Simple techniques designed to protect people from the worst effects of natural disasters can save thousands of lives – and millions of pounds in emergency aid, says Jehangir Malik, executive director of Islamic Relief UK
The UK is not the only country to have suffered heavy rain and floods in recent months. At least 10 people died in flash floods in southern Spain in September. Pakistan endured several weeks of monsoon flooding that killed more than 400 people in the provinces of Sindh, Punjab and Balochistan.
Scientists are cautious as to whether individual episodes of flooding like these – as well as individual incidences of severe drought and tropical storms in other parts of the world – can be directly attributed to climate change. What's certain, though, is that extreme weather events are increasing in frequency and intensity as climate change bites – and it's the world's poorest countries that are being hit hardest.
Between 1980 and 2010 the number of climate-related natural disasters increased by an average of 4 per cent a year. In 2011 alone such disasters killed 27,000 people and cost $380bn in economic losses. As I've seen for myself on visits to East Africa during last year's drought and on a recent visit to vulnerable coastal villages in southern Bangladesh, the people who suffer most are those who live in the most remote or exposed places and in the most basic of housing – and those who have the fewest assets and savings to fall back on in the event of disaster.
Feeling the Heat, Islamic Relief's new report, says the whole aid community needs a complete rethink on the way it deals with climate-related disasters. There's a huge imbalance in disaster spending that is not only costing lives but also squandering scarce aid budgets. There's growing evidence to suggest that improving disaster protection is more effective and much less costly than waiting to act until disaster strikes – and yet the world spends 23 times as much on emergency relief for the most disaster-prone areas as it spends on disaster protection.
Disaster protection is all about preparing people for the worst rather than expecting them just to hope for the best. Successful projects include cereal banks and microdams to store food and rain water ahead of the dry season; and cyclone shelters where people can take refuge as storms approach.
Disaster protection works. Investment in cyclone shelters and evacuation procedures in Bangladesh after the 1991 cyclone, which killed 140,000, reduced the death toll to around 4,000 when a storm of similar intensity struck in 2007. Not investing in disaster protection, on the other hand, can be extremely costly. In 2002 Mozambique asked the international community for a paltry $2.7m to protect against flooding, but only half of what they needed was provided. When the floods eventually came, the international community ended up paying $550m in emergency relief and reconstruction.
The story of Asma Begum, told in our report, explains that disaster protection can be so simple and yet so important. In June 2012 the Gaibanda district of north-western Bangladesh where she lives suffered its worst floods for a quarter of a century. Asma had already been flooded out of her home five times before, but this time her house was undamaged, her livestock survived and her children were safe – all thanks to an Islamic Relief project to build a raised earth platform on which 21 families from the flood plain rebuilt their homes, out of reach of seasonal flooding.
It costs £400 per family to build and maintain this flood protection for five years – less than the £440 it would cost in emergency aid in just one month if a family lost everything in a major flood.
Feeling the Heat urges the UN, governments and aid agencies to put disaster protection and preparedness at the heart of their aid programmes, and calls for the establishment of a new global contingency fund to ensure that these forward-looking and life-saving projects are properly resourced. It also proposes a bold and binding international agreement to protect poor communities better when the rather toothless Hyogo Framework for Action on disaster risk reduction expires in 2015.
We can't afford to neglect climate change mitigation if we are to stave off dangerous levels of climate change for the whole of this planet. But emissions are still rising and the success of any agreement to bring them under control could take decades to come to fruition. In the mean time, climate change has become a life-and-death issue for the very poorest people, and adaptation – particularly in the shape of prevention and risk reduction projects in disaster-prone areas – is their best hope of survival.
I am delighted to say that the UK government has been in the forefront of investing in disaster risk reduction – and is encouraging other aid donors to do the same through the Political Champions initiative led by the Secretary of State for International Development and the head of the United Nations Development Programme. I hope it will take an international lead in championing some of the issues highlighted in our report.
This article first appeared in Public Servant magazine