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Contributions from
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InWEnt News
Kobe: UN conference on disaster management
Partnership with tsunami-hit municipalities
Promoting decentralisation of education
03/2005 |
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[ UN conference on disaster management ]
With the tsunami in mind
News of interdisciplinary and supraregional approaches fell on particularly attentive ears at the UN disaster reduction conference in Kobe, Japan. The United Nations are in favour of creating regional and international emergency response networks. They also want to raise greater risk awareness among the public.
[ By Christina Kamlage and Erich Süssdorf ]
The tsunami that hit the coasts of the Indian Ocean provided tragic evidence of the fact that not everything humanly possible has been done to contain the risk of such natural catastrophes. So the question the UN conference in Kobe addressed in late January was: what is humankind prepared to do to protect itself from impending disasters?
All major UN conferences are fora that debate differences in chances of survival and responsibility from local to global level. Kobe was no exception. More than 90 percent of all deaths due to natural disasters occur in developing countries.
The United Nations is pursuing several parallel courses of action to contain the risks presented by catastrophes. They include:
– improvement of disaster prevention,
– creation of a “culture of resilience,”
– creation of regional and international emergency response networks and
– strengthening public awareness of risks.
Media images showing the violence with which the tsunami crashed into coastal communities triggered an extraordinary emotional response worldwide. The sight of human suffering prompted a spontaneous desire to help of unprecedented magnitude. For a moment, the global community seemed united by an almost universal sense of solidarity in the face of the incredible forces of nature that brought death and destruction to many coasts in Asia and even Africa. This is not what typically happens. Normally, droughts, floods and earthquakes in developing countries remain remote events and quickly disappear from the TV screens in advanced nations.
Ahead of the conference, experts had feared that measures against less headline-grabbing disasters could be totally eclipsed by the tsunami. In the event, that fear proved groundless. “After the tsunami, the conference had to focus on flood disasters, of course – not just because of the level of public concern but also because of the issues raised,” said Hans-Joachim Daerr of the Foreign Office, who headed the German delegation. “And yet, I think the conference succeeded quite well in dealing with the broad agenda it was meant to address.”
The German delegation offered conceptual, technological and financial help for the creation of an early warning system for the Indian Ocean. It also proposed that, within a very short time, a follow-up conference could meet in Bonn to examine the global potential for creating early-warning systems for all other relevant risks.
Tsunami disaster arouses media interest
After the Indian Ocean seaquake and the following flood catastrophe, international media propelled disaster relief to the top of its agenda. Prevention experts saw this as an extraordinary situation. “Disaster prevention is supposed to stop an event – a catastrophe – from occurring. Basically, it is an attempt to achieve a non-event,” says Karl-Otto Zentel, managing director of the German Committee for Disaster Reduction (DKKV). Normally, generating interest in disaster prevention is difficult.
“The degree of media interest shown in this conference is largely due to the tsunami,” says Zentel. He regrets that some issues at the conference were indeed sidelined by the most recent catastrophe. One example of neglect was, that hardly anyone discussed the creation of multi-sectoral and interdisciplinary working groups in as many countries as possible to form national platforms for civil society involvement in disaster prevention. This, however, is a priority for the DKKV. Zentel particularly criticised the fact that the debate on early warning systems focused almost exclusively on technology and devoted very little time to the equally important issue of capacity building.
A new start needs to be planned
An interesting aspect of the conference was that, of all the disaster prevention experts present, not one claimed to have predicted the tsunami in the Indian Ocean. All were taken equally by surprise by the quake and the ensuing waves. “The implications are far-reaching – especially as the risk was perceived by neither scientists nor practitioners,” says Tantiwanit Worawoot from Thailand, elaborating on the tsunami’s impact on his job. “That is why the human and material damage is so great. In the tourist areas in the south of the country, which were particularly hard hit, disposal systems were inadequate. Now, before making a new start, we should draw up security and environmental plans.”
But even in the areas not affected by the tsunami, experts now see new opportunities for improving disaster prevention. “The tsunami was a wake-up call, one that will make it easier for us to gain acceptance for new prevention methods. As well as reviewing the risks of tornadoes, floods, fires and earthquakes, we will also be reappraising the tsunami risk in El Salvador,” says Jozcabet Guerrero, who works in the field of disaster reduction with the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ).
More and better communication needed
Disaster prevention depends on people with a great variety of professional and academic backgrounds. On the other hand, there already is, to some extent, such a thing as a disaster jargon. As a result, communication with scientists or the media may prove difficult. Sometimes, language barriers are encountered.
Professor Dr. Jochen Zschau of the GeoResearch Centre in Potsdam near Berlin describes the need for communication: “From the viewpoint of the scientific community, we have a weak point at the practical implementation stage. Weaknesses in disaster prevention are not due to individual parts of the system, such as science, disaster management or policy; they are due to missing links between those constituents. Scientists now realise this and are making an effort to understand the other side. Conversely, too, disaster management experts are becoming more open to science.”
Dr. Harald Mehl of the German Remote Sensing Data Centre (DFD) also sees a need to improve communication: “One important point is that space agencies, satellite operators and users need to understand one another better and develop a better understanding of what the other side is doing. The space community and the disaster management community still speak different languages. Communication difficulties are the result.”
Concerning his own field of earth observation/satellite remote sensing, the main thing Mehl takes home from the conference is knowledge of the latest initiatives, the way the issue of disaster management is being addressed and the needs and requirements which satellite imagery has to meet to be of use to disaster managers. “At the time of the last conference in Yokohama (1994), we had satellite images with a spatial resolution of 15 to 30 metres,” Mehl comments. “Today we take shots with a resolution of about one metre.” With the help of such high-precision images, it is possible to provide aid organisations with up-to-date maps for orientation and damage assessment. “That is useful for the work of disaster relief agencies such as the German Federal Agency for Technical Help (THW) and the Red Cross as well as Médecins Sans Frontières and other aid organisations,” says Mehl.
A decade after the earthquake
The Japanese hosts admirably rose up to the organisational and logistical challenges presented by the presence of over 4,000 delegates from 168 countries. Kobe had been chosen as the venue for the conference in remembrance of the 1995 earthquake and the city’s resolute reconstruction. 6,400 people died, fire raged through the city, thousands of buildings and the infrastructure of the scenically sited port were destroyed. All delegates knew about the incident, and they were informed by video footage, exhibitions and memorials. Nonetheless, the immaculate functioning of inner-city life made it hard to imagine the havoc that was wreaked only a decade ago. “The inspirational spirit of Kobe did not impact on the conference as much as I would have liked,” says Loy Rego, director of the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC).
Traudel Köhler of Germany’s Development Ministry (BMZ) notes that the conference participants were barely aware of the significance of the venue. Nonetheless, she is very pleased with the way the conference had been prepared and organised. All she misses in the final document are time frames and binding indicators. “Despite the progress we have made in the last ten years in integrating disaster prevention into development cooperation, there is still a great deal to be done. I hope today’s heightened public awareness will make it easier for us to tackle that task.”
In the Public Forum of the conference, InWEnt staged a workshop on “Capacity Building and Utilisation of Technology in Disaster Risk Management” in cooperation with GTZ and the German Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR). On the question of planning future relieve actions, Dr. Rakesh Dubey from India remarked: “The cooperation with InWEnt and GTZ has prompted us to think about joint training activities for African specialists, because Indian training and advice programmes are more economical than European ones.” Maria Bilia from Tanzania stressed that two steps, in particular, are urgently needed: “improving information management and modernising the existing early warning systems.”
A particularly positive response from the conference delegates was generated by a host of concepts for interdisciplinary and supraregional cooperation and networking. On this subject and on the merit of the conference as a whole, the director of the Civil Protection Organisation of Zimbabwe, M. S. Pawadyira says: “With some risks, such as floods, we have found it is imperative to take a cross-border view. The cause cannot just be sought on the lower reaches of the rivers in Mozambique. That is why we are now working together as a region to contain flood risks.” What Pawadyira found particularly important was that, in contrast to the 1994 conference, smaller countries were now involved in the negotiating and formulation process in Kobe: “Without active participation, there can be no ownership of conference results. And that impacts negatively on the subsequent implementation of recommendations. In Yokohama, we were there to listen and learn. In Kobe we are active participants. That is thanks to training.”
Dr. Christina Kamlage
is a senior project manager in the InWEnt division “Environment, Energy and Water”
responsible for the disaster prevention sector.
christina.kamlage@inwent.org
Erich Süssdorf
headed the Environmental and Resource
Protection unit of Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft from 1993 to 1997. As managing director
of ETS Consultants GmbH, his main work now involves development studies and project management.
erich.suessdorf@t-online.de
Further information:
http://www.unisdr.org/wcdr
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