structural response to building capacity needs for drr
TRANSCRIPT
Structural response to building capacities needs for DRR
Sarbjit Singh Sahota, Director, RedR India
www.redr.org
The problems of our times—from fighting global epidemics and terrorism to preparing for natural disasters, from mediating ethno-political conflict to preventing wars, from revitalizing cities to revolutionizing health care—cannot be understood or solved by insulated thinking and uncoordinated action .
Practitioners need the tools of multiple disciplines to understand these challenging issues and to contribute to their resolution.
- University of Pennsylvania
Agenda for this session
Explore the type of capacity building required to achieve DRR. Quality, intensity, Scope; will focus on Non-Governmental initiatives.
Capacity Building for DRR is about fostering an integrated approach
In multiple domainsDevelopment planningPreparedness planningContingency planning andEmergency Response
Across disciplinesBreaks-down/over-come boundaries ofsector, scale and discipline to ensure that RISK is managed at the most appropriate level by the most appropriate people
in a manner that leads to safe development.
Fundamental Premise
Disasters are essentially a social and health issue Disasters tend to intensify pre-existing status, differences and inequalities. DRR can be a supper goal; an organizational priority for all its activities.
What are the Sectors, common to any post-disaster Responses?
WaterShelterSanitationFood and Nutrition
Education
Curative Health CareLivelihoodsMental Health Care……
All these are essentially services, which may have existed pre-disaster
as well and The quality of these services reflect in the form of
development index of any place.
Securin
g
Public H
ealth
Services during non- disaster time?
•About 30 million persons in rural areas suffer form sanitation-related disease•5 of the 10 top killer diseases of children aged 1-4 in rural areas are related to water and sanitation•About 0.6-0.7 million children die of diarrhea annually•Typhoid, dysentery, gastroenteritis, jaundice and malaria claim the lives of over a fifth of the children aged 1-4 in rural areas•Economic loss of Rs. 1200 crore annually due to loss of man-days on accidents of diseases
Source: Central Bureau of Health Intelligence, Ministry of Health and Family
Welfare, GoI, 1998-99
Post disaster Suspension of services like water, sanitation…..
adverse effects on well-being, quality of life, and development of affected populations as well as those who are not directly affected.
Improving sustainability of existing services- an integral approach to risk reductionReducing vulnerability to disasters can be a Public Health
Priority.
First Level of Capacity building
Perspective building on:Disasters and development as a continuum Public Health Approach
Infrastructural Causes
Population Environment
Primary Vulnerabilities
Structural CauseGovernance
Society
Culture
Economy
Socio- Economic Vulnerability and Capacities
Natural Hazard Man-Made Hazard
Underlying cause
Immediate Cause
Manifestation
Development, Disaster Prevention and Preparednes s Planning
Contingency Planning and Early Warning
Emergency Response
Disasters and development continuum
Information for
Information for
Information for
Environmental Health in Support of Public Health
Sanitation
Health and Hygiene Promotion
Wat
er S
uppl
y
Shelter&
Settlement
Decision Making (What to do?)
Disaster situation are unstructured problemSimilarly DRR is a goal with multiplicity of options, choices and complexity Hence both pre and post disasters pose a significant challenge to decision making.‘effective decisions’ = Contextual decisions
Organisational capacity Intelligence
Design
Choice
Implementation
Monitoring
Dec
isio
n m
akin
g
Prob
lem
Sol
ving
Various sciences and perspectives feed into making the intelligencerequired to do effective disaster management.
collective intelligence needs to interact with established decision support systems to produce effective decisions e.g tools to facilitating user decision making , standards
disaster decision making is a kin to problem solving,
Vulnerability
HazardDEVELOPMENT
PLANNING
PREPAREDNESS PLANNING
Policies, Laws and By Laws
Awareness and Partnerships
Institutional and Operational Systems
Early Warning Systems
CONTINGENCY PLANNING
Environment Service Delivery System
Population GovernanceInfrastructuresFood Security Poverty ReductionLifelines
CAPACITY BUILDING
Risk Reduction Planning (two pronged approach)VulnerabilityReduction
Risk management
Vulnerability Analysis
Mapping vulnerability is not enough, analysis along different pathways [inequality stemming from race, class, gender…..demographic processes (growth and population distribution) etc.] is important for targeted risk reduction. Analysis need to be followed by policy and structural responses. Explores the relationships between "event vulnerability" and "consequence vulnerability" and to understand the recovery process.event vulnerability refer to household vulnerability that is associated with the direct impacts from a disaster agent; and consequence vulnerability will refer to the household's vulnerability associated with the social and political processes of recovering from the disaster event.
Addressing vulnerability:
Vulnerability reduction is a political-economic phenomenon, which more than often reinforces the existing patters.institutions define problems in terms of what their own capacities
Need is to go much beyond 'technical fix' approach and consider the opportunity costs and how that capital might be spent in other ways to deal with the forces that generate peoples' vulnerability.
Policy Response to Vulnerability Analysis
state to engage in activities that deal with inherent inequality and prejudice?What if, state is part of the problem in maintaining such power systemthere are few governments in the world which
officially claim that they are uninterested in protecting their own citizens.
They may be interested in potentially cheaper/practical ways of reducing vulnerability.
We all need to engage in DRR but what about resource, technologies, implementation….?Do resource constrained regions and countries have a chance?
The earthquake triggered tsunamis that crossed the Indian Ocean with
great force. A 90 foot wave was measured in Sumatra, Indonesia, and
a 12 foot wave was measured in Puntland, Somolia.
Risk Reduction: ProsperityN
atur
al H
azar
ds
Through vario
us steps
Disaster R
isk Reduction is
achieved
Food
Educ
atio
n
Hea
lth
Comprehensive Risk Reduction
Disaster RiskIdentification
Comprehensive Risk Reduction in Community
Step-I: Community Organisation
Wat
er
Sani
tatio
nFacilitatedNegotiation
Disaster Prone CommunityRR is a sectoral responsibility delivered in coordination with others.
Tran
sitio
n
Task Based Consciousness based
What Capacity do we need?
A. skills, attitude and aptitude required to be a RR facilitators with:Capacity to Communicate and work with….….Cross sectoral perspective; Integrated Knowledge-Ref. Uni.of Penn statementCapacity to help in planning and managementCapacity to channel technical knowledge and wisdom from….
RedR supports individuals and organisations to create comprehensive capacities and capabilities to work on
DRR, hence create communities of practice; an important step towards institutionalisation of DRR.
B. TechnologyTechnology for Disaster Risk Reduction
Technology for Disaster Response
Overarching Issues
Housing and settlement Early WarningDrinking Water Sewerage and sanitationSolid Waste managementHealth SystemsCommunication
Housing andSettlement PlanningWaterSanitationLogisticsHealth CareCommunicatio n
Appropriate standardsBest Operating PracticesResponsive to Environment and ecologyCulture SpecificTransferable, Adoptable
What Capacity do we need?
•For RedR, appropriate technologies are part of the knowledge that we deploy for sectoral risk reduction. •The knowledge is delivered though its members and the training courses.
Lev
el o
f Res
ourc
e A
vaila
ble
for
Dev
elop
men
tSpace for Civil Society Increase
•Resources Decrease as we move away from the administrative capital•Essentially reach of resources reduces
We
have
gre
at a
Cha
nce
Quality and Quantity of Services
What do we need? C. Resources
Build organizations with capacity and capability to plan and implement strategic action for development
disaster preparedness & response; disaster risk reduction.
Thank you
E.g. of a resource rich ….
2005 Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katerina and the city of New Orleans, USA
Many of our mitigation efforts themselves degrade the environment and contribute to the next disaster … simply postponing events of even greater ultimate magnitude …the building of levée banks ... encourage development behind them which increases losses when eventually they fail.”
E.g. of a resource constraint ….
Bangladesh Flood Plains
Flood shelters: just one example of how communities can protect themselves from the worst of the floods.Banks of earth are raised by up to 15 feet and cover an area of couple of football fields. People dig huge pond in middle & use this earth to raise the ground. Whenever the floods come, people can bring their livestock, possessions – even their homes – to safety. The pond in the middle becomes an important source of food, as it is used to farm fish.
“Disaster risk is an unresolved problem of development” Hence
Development need to be responsive to our needs (localised/contextual): link people, place and local Government structures. Find integrated solutions that target direct and indirect risks Community based planning for risk reduction is one way forward. Community based planning was a vision behind 73rd and 74th
amendment.
The key issue on emergency service deliveryEmergencies threaten wellbeing of large population over a very short span of timeAll the services need to be planned and managed in an express mode that can match the fast changing emergency environment.This demand for daily or short cycle monitoring.In doing so it is also important to understand interdependency of these services; Complex decision making. Coordination of various service providers to access and analyse the information and mount appropriate responses is critical to achieve optimum service levels.
Hence Improved decision-making at all levels- Development of disaster risk reduction strategies in a multi-lateral environment
Pre-disaster Service level
In groups, brain storm and come-up with recommendations for sustainable services for DRR in Urban Areas.20 min. for discussion followed by presentation.
The way forward for RedRCreate and institutionalise decision support systems (DSS), tools and techniques that integrate various sectoral perspectives and modes of implementation.Sphere standards for emergencies, Dynamic Risk Register for DRR in urban settings are some of the existing DSS, which can help in integration of knowledge. RedR supports individuals and organisations to understand and use such tools, hence create communities of practice; an important step towards institutionalisation of DRR.
Risk Register in urban governance can fulfil the need of:
participation and involvement of broad range of stakeholders in decision-making. Allocating responsibility for disaster risk reduction Integrated planning and decision making framework. A coordinating framework
Risk Register in urban governance can fulfil the need of:
participation and involvement of broad range of stakeholders in decision-making. Allocating responsibility for disaster risk reduction Integrated planning and decision making framework. A coordinating framework
A tool to facilitating user decision making