Creating unnatural disasters and worsening the effects of hazards
Statement delivered by Eva Von Oelrich, Head of Disaster Preparedness and response Department, International Federation, to the United Nations Economic and Social Council substantive session 2002, panel discussion on Natural Disasters, NewYork
17 July 2002



Chair,

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies appreciates this opportunity to participate in the panel discussion on Natural Disasters - the next 10 years.

We know that development, earned over decades, can be destroyed by disasters in a matter of hours. During the past decade less people have died in natural disasters, but more and more people's lives and livelihoods are affected by natural disasters. The increase is steep upwards, triggered by more frequent extreme weather events, poor development, unplanned urbanization, non-enforced building codes, and effects of poverty and vulnerability. Disasters seek out the poor and ensure they stay poor.

Flawed development and weak environmental protection strategies create "unnatural" disasters and worsen the effects of hazards. Too often development in itself becomes the architect of technological and other human-made disasters and increases vulnerability. And climate change is the joker in the pack of cards.

Economic losses have increased five times since the 70s. Honduras was set back a decade after Mitch and 10 percent of Venezuela's GDP was buried with the landslides three years ago. How much the livelihood and indirect losses are - we can only guess.

These trends are expected to continue and increase. Can the world afford an exponential growth of people affected by disasters?

The International Federation sees achievements in managing and coordinating international disaster operations over the decade. We can talk about both speed, effective operations, improved disaster information systems and understanding of the local context, joint assessments, quality tools such as the Code of Conduct for Disaster Relief and the Sphere standards and further improved inter-agency coordination and consultations.

But disaster planning belongs to national governments and the pattern is partly sketchy, especially in some of the least developed countries. And yet we know that national preparedness makes a difference, for instance in the floods in Mozambique in 2000 and 2001. In spite of all media focus on international rescue, almost all were saved by Mozambicans and their neighbors.

The International Federation's first aim is to strengthen our national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies in 178 countries to develop and carry out their auxiliary role to the government in disasters, which includes managing a strong volunteer network. Its second
aim is to come in to support, when the disaster is overwhelming.

The main challenges as we see them over the next ten years are summarized in nine points:

• Most of all, we need to acknowledge that sustainable development is not possible without taking disasters into account. This is also a strong message to the World Summit on Sustainable Development, soon to start in Johannesburg. If we take this into account, it changes the way we work completely.
  
  
• The political commitment and action from more national governments to update emergency planning and develop risk reduction measures is vital. Why is support to capacity building the Cinderella sister for donors? That needs to be changed.
  
  
• The International Federation publishes its World Disasters Report annually. This year focuses on disaster preparedness. Conclusions are that disaster preparedness pays and has to be further strengthened. But there is also a need to look beyond. In the future wider risk reduction measures, including mitigation and awareness raising need to be reinforced in each disaster-prone country. The long-term, overriding need is a world strategy for tackling risk reduction. The UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction exists. Do we want to empower it? I hope we do.
  
  
• The International Federation works on the ground with people in disaster-affected communities - before disaster strikes. We have the independence and experience to speak on their behalf. The next decade must make a difference for them. Preparedness starts at the source, where the risks are, where the hazards are coming back each year. Many effective risk reduction measures are low-cost, even no-cost. In areas where people have never dreamt yet of insurance schemes awareness, simple mitigation and evacuation training can be first steps to decreased vulnerability as well as looking at women's roles and contributions.
  
  
• One challenge is to link communities vertically to a national disaster management system. Too many of them are isolated. In ten years governments must have stronger links to sub-national levels. In the International Federation we now pool resources from neighboring countries on the regional level with thirteen hubs around the world. This also increases vitality and relevance of national action and strengthens coherence. The regional system works in line with global disaster management. All works as an interlinked system. Equally important are the horizontal links - to the authorities, to UN and NGO actors. The simple truth is evident: as strong as its weakest link. In the future we need to further increase joint risk assessment and planning. This needs to extend also to more long-term areas such as the common country assessment (CCA) and UNFAD, the UN Development Assistance Frameworks, to ensure more coherent planning. The International Federation's risk assessment tool, VCA - Vulnerability and Capacity Assessment, usefully serves that purpose. Joint assessments are key to coherent solutions.
  
  
• The International Federation has taken the initiative to look at what International Disaster Response Law can do to improve response to natural disasters in the future. We are doing a study of what exists, what doesn't and what areas could be solved by international law. The study will be presented at the forthcoming International Conference for the Red Cross Red Crescent movement, which includes governments, next year.
  
  
• Natural disaster trends are clear and worrying, with particularly harsh messages for the least developed countries, and yet disaster data are so poor. Even a disaster-prone country like the United States has no unified data-collection system and no agreed criteria on losses. In ten years we must have a global database of comprehensive, reliable and comparable data. Criteria for losses need to be agreed upon. Equally important, but largely unnoticed, are the multitude of small and medium-scale disasters. The losses from these disasters can be as significant as for major disasters. Examples from the DesInventar disaster database for Latin America show that accumulated losses in small and medium disasters in certain countries exceed those of the big disasters.
  
  
• Natural disasters in the context of complex humanitarian emergencies hide complex underlying layers. We already see a trend of increasing politico-economical disasters. A country in violent conflict has generally sacrificed much of its population's safety nets in the course of the conflict. Fallen states have lost the ability to safeguard its people. The need to look beyond the disaster event and work on compounded effects will most probably increase. Dilemmas difficult to tackle today will be more common. Next year we will meet in ECOSOC and talk about why we need to act earlier in the slow onset disasters we already follow today. Slow onset disasters have a history of not attracting donor attention until too late. We must change that.
  
  
• We must see natural disasters not as one-off events but as phenomena, triggered by multiple factors, requiring multiple, holistic solutions. Technical, environmental, also climate change-related, social, economic and political elements need to be analyzed jointly to give answers, adequate to changing risk patterns and an increasingly stressed planet. In the past we talked about the hazards, in the present we focus on disasters, in the future the focus should be risks.

Thank you for your attention.

And thank you to OCHA for giving us the opportunity to look into the future in occasion of the 10th anniversary of General Assembly resolution 46/182, which led to the creation of Inter - Agency Standing Committee and a fruitful cooperation.