By Abdur Rehman Cheema
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A recent study highlights the barriers, their modifiers, and resulting in malpractices and missed good practices that hinder our efforts to Build Back Better (BBB) after earthquakes. BBB calls for strengthening institutions, building capacity and improving coordination among different stakeholders. Implicitly, BBB emphasises removing barriers to disaster risk reduction, resilience and adaptation.
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In the last 18 years, Pakistan was the 4th top country in the world after Haiti, Indonesia and China with a total loss of 74,372 lives as a result of 9 earthquake events. Hard-pressed to provide basic facilities to its citizens, disaster management falls low on the state’s development agenda. Excessive damage in terms of infrastructure and casualties from the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and then again the 2015 Hindukush earthquake in the underdeveloped Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) province raised questions about barriers that lent to the repetition of past malpractices. Barriers are understood as conditions or factors that render adaptation difficult in response to the challenges posed by climate change. However, barriers alone are not at play during recovery since barriers are magnified by their modifiers. Modifiers are other factors such as governance structure and culture that often influence how barriers would be dealt with.
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Though Pakistan and other similar countries in the region have seen severe earthquakes in a short span of time and many of the required legislative and institutional arrangements are in place, the enormity and complexity of barriers to BBB are likely to persist longer than expected. What can Pakistan and other countries can learn from past mistakes to do more to secure the lives and assets of their people?
To leverage recovery as an opportunity, barriers have to be looked at through a holistic approach that anticipates and acknowledges the overarching nature of endemic impediments to BBB. Malpractices can be avoided by being better prepared to address the apprehensions of the affected communities and underlying institutional gaps. The effect of barriers can be reduced by breaking free from their modifiers and viewing reconstruction as an opportunity to employ good practices. The effects of barriers and modifiers can only be abated if institutions and communities collectively work in a systematic way to build back better.