Opinion | Columnists
Risk management builds a better world
Addressing poor urban governance, vulnerable rural livelihoods, ecological decline and weak social protection requires major investment from world powers.
- By Margareta Wahlstrom, Special to Gulf News
- Published: 23:00 May 14, 2009
- Image Credit: Illustration: Nino Jose Heredia/Gulf News
Global financial instability like disaster risk comes in many guises, but both are linked by a single enduring consequence: whether the starting point of catastrophe is a broken banking system or a Category Five tropical cyclone, it is poor and deprived communities and their inhabitants who suffer most.
Agreements reached at the G20 Summit in London appear to indicate that any optimism to be drawn from the present world economic crisis centres on the prospective opportunity of implementing much-needed financial and institutional reforms and 'fix the system' for the longer term, thus enabling a return to the perceived prosperity of recent years.
The wider implications of such thinking require careful consideration - especially for the estimated 1.4 billion people in the developing world (one in four) living on less than $1.25/day (Dh4.58), according to World Bank figures.
Fiscal growth and stability do not automatically equate to risk-free development, particularly in low and middle income nations. Brisk economic and urban development, as experienced by many Asian and Latin American countries over past decades, has led to a growing concentration of people and economic assets in hazard prone cities, fertile river valleys and coastal areas.
Rapidly expanding settlement patterns in vulnerable rural/coastal areas and urban informal settlements have not necessarily been accompanied by adequate risk reducing capacities, responsive governance structures, policies, planning and regulatory frameworks.
While the less advanced and poor countries and their communities suffer more in real and comparative terms, their wealthier counterparts are not immune to this trend of increasing risk, as bush fires in Australia and the recent earthquake in central Italy reminded us so tragically at the start of this year.
Floods, droughts, storms, earthquakes, fires, when combined with 'risk drivers' such as increasing urbanisation, poor urban governance, vulnerable rural livelihoods and the decline of ecosystems, can lead to massive human misery and crippling economic losses.
The risks posed by the consequences of global climate change such as rising sea levels carry additional grave implications for how we will live in the near future.
The current rate of progress in addressing the underlying risk drivers is inadequate if we are to achieve the substantial reduction of disaster losses called for in the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015: Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities to Disasters (HFA) and in the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.
Fortunately, we know what to do - as the first Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction makes clear. This major United Nations publication launched in mid-May 2009, comprehensively reviews and analyses disaster frequency, geography and impact - and is set to become the primary reference document for the disaster risk reduction community.
Increasing vulnerability and emerging hazards can only be addressed effectively through disaster reduction interventions at both national and sub-regional levels.
The benefit of collaboration on trans-boundary risk management is evident from the scope of this and other sub-regional frameworks that have been adopted across Europe, Asia and the Americas in past years.
A number of countries are strengthening disaster risk reduction capacities through the creation of national coordination structures - such as in Bahrain where the National Committee for Disaster Management (NCDM) was adopted in 2006 to define responsibilities for disaster risk reduction at different levels of government.
In Norway, 96 per cent of municipalities have conducted local risk and vulnerability analyses while the Turkish government is collaborating with the private sector to introduce a compulsory earthquake insurance pool to mitigate the potential consequences of earthquakes.
The lesson is clear: responsive and capable institutions, integrated policy frameworks and planning systems underpinned by increased investments for reducing risks to development and adapting to climate change will be critical in the coming years.
To address the underlying drivers of risk - poor urban governance, vulnerable rural livelihoods, ecosystem decline and weak social protection - on the scale necessary requires major investment. Rather than a cost, this has to be seen as a prerequisite towards building a more secure, stable, sustainable and equitable future.
In the context of the global economic crisis, increasing public spending as the catalyst for economic stimulus packages has considerable merit provided, investment in risk-reducing infrastructure - improved drainage, for instance - and other initiatives designed to mitigate risk drivers remain fundamental to the overall package.
Critical to the equation, however, is ensuring that established disaster risk reduction measures are factored into all new development.
In a nutshell: invest today for a safer tomorrow.
Margareta Wahlstrom is the UN Assistant Secretary General for Disaster Risk Reduction and Special Representative of the Secretary General for the Implementation of the Hyogo Framework for Action.
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