Disasters need not destroy development
19 June 2002

By Eva von Oelreich

What is happening? Why on Earth, when millions upon millions of dollars are being funnelled into development, is our world becoming less and less safe? Why are the poor being corralled into a spiral of disaster and accident? Disasters are seeking out the poor, ensuring they stay poor and vulnerable at the bottom end of the development cycle, unable to claw a way out.

We know that the hard-won progress in children's living standards, gouged out over decades, is being threatened by HIV/AIDS. Equally, we know that a disaster such as an earthquake can wipe out decades of development in a few hours. This is nothing new. We in the international aid world read about it, discuss it, have conference after conference and yet the facts are stark: in the 1970s some 700 million people were affected by disasters. This had rocketed to two billion in the 1990s. Climatic change is often blamed, but while high winds, freak storms or earthquakes in the developed countries may be spectacular and even take a high toll in insurance premiums, they do not cause the rampant human misery occasioned by disasters in less wealthy countries.
Honduras' economy was pitched back 20 years by Hurricane Mitch according to its prime minister and Venezuela lost an estimated 10 per cent of its GDP to landslides in 1999. What chance then for these countries and others to achieve development goals such as halving the number of people living in extreme poverty, reducing infant and child mortality by two-thirds or providing universal primary education by 2015?

So, despite our victories in public health, education, women's rights, literacy and vaccination, disasters are having an ever-deeper impact on those least equipped to deal with them - taking away any gains made - as well as impinging on the lives of those who might have felt themselves somehow safe. Most of those who died in Turkey's devastating earthquakes of 1999 were likely victims of ineffective building codes, not poverty. And landslides in El Salvador in January 2001 swept away badly-sited middle-class housing. Flawed development - shoddy workmanship, bad planning, corruption - is leading to the creation of "unnatural" disasters whereby the policy that was supposed to save lives and improve living standards actually works in the opposite direction. What is to be done? These are all issues tackled by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in this year's World Disasters Report.

In every development strategy there must be a strong element of reducing risk from disasters. Urban planning, poverty eradication and environmental protection strategies must all include risk reduction.

And what can aid agencies do? The onus particularly falls on global organisations who are supposed to know that rapid response systems, while essential, do not constitute development - are not conducive to sustainability. International relief aid may prevent the breakdown of economic activity in the event of a disaster or on occasion may stimulate economic recovery in the aftermath of tragedy, but unless the underlying policies are right, the gains will soon evaporate.

Knowing what we know, it is not enough merely to be ready to launch massive life-saving operations. We may not be able to prevent the collision of tectonic plates, nor deflect the eye of a hurricane, but hazards do not need to become devastating disasters. Risks can be reduced. Risks must be reduced. The only real insurance available to the poor and the vulnerable may be the knowledge of how to interpret risk signals - how to prepare, when to evacuate.

The beautiful and much-overlooked truth is that planning pays for itself. They may be prosaic and mundane but mangroves planted by the Vietnam Red Cross along a 110 kilometre stretch of coastline, are providing enormous benefits. As well as giving communities living there greater protection from typhoons, the one million dollar investment has cut dyke maintenance costs by seven million dollars per year. Similarly, a Bangladesh Red Crescent cyclone preparedness programme has helped evacuate and shelter 2.5 million people before typhoons struck - saving their lives. Small but significant victories, unhailed because in media parlance "good news is no news".

The international aid community needs to take heart from this patchwork of success stories. But real, measurable targets for risk reduction alongside those for development have to be set by all parties if there is to be any sustained progress. These targets could include halving the number of people killed and affected by disasters and allocating 5-10% of relief funds to disaster mitigation programmes. States must also be encouraged and assisted to develop and finance disaster preparedness plans. They must be cajoled to look beyond the ends of their noses, putting money into risk reduction projects rather than holding it back for when (preventable) disaster strikes. And finally, governments, donors and aid organisations have to work together to achieve this.

The first positive step the international aid community can take is to create a more coherent risk reduction community. Borders separate researchers and practitioners, not only from different technical specialities, but also from the disaster and development fields as well as their access to funding. ECHO, one of the biggest and most important players on the disaster relief stage, spent just 1.5 per cent of its budget on disaster preparedness last year. The amounts spent in risk reduction in other budget lines are unknown - risk reduction is mostly invisible, unglamourous. But it must become an urgent priority for disaster managers, planners and policy-makers across the globe. Risk is part of our everyday life, yet how many of us deliberately walk under ladders? Risk reduction is not an optional extra. It is not a fashionable accessory. It is essential to the success of development itself.

Related Links:
The World Disasters Report 2002