Clearly identify risks Africa faces

Rowena Hay in Business Day (South Africa): It is time for Africans to speak coherently about the environmental and social threats they face, building on and adapting established global risk models. Individual efforts in disaster risk reduction do make a difference and can eventually secure political will and public support.

It is about how we manage the risks to the environment, taking into account social and economic demands — if we don’t take them into account, they will trigger worse environmental risks.

There is a view of the world that risk can be quantified once-off, but this does not factor in compound disasters and cascading risks. We have been living in a world of uncertainty and constant change since the financial crisis of 2008. So we need to talk about adaptation. Coping capacity is based on the recognition that some communities cope better than others, and recognise the need to adapt to change. You look not only at vulnerability, but also people’s strengths.

...The 2014 World Economic Forum global risk report was released and the third UN World Conference on disaster risk reduction led to the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-30. The Hyogo framework was developed by a small group of scientists, sociologists and disaster management practitioners and was a practical, useful document. It was far-sighted in its approach to civil society and using ordinary people as volunteers.

Preparation for the post-2015 process started in 2011, with conversations about setting new goals. However, African representatives argued that many priority areas were only starting to be addressed in certain parts of the continent and the agenda should not be changed.

This was a triumph for the African voice, showing that the regional nature of some environmental issues should be further addressed. The growing nexus of environment, government and instability is often glossed over and that is a factor in Africa we simply can’t afford to ignore....

Photo of a 2006 flood in Algeria, shot by Astonar, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

African islands meet to address climate change and disaster risk challenges

ClimDev-Africa: Representatives of African Small Island Developing States (SIDS) have convened here for a two-day workshop to develop a collaborative framework for support to address the challenges of climate change and manage disaster risks.

The workshop is being held at the UNECA Headquarters under the auspices of the Climate for Development Africa (ClimDev-Africa) Programme, a joint initiative of the African Union Commission (AUC), the Africa Development Bank (AfDb) and the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA)  ‘s  African Climate Policy Centre (ACPC) a unit of the UNECA’s Special Initiatives Division (SID), which serves as the Secretariat for the ClimDev-Africa programme responsible for establishing the policy basis of the joint initiative.

The workshop aims to provide African SIDS with support to address the urgent challenges posed by climate change and seize opportunities in emerging areas related to the transition towards blue and green economies that are aligned to development aspirations.

The gathering is a follow up to a scoping mission to Cabo Verde, Union of the Comoros, Guinea Bissau, Mauritius, Seychelles and, São Tomé and Príncipe, undertaken by ACPC upon request from the African SIDS. The mission assessed their climate change adaptation and mitigation needs; identified priority interventions aimed at building country resilience to climate change and the means to address residual loss and damage. Africa’s six SIDS are highly vulnerable to climate change and related extreme weather-induced disasters that make it difficult for them to attain their development goals....

Shot of the Seychelles by Anse Takamaka, Mahé, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International, 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license

Majority of natural disasters climate related, official says

Alex Kirby in Responding to Climate Change: A senior French political leader, foreign minister Laurent Fabius, has told an international conference on how to reduce the risk from natural disasters that 70% of them are now linked to climate change, twice as many as twenty years ago.

Fabius is the incoming president of this year’s round of negotiations by member states of the UN climate change convention, to take place in Paris in December. He said disaster risk reduction and the struggle against climate change went hand in hand: “It is necessary to tackle these problems together and not separately.”

He was speaking against the background of two events which occurred thousands of miles apart on 14 March, linked by nothing except tragic coincidence.

In the Japanese city of Sendai the third UN world conference on disaster risk reduction began a five-day meeting. In the South Pacific Cyclone Pam brought death and devastation to the 83-island nation of Vanuatu on a scale seldom recorded in the region.

Vivien Maidaborn, executive director of Unicef New Zealand, said the disaster could prove one of the worst in Pacific history. “The sheer force of the storm, combined with communities just not set up to withstand it, could have devastating results for thousands across the region,” she said.

A Unicef worker in Vanuatu described the cyclone as “15 to 30 minutes of absolute terror” for “everybody in this country” as it passed over....

Sendai's skyline at dawn, shot by Caveman2, Wikimedia Commons, public domain

New global disaster reduction strategy must include vulnerable people

Jessica Hartog at the Thomson Reuters Foundation: Last week, international experts on disaster reduction met in Geneva to develop a new global framework to make the world more resilient to increasing natural disasters.

It is clear that disasters such as earthquakes, typhoons and floods are on the rise and have huge impacts. The U.N. Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) estimates that in the last 20 years, 1.3 million people have been killed by disasters. Of these deaths, 93 percent were in developing countries, highlighting how the poor are disproportionately vulnerable to disasters.

But there is more to the story than mortality rates. In the last 20 years, around 4.4 billion people have been affected in some way or another by disasters.

For people whose assets have been damaged or destroyed, farmers whose harvests have been lost, or communities whose road infrastructure has been damaged - cutting them off from their work, schools and markets -  economic losses are thought to have totalled $2 trillion in the same period.

It is expected that disasters will only continue to increase if we do not take measures to stop this trend. Major drivers are climate change and the growth of cities in areas that are already exposed to floods, tropical storms and earthquakes. This is why an internationally agreed disaster risk reduction strategy is so important....

From the 2010 flooding in Thailand, shot by Napast3379, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons 3.0 license 

Nepal's disaster preparedness woefully inadequate

Om Astha Rai in My Republica: Nepal has put in place plenty of plans, strategies and mechanisms to deal with disasters in the last five years.  But, is Nepal now well-prepared to manage disasters?  The answer is a big NO. In the aftermath of the recent Sunkoshi landslide and other devastating floods, particularly in the plains of the midwestern region, it seems that Nepal´s disaster preparedness is almost non-existent.

Government officials often dub 2009 as a landmark year in the field of disaster risk management. On October 11 that year, the government approved a national strategy for disaster risk management, outlining top five priority areas.  In the years since 2009, several mechanisms, as envisioned by the national strategy, have been formed to manage disasters.

...So, despite all this preparedness, why did the recent floods cause so much damage in the mid-western region? According to the National Emergency Operation Center (NEOC) of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA), floods and landslides have killed 123 people, injured 67 people and left 126 people missing in several parts of the country since August 14.

..."Perhaps, our disaster preparedness is far from adequate," says Ramesh Shrestha, an early warning system officer at Mercy Corps Nepal, an NGO working in disaster management sector. Shrestha believes that there is no gap in disaster management policies and strategies but their implementation is far from satisfactory. "This is why disasters continue to cause so much destruction every year," says Shrestha....

A highway next to the Sunkoshi River, shot by Rajesh2044, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license 

Japan to assist with disaster risk reduction training in Latin America and the Caribbean

Continuity Central: On July 31st 2014, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) signed a Memorandum of Cooperation for the ‘Disaster Risk Reduction Training Program for Latin America and the Caribbean’ with the Chilean International Cooperation Agency (AGCI).

The Memorandum of Cooperation will enable JICA to assist with disaster risk reduction training in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Through the combination of Japan and Chile’s disaster management resources, the program is designed to efficiently and effectively develop human resources with a high level of specialization, as well as to improve the capacity of government officials to respond to actual disasters. The program also aims to build a regional network for sharing experiences and knowledge from other Latin America and the Caribbean countries....

Nepal landslide deaths highlight disaster risk reduction gaps

IRIN: A landslide in Nepal on 2 August killed 33 and 122 are still missing as search and rescue continues. Experts say this event, one of the deadliest in the country’s recent history, is a wake-up call for hazard mapping, early warning, and disaster management. “The scale of human casualties in terms of fatal incidents is enormous and this is appalling,” Nepal Red Cross Society’s (NRCS) disaster risk reduction coordinator Krishna KC told IRIN.

During the early morning of 2 August, a 1.9km long slope of land perched 1,350 metres above the Sun Koshi river collapsed, according to an evaluation report by the Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD). Seven hundred and fifty personnel from the Nepal Army and Armed Police Force (a paramilitary unit) are continuing search and rescue efforts in the area, around 200km northeast Kathmandu.

...According to NRCS, the disaster caused one of the highest death tolls due to a landslide in a single village in Nepal’s history since records began in the 1950s. In the past decade landslides killed over 1,300 people and destroyed 10,000 houses, according to NRCS.

Government officials and scientists from ICIMOD and UN agencies have travelled to the affected area to support the ongoing response efforts and research how prevention and preparedness can be improved in what the Asia Disaster Preparedness Center calls one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world.

While search and rescue continues in the Himalayan foothills, experts are concerned about potential flood risk downstream. According to the government’s Department of Hydrology and Meteorology (DHM), debris created a dam across the Sun Koshi river within 13 hours of the landslide starting. Seven million cubic metres of water now extend around 3km upstream, creating a large lake. The latest report by NRCS predicts that the breach of the land mass could create substantial flood risk for 11 downstream Nepali districts....

A river in the Himalayas (okay, it's Tibet, not Nepal). Shot by Mayank Bhagya, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Disaster-resilient school design in the Philippines

Maricris Irene V. Tamolang in the Philippine Daily Inquirer: While some schools in the Philippines serve as evacuation centers in times of calamities, none are especially designed to adapt to and withstand natural disasters. Like other structures vulnerable to tropical storms, schools get damaged or worse, destroyed, depriving evacuees the safety they most need.

To address this problem, three incoming senior architecture students at the University of the Philippines Diliman came up with a climate-adaptive and disaster-resilient school design strong enough to survive supertyphoons like “Yolanda.”

With inputs from the group’s adviser, Nicolo del Castillo, “Taklob,” which means cover (derived from the word “Tacloban”), topped the school category of “Build Forward,” a competition sponsored by a property developer. The team members modeled Taklob after the structural design of a bridge introduced in their Architectural Structures IV class last semester, said Rafael Khemlani, who suggested the idea.

This model mainly accounted for the arches and cable wires that replaced the conventional columns in most construction projects, he said. Each classroom has an area of 76.5 sq m. It has a restroom and an evacuation supply storage—both located at the rear side—and doors at both ends of the front side. The floor is elevated 1 meter from the ground to prevent damage from storm surges.

...“We won’t call it a green design because the main element used is mostly steel,” Mervin Afan said. “But it is sustainable because of its tropical feature, allowing air to pass through easily. It is climate-adaptive because of its flexibility. During hot days, you can leave the storm shutters open and when the rainy season sets in, you can keep them closed.”...

A Philippine resident sits outside of his home in the aftermath of Super Typhoon Haiyan. US military photo

Staving off disasters together

Nicola Banwell in the Dhaka Tribune (Bangladesh): Collaboration between the public and private sectors, also known as Public Private Partnerships (PPPs), can create an enabling environment for community resilience and disaster risk reduction. Public private partnerships involve harnessing investment, expertise, and innovation from the private sector for better public infrastructure – including both physical infrastructure (as in roads, railways, etc) and social infrastructure (such as hospitals, schools, and health services).

Small and medium enterprise (SMEs) and other private sector investment is a key strategy in sustainable development financing in the emerging post-2015 development agenda as well.

There is great scope for harnessing private sector strengths and expertise in disaster risk reduction as PPPs increase access to technical expertise and knowledge, as well as resources and innovative solutions. Mainstreaming disaster risk reduction in the private sector can create ample opportunities for the development of innovative technology, and steer public demand and consumers toward disaster resilient materials, solutions, and technology.

Furthermore, because of the private sector’s direct relationship with consumers, producers, and those in the supply chain, private sector investment has the potential to reach a wide range of individuals, communities, and enterprises.

Disaster losses undermine business performance and sustainability, while simultaneously resulting in widespread loss to populations in terms of life, livelihood, and infrastructure. For these reasons, PPPs are of mutual benefit to both parties.

For example, the safety and resiliency of communities can be promoted by the private sector through investment in disaster risk reduction, quality assurance, and standard setting in urban structures, and the development of resilient power and water infrastructure. At the same time these investments also protect their own business continuity, as it enables the private sector to provide their goods and services reliably, with reduced interruption. Further to this, in the event of a disaster, the reliable provision of goods and services allows the community access to vital goods and services....

Fishing in a flooded field in Bangladesh, shot by Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

UN lauds Philippines for disaster risk reduction initiatives

Jerry Esplanada in Emergency Management via McClatchy News: The Philippines is one of the most disaster-prone countries in Asia that have made "striking paradigm shifts" in disaster risk reduction and management, according to the head of the Geneva-based United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR).

Margareta Wahlstrom, also UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's special representative on disaster risk reduction, on Saturday reported that Manila is "developing more sophisticated methods of gauging the impact of typhoons following 'Haiyan,'" also called Supertyphoon "Yolanda," which devastated Eastern Visayas in November.

"Even though Cyclone Haiyan claimed over 6,200 lives when it struck the Philippines, many more were spared because of early warnings and evacuations, particularly in the province of Cebu," she said in a statement issued the day before the opening of the 6th Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Bangkok.

Like the Philippines, Bangladesh "has one of the best cyclone preparedness programs today, having lost hundreds of thousands of lives in the past," Wahlstrom pointed out. Indonesia, for its part, "has made disaster risk reduction a pillar of its national development policy," she said.

"A similar revolution needs to take place in managing disaster risks across public and private sectors in the region in order to stop the hemorrhaging of assets and wealth caused by disasters," she emphasized. According to the UNISDR chief, "there are encouraging signs that the business community across Asia is alert to the issue."...

Typhoon damage post-Haiyan, US State Department photo

Asia can show the way in building disaster resilience

Margarete Wahlstrom at the Thomson Reuters Foundation via UNISDR: Next week, 2,500 delegates from more than 39 countries in Asia and the Pacific are expected in Bangkok, Thailand, for the Sixth Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction, to shape future efforts to build more resilient communities and nations.

The outcome of the meeting will have long-term significance for the world at large, as the recommendations will feed into a new global agreement on disaster risk reduction which will replace the current Hyogo Framework for Action, adopted in 2005 by all U.N. member States following the Indian Ocean tsunami.

When Asia speaks on disaster risk management, the rest of the world listens. The region suffers more than 80 percent of the world’s disaster events. Nine of the world’s 10 most significant disaster events last year by fatalities occurred in the Philippines, India, Pakistan, Japan and China. Some 14,500 lives were lost in tropical cyclones, floods, heat waves, cold waves and earthquakes.

...The learning from the last nine years of implementing the Hyogo Framework for Action across the region tells us that while much progress has been made when it comes to reducing the risk of fatalities in the event of a disaster, countries still struggle when it comes to tackling the causes of risk creation and economic losses.

Many countries are forced to spend far too much of their budgets on disaster response, meeting the emergency needs of affected people and, in the longer term,  repairing roads, schools, health facilities and critical infrastructure which should have been disaster-proof in the first place.

If a percentage of response and recovery money were invested wisely in urban planning and land use to reduce the population’s exposure to risk, then the long-term savings would be significant. For every $1 invested in disaster risk reduction, the long-term savings are at least $4 to $8 - more money that can be spent on education, health and job creation....

NASA image of Cyclone Phailin in the Bay of Bengal, October 11, 2013

Recognising resilience innovation in the Pacific

A press release from the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction: To help mark the approaching 10th anniversary of the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA), the global strategy for reducing disaster losses worldwide, the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) Sub-Regional Office for the Pacific today launched the inaugural Pacific Innovation and Leadership Award for Resilience (PILAR), a pioneering initiative in the region.

The award recognises exemplary action taken by individuals, businesses, communities, governments and or non-governmental organisations across all the Pacific Island Countries and Territories, to build community and national resilience through disaster risk reduction measures.

Mr Timothy Wilcox, UNISDR’s Sub-Regional Coordinator for the Pacific, said: “This is the last Pacific Platform before a post-2015 framework for disaster risk reduction is endorsed next year by the global community in Japan. It is appropriate that we mark the contributions of so many activities with the launch of an award that recognises and promotes innovation, good-practice and leadership in these areas”.

Pacific Island Countries and Territories face extreme risk from naturally occurring hazards that are likely to intensify with the onset of climate change. Despite the inherent vulnerabilities that confront the Pacific, there have been many opportunities for innovation and ingenuity from all sectors of society to reduce disaster impact and to ensure long term sustainability of nations and communities.

The award covers a range of areas including awareness-raising, knowledge sharing, community engagement, policy interventions, and other resilience-building activities....

Landing in Fiji, shot by Kat Clay, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

New disaster risk reduction strategies needed rather than “rearranging deckchairs on Titanic”

Stella Dawson at the Thomson Reuters Foundation: Countries must develop new strategies for preventing damage from natural disasters and invest in rapid-response systems so that they can bounce back quickly after catastrophe hits, development officials and policymakers said.

The number of natural disasters has doubled in the last 30 years, economic costs have quadrupled in size, and low-income countries and small islands are at risk of having their entire economy wiped if disaster hits, according to the World Bank.

Without a new strategy, the number of lives lost and the economic costs will escalate at an even faster rate, officials said.  For instance by 2050, 1.5 billion people will live in cities exposed to major storms and earthquakes, double the number today. “We must make this part of a comprehensive policy to be prepared for tougher weather and more natural disasters that are coming out of climate change in the years ahead,” Borge Brende, foreign affairs minister for Norway, during World Bank spring meetings, which wrapped here in Washington this weekend.

“We are doing too much rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic rather than dealing with what will be hitting us,” he said.

For every $100 spent today on official development aid, only 40 cents goes to disaster prevention and preparedness, a sum that is clearly inadequate given the increasing frequency of natural disasters, according to Rachel Kyte, special envoy for climate change at the World Bank.

The damage is getting worse. The World Bank says 2011 was the costliest year on record for disasters at $380 billion, and between 1980 and 2011 over 70 percent of disaster-related losses were weather related....

A feral goat grazing in the Valley of Rocks in the UK, shot by Mark Robinson, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr,  under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license 

Kariba Dam collapse fears and disaster preparedness in Zimbabwe

IRIN: Could fears of the imminent collapse of the more than five-decade-old Kariba Dam on the Zambezi river between Zimbabwe and Zambia spur Zimbabwe into more effective disaster preparedness?

In early March, engineers at a conference organized by the Zambezi River Authority (ZRA, a Zambia-Zimbabwe organization which manages the Kariba Dam) warned that the 128-metre-high dam could collapse, threatening at least 3.5 million people especially in Mozambique and Malawi.

Years of erosion had made the foundations of the dam weaker, said engineers. "Anything is possible, so there is a need to act to avoid risk and minimize panic,” Modibo Traore, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (OCHA) in Zimbabwe, told IRIN. The Kariba Dam holds one of the largest man-made expanses of water in the world.

ZRA says the “situation at the Kariba Dam wall is a cause for grave concern”, and “all urgency is expected in order to avert any such catastrophe as dam failure”. It acknowledged the need for major repairs.

Disaster preparedness in Zimbabwe is extremely weak, if the example of recent flooding involving a partially built dam is anything to go by. In February, flooding of the Tokwe-Mukosi dam in southeastern Zimbabwe displaced thousands of people, and forced the government to declare it a national disaster...

The Kariba Dam in Zimbabwe, shot by Benbbb (Ben Bird), public domain 

How effective is Pakistan’s disaster authority?

IRIN: The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) was set up shortly after the 2005 quake that killed at least 87,000 people in northern Pakistan to act as the “implementing, coordinating and monitoring body” for disaster management.  What the government wanted was an NDMA that stands ready to pre-empt and respond to natural disasters as they occur. Did it get it? Opinions vary.

“Right now, we see problems with disaster management - and were just discussing why the drought and famine in Tharparkar had been allowed to occur despite the existence of the disaster prevention bodies,” Mushtaq Ahmed Jan, lecturer at Peshawar University’s Centre for Disaster Preparedness and Management told IRIN, blaming the problem on the Meteorological Office’s failure to predict low rainfall, followed by mismanagement at several levels.

Other experts echo this view. Disaster management in Pakistan has “not been very effective”, Abuturab Khan, assistant professor at the COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, based in Abottabad, told IRIN. Khan was one of the authors of a report Natural hazards and disaster management in Pakistan produced in 2008 and published by the Munich Personal RePEc Archive.

“Disaster management aims to reduce, or avoid the potential losses from hazards, assure prompt and appropriate assistance to victims of disaster, and achieve rapid and effective recovery,” the report says. It questions Pakistan’s capacity to achieve this and says many flaws remain in delivering what people need in disasters of various kinds....

Samar province to use lessons from Yolanda (Haiyan) in its disaster management

Philippine Inforamtion Agency: In its effort to improve disaster risk reduction management in Samar province,  Samar LGU  will be conducting a technical consultation on managing disasters on April 3-4, 2014 at the Ciriaco Hotel, Calbayog City.

The activity called Technical Consultation on Management of Typhoon Yolanda: Learning, Challenges and Road ahead for Improved Disaster Management Systems in Samar Province  will be done in coordination with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), DILG and the Office of the Civil Defense.

The provincial government of Samar wants to use the lessons of super typhoon Yolanda to improve its handling and managing of areas gravely affected. Typhoon Yolanda caused the loss of lives, properties and infrastructure in Samar towns especially in Marabut and Basey, and even in Sta Rita.

In a letter-invitation, Christine Caidic, Samar’s Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction Management Officer said that the technical consultation will give emphasis   on the Early Warning Systems (EWS), response and relief. It also aims to come up with a Prioritized List of Actions to improve the management of the affected areas.

From PAGASA,Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda making landfall south of Tacloban City on the Island of Leyte. 7:00am PST / November 8, 2013

Conservation cooperation a ‘matter of survival’ for Arabs

Ola Al-Ghazawy in SciDev.net: The Arab region’s best chance of facing the challenges of food insecurity, water scarcity and natural disasters lies in collaborating on environmental preservation, a study says. The study, published in The Lancet (20 January), argues that current academic discussions about health, population and development in the Arab region fail to convey the true level of urgency.

Rather than speaking about security — as is common in much development parlance — the report argues that the Arab world is facing threats great enough to call into question its survival, and calls for “using survival as an analytical concept in studying the dynamics driving the threats”.

Muna Abdel Aziz, a Sudanese consultant in public health medicine based at the Warrington Borough Council, United Kingdom, tells SciDev.Net that “the concept of survival indicates urgency whereas security does not necessarily convey this”.

Ecological sustainability is a key issue because population-environment-development dynamics have an interactive relationship with health, the report says. For example, environmental factors such as droughts can force urbanisation, and the city slums formed as a result can become a breeding ground for disease.

The paper adds that sufficient investment in disaster preparedness is beyond any single nation’s capacity, making collaboration essential. Abbas El-Zein, lead author of the paper and an associate professor at the University of Sydney, Australia, tells SciDev.Net: “We are arguing that collaboration around ecological sustainability offers the best chance of success in dealing with issues such as water scarcity, food insecurity and emergency preparedness”....

High-rises in Shibam, Wadi Hadhramaut (or Hadhramout, Hadramawt) Yemen. Shot by Jialiang Gao www.peace-on-earth.org, Wikimedia Commons,  under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

PM Hasina of Bangladesh for upgrading disaster mitigation system

The Daily Star (Bangladesh): Stressing upgrading the traditional early warning and disaster mitigation system, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Sunday said that international cooperation for exchange of weather data and information is very important for worldwide disaster management.

“Since meteorological phenomena do not obey political or geographical boundaries, international cooperation for exchange of weather data and information throughout the globe is essential for worldwide disaster management,” she said.

“We’ve to ensure proper application of latest technology with our conventional system for upgrading our existing early warning and mitigation activities,” Hasina said, inaugurating the 41st session of WMO/ESCAP Panel on Tropical Cyclones for the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea.

Defence Secretary Khondoker M Asaduzzaman delivered the address of welcome at the inaugural ceremony held at the International Conference Center of the Prime Minister's Office in the morning. Director of Bangladesh Metrological Department Md Shah Alam gave the vote of thanks....

Cusco, Peru receives help from World Bank in adapting to climate change

Via Andina in Peru This Week: The Andean city of Cusco in southern Peru has received assistance from the World Bank to strengthen local climate change adaptation planning. The World Bank’s disaster risk management team in Latin America and the Caribbean recently piloted a regional study and technical assistance initiative in Cusco and other four small and medium sized cities (SMSC) in the region.

The initiative’s main objective was to support SMSC with their adaptation planning for floods and landslides, two of the most recurrent climate-related hazards in the region. SMSC in the LAC region are diverse in location, topography and socio-economic and institutional make-up, yet many are struggling with similar challenges caused by rapid urban growth, weak capacities in urban planning and inadequate provision for public services and infrastructure.

SMSC are also less likely to have had access to climate change adaptation (CCA) training, financing or knowledge networks. The ultimate goal of the initiative was to strengthen local adaptive capacity and to increase urban resilience through mainstreaming climate change adaptation into current planning systems. The other medium sized cities selected were Castries, Saint Lucia; El Progreso, Honduras; Estelí, Nicaragua; and Santos, Brazil.

Over the course of one and a half years, the task team worked with these cities to conduct three assessments to evaluate their i) climate related risks, ii) institutional adaptive capacities, and iii) socio-economic capacities to adapt to climate change.

These assessments, in conjunction with a series of consultative workshops with city planners and decision-makers, resulted in the development of Strategic Climate Adaptation Investment and Institutional Strengthening Plans for each city. These plans identify priority investments and activities to strengthen institutional capacities for climate change adaptation....

Roofs in Cusco, shot by Colegota, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Spain license

Bangladesh teaches disaster preparedness to reduce risk

IRIN: Bangladesh is working to enhance children’s understanding of disaster preparedness with the introduction of 10 new supplementary books for teaching the subject, which has been part of the education curriculum in primary and secondary schools since 2004.

“With these books, students will be taught about disaster… [preparedness] by rhymes and stories, so that they can understand the risks,” Shafikur Rahman, chairman of the National Curriculum and Textbook Board (NCTB), told IRIN.

In the Bangladesh 2010 National Education Policy disaster preparedness is cited as a core area to be incorporated into the curriculum, “to build students as skilled human resources to fight the challenges of the world threatened by climate change and other natural disasters, and to create in them a social awareness about environment." The Asian Disaster Preparedness Centre lists this low-lying nation of 155 million people as one of the most disaster-prone states in the world, with cyclones entering the Bay of Bengal and making landfall along the Bangladesh coast almost every year.

More than two-thirds of the country’s 64 districts are prone to natural disasters, including cyclones, floods, landslides, tornadoes and drought. The Comprehensive Disaster Management Programme (CDMP) of the Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief is providing financial and technical support to incorporate disaster preparedness in the Bangladesh school curriculum....
Rural Bangladesh children, shot by Mark Knobil , Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license