide food emergency, but timely intervention and cooperation between South Africa and its neighbors (in the run up to the end of Apartheid) allowed the logistical leverage to deliver food. There was no famine.

 

John Scicchitano is correct to highlight the contribution of the USAID funded FEWS, and there are other systems like this one at work today.

 

Nevertheless there are two enormous problems that limit timely action. First, as the IFRC's forthcoming World Disaster Report 2006 [12]will take as its theme, some humanitarian crises are neglected for a variety of reasons. Selective media attention was mentioned in the transcript. Certainly this is true. However, state secrecy also hides much suffering as in North Korea. Politically awkward situations such as Sudan produce delays in international intervention. Also, the very nature of some of the reporting systems are biased against the small but accumulating events that erode livelihoods and eventually make people terribly vulnerable to something like hurricane Mitch in 1998 or hurricane Stan that hit Guatemala in 2005 shortly after Katrina hit New Orleans.

 

David Peppiatt signaled the importance of "low impact/ high frequency" hazard events that erode livelihoods, reducing the surplus that families have available to invest in risk reduction. Such families are usually uninsured. Loss of a boat, a carpenter's tools, a sewing machine, a cow, or even a small amount of arable land in landslide, can send a household spiraling into debt. Such "small" losses are never recorded in the major international data bases such as EM-DAT[13] but do, in fact, appear in a very interesting new disaster accounting system called DESINVENTAR.[14]

 

About the media, I believe the evidence given was a bit too harsh. There is good practice as well as bad. One very positive development is the creation by the non-profit Reuters AlertNet of a resource for helping journalists dig deeper into the contextual issues that certainly are often missed.[15]

 

Besides the problem of neglected disasters - including those mentioned by members of the committee such as HIV-AIDS - there are problems as well with "early warning" in a narrower, technical sense. For example, the tsunami that affected the southern coast of Java on 17 July killed at least 339 people. Reuters AlertNet reported today (18 July) that at the time none of Indonesia's ocean buoys for detecting tsunamis was operational. 19 months after the 26 December 2004 killer tsunami and $2 billion later, one cannot say that an Indian Ocean tsunami early warning system exists.

 

Just as the daily stresses on the urban and rural poor wear down their resilience to natural hazards, also the daily grind of poor governance and "business as usual" politics and corruption wear down the ability of the state to deliver social protection.[16]

 

In March 2006, I heard Bill Clinton, UN Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery, address the 3^rd International Conference on Early Warning. He was pleased with progress. This pleasure was tempered by the awareness among the delegates and experts that "the last mile"[17] remains a challenge: that is - actually getting the high tech warning from the towers to the communities, where people will (a) have the ability to receive them, (b) will understand them, and (c) will have options to escape or will have already strengthened structures and have the ability to shelter in place on an upper storey. The challenge is to fully engage local communities.[18]

 

 

 

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND DISASTER RISK REDUCTION

 

Returning to my theme of the importance of "daily life" in structuring the vulnerability of the rural and urban poor, I agree 100% with John Scicchitano that nutrition and public health outreach and infrastructure are grossly neglected. The routine management and maintenance of such social protection systems are vital if society is to have resilience to extreme events. It is not just that humanitarians often bypass such existing systems in delivering aid, but in an era of cuts in government expenditures, the state routinely neglects vital services and infrastructure. Sustainable development is not just about economic growth (and its impact on the environment) but also the maintenance and growth of public goods such as water and sanitation systems, well-baby clinics and nutrition services, immunization, and health education, and well as public education for children and youth. These, in turn, provide the social networks for communities to address local hazards and to build their capacity to cope. Therein lays an important link between development and disaster risk reduction.

 

Climate change came up several times in the transcript. Adaptation to climate change is a growing concern of many NGOs, international agencies, and some bilateral aid organizations. For instance, the Netherlands GDIS is funding a program of capacity building for research on effective adaptations to climate change in more than a dozen countries (including Tanzania and Mozambique). Climate change will have - indeed already is having - a heavy impact on the rural and urban poor. However, the networks that are established around schools and health centers mentioned above are also capable of developing their resilience and ability to cope with the changes that global warming will bring.

 

In Tanzania this will take the form of more pressure on rural women who provide domestic water, wood fuel, and food, as well as provide home nursing for family members who are ill. Warming may already be increasing the incidence of malaria in Tanzania - hence placing more of a burden for home health care on women - and soon it could cause decreases in the yield of maize and wheat, increase the severity of flood and drought, and cause vegetation changes that will make it harder to provide domestic energy needs with wood fuel. The quality and quantity of drinking water may also be affected.

---

[1]Visiting Research Fellow, Crisis States Programme, DESTIN, LSE
& Honorary Research Fellow, Benfield Hazard Research Centre, UCL
& Senior Scientist and Academic Advisor, UN University Institute for Environment and Human Security, Bonn; contact [e-mail] .

[2] Ben Wisner and Peter Walker, Beyond Kobe, International Famine Program, Tufts University, May 2005 http://www.unisdr.org/wcdr/thematic-sessions/Beyond-Kobe-may-2005.pdf .

[3] Interamerican Conference on Disaster Reduction, "Manizales Declaration," 17-19 November 2004, Manizales, Colombia http://www.unisdr.org/wcdr/preparatory-process/inputs/Declaration-Manizales-eng.pdf .

[4] Coalition for Global School Safety (COGSS) http://www.interragate.info/cogss/ .

[5] My desk review is presently being prepared for publication but can be viewed by members of the committee on a hidden page on the ISDR web site: http://www.unisdr.org/let-our-children-teach-us.htm .

[6] ProVention Consortium CRA tool kit http://www.proventionconsortium.org/?pageid=39 .

[7] DFID, Disaster Risk Reduction: A Development Concern, London, 2004 http://www.dfid.gov.uk/pubs/files/drr-scoping-study.pdf .

[8] http://www.unisdr.org/news/DFID-reducing-risk-of-disasters.pdf .

[9] UN University project, "The Geography of Urban Social Vulnerability," 1998-2002 http://geic.hq.unu.edu/env/project1.cfm?type=1&ID=28 & 4 summary training videos: http://update.unu.edu/archive/issue23_6.htm & Ben Wisner and Bruno Haghebaert, "Fierce Friends/ Friendly Enemies: State/ Civil Society Relations in Disaster Risk Reduction," background paper, ProVention Consortium Forum 2006, Bangkok, February 2006 http://www.proventionconsortium.org/themes/default/pdfs/Forum06/Forum06_Session4_State-CommunityAction.pdf .

[10] Two web resources dedicated to "root causes" are RADIX (http://www.radixonline.org ) and the Gender and Disaster Network (GDN, http://www.gdnonline.org ).

[11] Human Rights Watch, "Tsunami Recovery Efforts: Human Rights Watch Letter to Clinton," Human Rights Watch, 10 May 2005 http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/05/10/india11024_txt.htm .

[12] I am co-author of the lead chapter of this year's World Disaster Report. The committee may want to contact the editor, Mr. Jonathan Walter is they desire to see a pre-publication draft ([e-mail] ).

[13] http://www.em-dat.net/ .

[14] http://www.desinventar.org/desinventar.html .

[15] The committee may wish to speak with Ruth Gidley of AlertNet ([e-mail] ) about this innovation - partly funded by DFID - called "MediaBridge."

[16] N.B. Indonesia ranked near the bottom of all nations as regards business perception of its transparency (lack of corruption) with a score by Transparency International of 2.2 on a scale of 10 (see http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781359.html ).

[17] John Twigg, "Disaster Early Warning Systems," Working Paper 16. Benfield Hazard Research Centre, UCL, June 2006 http://www.benfieldhrc.org/disaster_studies/working_papers/workingpaper16.pdf .

[18] UN-ISRD, Global Survey of Early Warning Systems, Report to the Secretary General, Bonn, March 2005 http://www.unisdr.org/ppew/info-resources/ewc3/Global-Survey-of-Early-Warning-Systems.pdf .