RIO+20 FEATURE: SEVEN ISSUES, SEVEN EXPERTS – DISASTERS
New York, Jun 15 2012 5:10PM
World leaders, along with thousands of participants from governments, the private sector, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and other groups will come together in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to take part in the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) later this month.
The Conference seeks to shape how countries and their citizens can reduce poverty, advance social equity and ensure environmental protection to achieve long-term growth.
Seven key areas have been identified by the UN as needing urgent attention: creation of jobs, access to energy, building sustainable cities, ensuring food security and sustainable agriculture, access to water, managements of oceans and disaster readiness. But what do each of them entail and how can people contribute to a sustainable future?
In our <em><"/apps/news/featurenews.asp?Cr=Sustainable+Development&Cr1=Feature">Seven Issues, Seven Experts</em> series UN officials tell us what we can expect and how we can contribute to each area to make our planet more sustainable.
In the third installment, the UN News Centre spoke with <"http://www.unisdr.org/">Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction, Margareta Wahlström about what countries and communities can do to prevent disasters, and why it's important to start with disaster risk prevention in our homes.
<div id="EmbedPhotoLeft" style="width:200px;"><"/News/dh/photos/large/2011/October/27-10-2011elsalvador.jpg" class="lightbox" title="Residents of the flood-affected Icaco community in El Salvador collect energy cookies provided by the WFP. Photo: WFP/Tania Moreno" rel="gallery-default"><img class="Embed" src="/News/dh/photos/2011/October/27-10-2011elsalvador.jpg" style="width:180px; height:120px;">
<p class="phtocaption2">Residents of the flood-affected Icaco community in El Salvador collect energy cookies provided by the WFP. Photo: WFP/Tania Moreno</p>
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<strong>News Centre:</strong> How does disaster readiness fit into the sustainable development picture?
<strong>Margareta Wahlström: </strong>It is right at the centre of it because every time a disaster hits, whether it is flooding, an earthquake, a hurricane or landslides, it destroys people's property and, too often, takes lives. Schools collapse along with bridges, roads, hospitals, people's homes, and in most countries of the world people have no insurance. There is nobody to pay for this so every time there is a disaster, however small from the global perspective, it destroys people's investment for the better life that they want to have.
Something is lost and that I think is the core of sustainable development - that in an equitable fashion all people in the world will be able to benefit from the enormous economic and social development.
<strong>News Centre:</strong> There's a sense that disasters are difficult to predict and therefore hard to prepare for. What can governments do to plan ahead of each disaster?
<div id="EmbedPhotoRight" style="width:200px;"><"/News/dh/photos/large/2011/06-06-flood.jpg" class="lightbox" title="Victims of the worst floods to hit Pakistan in several years are pictured with some of their belongings in the northwestern city of Nowshera. UN Photo/WFP/Amjad Jamal" rel="gallery-default"><img class="Embed" src="/News/dh/photos/2011/06-06-flood.jpg" style="width:180px; height:120px;">
<p class="phtocaption2">Victims of the worst floods to hit Pakistan in several years are pictured with some of their belongings in the northwestern city of Nowshera. UN Photo/WFP/Amjad Jamal</p>
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<strong>Margareta Wahlström: </strong>It depends on the country. There are countries that are disaster-prone where every year there are several events, and there are some countries that are not so disaster-prone even though the frequency of disasters is increasing due to climate variability, and higher population density.
But let's start with the most disaster-prone countries. They need to have a very strong public education system. People need to know about the risks so that they can self-organize.
They must also have early warning and alert systems, which save many many lives today. If a hurricane is approaching you can actually follow it on a map and say where it will land in five days. This allows people to start preparing by evacuating properties for example. This saves lives and money.
Another thing that many countries have already done is to strengthen their capacity to respond to a disaster when it happens. They train people, they have supplies and they have means of transport and communication ready to respond.
The more medium-term issue is how governments and people actually prepare to diminish the impact of the risk itself. This entails planning so that people don't live on highly vulnerable land, next to river banks that flood every year, or next to the ocean shore. These are issues of land use planning, quality of infrastructure and risk assessments. These are things that have already happened in many countries but certainly not enough, and they are linked to education as well. Something Japan is doing very effectively is making sure is that children already engage at a really early age to understand the risks of Japan, and not only learning how to behave during a crisis, but also how to reduce the risks in their daily lives.
<div id="EmbedPhotoLeft" style="width:200px;"><"/News/dh/photos/large/2011/July/26-07-2011fukushima.jpg" class="lightbox" title="An IAEA fact-finding team examines devastation at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in May 2011. Photo: IAEA/Greg Webb" rel="gallery-default"><img class="Embed" src="/News/dh/photos/2011/July/26-07-2011fukushima.jpg" style="width:180px; height:120px;">
<p class="phtocaption2">An IAEA fact-finding team examines devastation at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in May 2011. Photo: IAEA/Greg Webb</p>
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<strong>UN News Centre: </strong>You said the number of disasters keep increasing. Why this is and can we expect this trend to continue?
<strong>Margareta Wahlström:</strong> There are quite a few reasons. Part of it is due to development itself and this may be a bit contradictory, but because so many people live in such highly vulnerable areas, that means that the exposure of human societies is increasing and is already costing enormous amounts of money, and will cost even more in the future.
A simple example is that urban flooding is increasing very rapidly because we are building over the natural waterways of the water so that it can no longer flow off. Cities are not building good drainage systems, so when it rains water doesn't go away, it just keeps building up in the urban area.
The very rapid urbanization by itself also creates risks because cities either do not have resources or cannot just keep up with the rapid growth.
In addition, the change in patterns of weather, unpredictable rain, new drought patterns, all of this of course increases the incidences of extreme events that cause disasters in human society.
Just remember what has happened in the past two years. The impact of disasters is not just national but affects entire geographic regions through the interconnectedness of trade relationships.
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Jun 15 2012 5:10PM
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