IFRC: Decreasing the destructiveness of disasters is our only choice
By Yasemin Aysan, Under Secretary General for Disaster Response, on the occasion of the 2009 International Day for Disaster Reduction
Today, as Asia Pacific reels from one devastating disaster after another, more than 12 million people have been extensively affected. Typhoons, earthquakes, tsunamis and flooding have uprooted millions, left them homeless and stripped them of their livelihoods. The countries’ National Red Cross or Red Crescent Societies have sprung into action with massive emergency assistance. Loss of life is always tragic, but ample investment in preparedness and early warning systems - including the training of community-based volunteers as first responders - have clearly contributed to minimizing the loss of life across the disaster areas.
These disasters remind us that although we have made progress in the field of risk reduction, a much greater global commitment must be reached to make many, many more communities safe and strengthen their resilience, particularly in the disaster-prone regions of the world.
If we – as an international community of partners – do not step up risk reduction measures significantly, then we will fail to achieve the targets set by the UN’s Millennium Development Goals to decrease poverty, hunger, disease and deaths. In a globalized world, buffeted by the severe humanitarian impact of ever more extreme and frequent disasters, often linked to climate change, our mission to help the most vulnerable populations becomes ever more vital.
But a properly resourced global strategy is needed - one which is fully supported and respected by governments and decision-makers, and implemented at the community level.
Risk reduction is cost-effective – early warning and early action, as well as other preparedness measures, savesmore lives and livelihoods per dollar or euro spent than traditional disaster response. Recently, together with United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator John Holmes, we stressed that the G20 must lay the foundations for bold action in the upcoming Copenhagen conference on climate change.Whether at the global or local levels, we must help communities better adapt toclimate change impacts and integrate this into existing disaster risk reduction programmes.
Early warning must strive to guarantee that communities receive the information they need. We have the technology to make seasonal and long-term forecasts to help farmers better plan their planting, as well as weekly and daily forecasts to warn coastal communities of incoming typhoons, but we need to make sure people are ready to react to this information. And we must ensure that this potentially life-saving information gets into the hands of those who need it most.
There is thankfully growing evidence ofthe effectiveness of disaster preparedness. In Samoa, when church bells rang out as a tsunami warning, Red Cross volunteers – well trained in tsunami preparedness drills - helped villagers evacuate to pre-identified sites on higher ground. This low-tech example illustrates the importance of reaching the grass-roots level, of making sure the information provided by advance warning systems reaches people urgently.
In west and central Africa, the Red Cross Red Crescent is working with the African Centre for Meteorological Applications for Development (ACMAD). When warnings arrived last July of heavy rains and subsequent severe flooding, evacuations and evaluations took place quickly and pre-positioned stocks of essential relief items were distributed to the affected people in record time. The real work of protecting communities and preserving livelihoods can be done beforehand, but we must be ready to invest in preparing communities that are habitually exposed to disasters.
Strong partnerships at all levels - global, regional, national and local - are essential to make sure everyone is pulling in the same direction and is supporting each other. Today, a flagship risk reduction plan for Nepal will be unveiled, developed by a jointconsortium of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) in consultation with the Government of Nepal and involving also the Nepalese Red Cross. This kind if coordinated preventive model works and should be replicated and extended to other countries.
It is clear that much remains to be done to increase community safety and resilience, and that many challenges loom ahead. On this International Day for Disaster Reduction, let us remember that disasters like those currently happening in Asia and the Pacific are everybody’s business and that, working together, we can make communities all over the world safer and better prepared to face and overcome natural disasters and their consequences.