Friday, November 25, 2011

My performance in lecturing students

This is a long pending task I just managed to finish & put on the blog! Sorry, this entry is not about climate change but my performance in communicating the message of climate change to the graduate and post-graduate students at Nagoya University!

I have been a visiting lecturer at Nagoya University at the Nagoya University Global Environmental Leaders Program for the last two years. I was asked to teach graduate and post-graduate students on the topic of climate change and developing countries. The class consisted of mixed nationalities with most of them are from Asian and European countries. The total strength of the class was 35.

As I do with most other things I do, I requested the students to evaluate my lecture using 20 indicators (See Table below) consisting of 4 on students, 8 on the content and 8 on content delivery on 1-5 scale where 1  means bad and 5 means excellent. This evaluation was not the standard part of my TOR to the course but was done on my initiative.

Some quick observations from the evaluation:

I couldn't analyze the responses for long time. Just got some time to do it and I am surprised to see that most  students have rated my lecture on level 4 or 5 on most indicators. Below is the figure showing the results. The ones rated 3 are mostly for indicators related to the students self evaluation of their English understanding skills and prior knowledge on the subject.
  • Most indicators stayed the same in both years. However, there was an improvement in indicators of audibility and organization of the lecture delivery from the first year to the second year.
  • Most students have rated 4 or 5 on various indicators related to the lecture content and delivery.
  • Most students rated 3 or 4 for their English skills and their prior knowledge on the subject.
  • Most commented that I talk too fast and don't give time to imbibe concepts (one expression that particularly caught my attention was 'WOW he is too fast').
  • Few complained that I used too many slides with figures and I explain figures too fast.
  • The students who said the topic was new to them rated my lecture as difficult to understand.
  • The students who rated their prior knowledge on the subject as good have rated my lecture as good to excellent.
  • Very few students with excellent English skills have rated my lecture as average. Most of these students thought I should have spent more time in explaining concepts.
  • On overall, most students thought they learning was either good or excellent from the lecture. 


Figure: Rating distribution of students on various indicators of the lecture.

Table: Indicator list used for evaluation of the lecture.

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Fitting the Radiation Safety Piece into the Jigsaw Puzzle: Restoring Agriculture and Food Sector Aftermath the Great Tohoku Disaster


Time and Date: 1-5PM on 8th November 2011. Venue: Room #801, Kokukaikan, Tokyo
Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, Hayama, Japan


For general participants: please get in touch at prabhakar@iges.or.jp or call if you wish to register your attendance in this event.

The Great Tohoku Earthquake that occurred on 11th March 2011 is the most powerful earthquake in the known history of Japan. A chain of events unfolded after the earthquake that included a tsunami of historical magnitude that damaged critical infrastructure such as nuclear power plants located in Fukushima leading to release of unknown quantities of nuclear radiation into the environment. As a consequence of these series of events, lives of more than 25,000 people were lost, many went missing, and hundreds and thousands were displaced into various prefectures of Japan. Though Japan is known for its advanced earthquake and tsunami risk mitigation measures, these events have clearly overwhelmed the national and prefectural administration leading to a national emergency that is still unfolding.
Subsequently, many policy makers and disaster risk reduction specialist in Japan and abroad have been focused on how to rehabilitate the displaced people and how to reconstruct the affected areas. The national and affected prefectural governments have put in place several measures for rescue, rehabilitation, compensation, and reconstruction in the affected areas. Amidst all these discussions and developments, one aspect seemed didn’t not get much attention as much as it deserves i.e. the radiation safety aftermath of damage to nuclear power plants in Fukushima. The release of unknown quantities of radiation into environment has several implications in terms of health safety of citizens even beyond the disaster affected areas, mistrust on Japanese exports, delayed rehabilitation in areas with high radiation exposure, demand for imported food, and implications in terms of economic growth for a country whose economy primarily depends on exports.
This raises important questions that need immediate answers from the perspective of civil society and disaster risk reduction professionals: what radiation related issues are faced by the civil society, how food safety regulations in Japan consider radiation contamination, what specific limitations are posed by the radiation for speedy disaster recovery, and what it all means for the resilience of the Japanese society as a whole? These are also the questions that the civil society in Japan is interested to know answers for, as evident from several discussion boards and networks that have emerged on Internet. This informal event aims to address these questions in a greater detail with an objective of finding way forward. This initiative is funded by the Asia Pacific Network for Global Change Research (APN) through the project CRP2010-02CMY-Pereira.
Contact: prabhakar@iges.or.jp; +81-80-5631-0541

Agenda

13:00  Welcome remarks                                                         SVRK Prabhakar
13:05  Session I: Rehabilitation of food and agriculture in Japan post-Fukushima
>The impact of Fukushima event on food and agriculture and measures for it [Mr.Toshihiko TAKEMOTO, PRIMAFF
>The impact of low concentration radiation on food in Japan [Mr.Seiichi Oshita ]
>The radioactivity found under cooperative work of agriculture [Ms. Tomoko M. Nakanishi, University of Tokyo]
>Consumers’ voice and activities of Pal-System for food contaminated by radiation [Mr.Michimoto MATSUMOTO, COOP, Japan]
>People’s  voice and activities to ensure food safety from radiation [Ms.Setsuko YASUDA, Vision 21]
14:25  Session II:
 Managing radiation hazard: Information management and linking civil and nuclear administration  
>Health safety post Fukushima: Study findings from radiation doses in education institutions: [Mr.TSUZI Masayoshi]
>Information of radiation and civil society[Mr.Mikio NAKAYAMA]
>Presentations from Disaster Risk Management Professionals [Prof Hari Srinivas]
15:25  Coffee Break:  
15:40  Session III: Citizens Charter: Civil Society Perspectives  
>Citizens perspective: Antonio Portela
>Issues and experience from Network I: Pieter FRANKEN, Safecast
>Issues and experience from Network II: David Sidney Moore, Tokyo Kids and Radiation
16:40  Session IV: 
Discussion on implications of Fukushima on the resilience of Japan and policy suggestions
>Open Discussion among all participants

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Implications of Fukushima on the resilience of Japan


The Great Tohoku Earthquake that occurred on 11th March 2011 is the most powerful earthquake in the known history of Japan and definitely a major catastrophe that Japan has to deal after the second world war. A chain of events unfolded after the earthquake that included a tsunami of historical magnitude that damaged critical infrastructure such as nuclear power plants located in Fukushima leading to release of unknown quantities of nuclear radiation into the environment. As a consequence of these series of events, lives of more than 25,000 people were lost, many went missing, and hundreds and thousands were displaced into various prefectures of Japan. Though Japan is known for its advanced earthquake and tsunami risk mitigation measures, these events have clearly overwhelmed the national and prefectural administration leading to a national emergency that is still unfolding.

Subsequently, many policy makers and disaster risk reduction specialist in Japan and abroad have been focused on how to rehabilitate the displaced people and how to reconstruct the affected areas. The national and affected prefectural governments have put in place several measures for rescue, rehabilitation, compensation, and reconstruction in the affected areas. Amidst all these discussions and developments, one aspect seemed didn’t not get much attention as much as it deserves i.e. the radiation safety aftermath of damage to nuclear power plants in Fukushima. The release of unknown quantities of radiation into environment has several implications in terms of health safety of citizens even beyond the disaster affected areas, mistrust on Japanese exports, delayed rehabilitation in areas with high radiation exposure, demand for imported food, and implications in terms of economic growth for a country whose economy primarily depends on exports.
This raises important questions that need immediate answers from the perspective of civil society and disaster risk reduction professionals: what radiation related issues are faced by the civil society, how food safety regulations in Japan consider radiation contamination, what specific limitations are posed by the radiation for speedy disaster recovery, and what it all means for the resilience of the Japanese society as a whole? These are also the questions that the civil society in Japan is interested to know answers for, as evident from several discussion boards and networks that have emerged on Internet.

Resilience of Japan:

Japan is known for the resilience it has shown by emerging as a stronger state each and every time it is hit by  major catastrophe in the past, let it be a man made (i.e. second world war, or dealing with environmental pollution within its boarders) or natural (e.g. Kobe earthquake).

From the point of Tohoku and Fukushima events, both positive examples (e.g. on the way the local communities and businesses dealt with event) and not so positive ones (e.g. on the way the governments fell apart in reaching a consensus on what can be done and how best can be done as represented by civil movement in the country). It seems to show that there is a lot of factors that are playing at the local level to make them resilient which doesnt seem to reflect at the larger level of governance (say at the level of elected leadership either at prefecture or national level). This conclusion could be baseless since my understanding of events happening around in Japan are far from close due to language barrier and as some say due to the state control of media. Nevertheless, there is a need to look into the factors that play into this confused state of affairs. Any leads on how to go forward on this? 

Thursday, October 20, 2011

GMS Countries and Early Warning Systems in the Context of Food-Water-energy Nexus


Suggested citation: Prabhakar, S.V.R.K. 2011. Climate Risks to Agriculture/Food Security in the GMS Countries and Early Warning Systems in the Context of Food-Water-energy Nexus. International Conference on GMS 2020: Balancing Economic Growth and  Environmental Sustainability, 2011, 15 - 16 November 2011, Hotel Plaza Athénée, Bangkok. Working Group on Environment (WGE) and Asian  Development Bank (ADB).

Abstract:


The Greater Mekong Subregion has undergone a rapid economic growth over the past decade with positive impacts on the human development and negative impacts on the environment and natural resources. The growing demand for energy in the region and high fuel prices during 2008 has seen several countries declaring ambitious biofuel strategies from which they retreated covertly later on. This has set a debate on nexus between food, water, and energy in the region. Though the biofuels fever has died down sooner than expected, there are chances for reemergence of debate over food-water-energy due to several traditional and non-traditional pressures discussed in this paper that include increasing energy demand, population growth, urbanization, changing life styles, and climate change. Early warning systems can play a crucial role in averting situations like 2008 fuel and food prices. However, there are several bottlenecks to be overcome that include lack of infrastructure and capacity for implementing such EWS. In addition to EWS, this paper discusses some traditional off-the-shelf policies such as general improvement in resource use efficiency in agriculture, water and energy sector, increasing energy supply through renewable sources, and creating a East-Asian Energy Community or a grid that could ease the food-water-fuel nexus in the region to a greater extent. 

Some Excerpts from the Above Paper:

An Early Warning System (EWS) in the context of food-water-energy nexus can be defined as a collection of dependent and independent variables that lead to detection and assessment of impending problem based on feedback connections operating between demand and supply of food, water and energy. A EWS can be as simple as that of a collection of indicators that can provide an early warning to the policy makers and other development planners operating at various levels. It can also be as complex as that of employing dynamic simulation models that can quantitatively represent the real world based on the conditions defined/assumed within the model (the system). A recent example of EWSs for policy decisions can be the EU proposal for building an EWS for energy that simulates the supply and demand situation in the region (European Union, 2009), which includes early warning for long-term energy conditions as well as to handle short supply in oil in short-time scales.

An effective EWS can be built using dynamic simulation models since they can consider the element of time and related dynamics in determining the status of outcomes that could be useful to the policy makers. The use of simulation models in the public policy research is not new. Some examples include:

·         The General Algebraic Modeling System (GAMS) has provided good tool in understanding environment and economics into a single framework.
·         The Asia-Pacific Integrated Model (AIM) has provided a tool to simulate the impact of climate change on natural environment and socio-economics the Asia-Pacific region.
·         Computable general equilibrium (CGE) models have been used for understanding the economy-wide impacts of policies.
·         Multi-regional input-output (MRIO) models have been employed to understand and forecast material flows across different regions.
All the above simulation models are largely used for research purposes that have partially contributed to development of policies rather than for providing real-time early warning for policy purposes. Partially, this could be attributed to the limited understanding of natural, socio-economic and institutional systems.

2.1. Prerequisites for development of an EWS

Development of EWS is dependent on various factors related to the system in question and it has to do with how best the EWS can represent the real world.

Determinants of an effective EWS:
  •  How the system is defined (what components a system constitutes),
  • Understanding of relationships and feedback connections operating between different actors/components of the system,
  • The precision with which these dynamic and static forces are quantified and represented in the model, and
  •  Interpretation of the outcomes of the model as against what it actually mean with implications for the institutions that use the EWS for policy purposes.

2.2. What an EWS should be able to do?

The end result of developing the decision support system for early warning related to food-water-energy should be able to:

1.       visualize demand and supply situation of food, water and energy in the region on short- medium- and long-term basis,
2.       give projections on prices of food, water and energy on immediate and long-term basis so that countries can take preventive and proactive strategies,
3.       help policy makers at various levels to plan appropriate crops, water usage and water conservation practices and how energy is produced and consumed at the regional and national scales,
4.       help in appropriate allocation of resources for food and energy production while keeping in view several constraints such as environmental health, climate change, food prices, and sustainability of resources employed, and
5.       help develop a set of standard operational procedures to be invoked in the wake of a situation like 2008 energy and food crisis.

ContactFor an extended article, please contact the author....

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Rapid and integrated approach for measurement of wealth and health of individuals

I have been intensively thinking about integrated measurement systems for sustainability and related issues for the last several years and BANG here is a serendipitous solution I got: The details are on the picture! Please drop your thoughts on this.


<<This post is just a fun though it has some intellectual twist in it; so take it lightly and move on to my other serious posts on this blog>>



Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Drought Relief for Tangible and Intangible Benefits: A Study of Government Drought Relief Work in Some of the Drought-Prone States of India

India has a diverse set of geo and physiographic conditions typifying its size. Its diversity is also reflected through various kinds of disasters that the country is vulnerable to. For instance, it has been identified that nearly 57% of the land mass is prone to earthquakes, 12% prone to floods, 8% is vulnerable to tropical cyclones. All these disasters are categorized as sudden onset disasters as they seldom give sufficient time for the administration to react in advance such that the impacts could be minimized. This very basic characteristic, apparently, seems to bring these disasters to focus in media and elsewhere. However, slow onset disasters such as drought, which is expected to occur in different phases spanning meteorological drought to socio-economic drought, gives ample time for the administration to react to this disaster. The same characteristic of this disaster makes the communities to adapt to it over a period of time such that at a given point of time the communities stop looking at it as a threat to their immediate and long-term prospects.

India has faced number of drought years, ever since the meteorological data is available. Out of these years, few of them could be termed as severe to most severe droughts. The all-India drought of 2002 caused an agricultural income loss of Rs 39000 crores to the country. Such losses, which prove costly to the nation’s economy, can repeat in no time as it was observed in 2004. This tantamount to say that the drought risk of the nation is ever increasing and hence deserves concerted actions from all quarters of the society to thwart its negative impacts on the nation’s development.

For example, the latest all India drought of 2002 saw the country spending Rs 2013 crores from the Calamity Relief Fund (CRF), Rs 2201 crores from the National Calamity Contingency Fund (NCCF), and 87.36 MTs of foodgrains for relief employment under special SGRY. The country also spent huge amount of resources for transporting water and fodder by rail up to 30th June 2003[1].

In addition, the country has been spending considerable amount of resources on long-term drought risk mitigation programs through watershed development programs. These watershed programs, either implemented by the government of India through its Drought Prone Areas Program (DPAP) or by various non-governmental organizations, either in isolation or in conjunction with the state and below level governments, produced different results across the country, ranging from absolute failure to superb success. However, the recurring droughts proved that the drought proofing is far from reality and the country has a lot to achieve in this area. Severe droughts have not spared even those areas covered under long-term drought mitigation such as DPAP.

While drought relief aims at providing quick relief to the affected communities, so that the life returns to normalcy, it has to be understood that often huge amount of money has been spent in a very short span of time. The bone of contention is whether all this expenditure has led to tangible and intangible benefits? It is worthwhile to know the answer to this question. The present study on drought relief for tangible and intangible benefits aims at understanding what kind of benefits were accrued to the communities through drought relief interventions such that a corrective course of action could be chalked out. The study had a broad objective of understanding the elements affected by drought, identifying the tangible and intangible benefits of drought relief and studying the existing drought relief mechanism at few locations such that the deficiencies are identified and rectified for a better drought relief management. For more details on the concept of the study, please refer to Annexure II.

Full report can be accessed from here: http://www.slideshare.net/svrkprabhakar/nidm-prabhakar-drought-relief-study-draft-final-report.

[1] Drought 2002. A Report. 2004. Department of Agriculture and Cooperation, Ministry of Agriculture.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Restoring agriculture and food sector in Japan aftermath Tohoku Earthquake and Fukushima: A thought notes.


Fitting the Radiation Safety Piece into the Jigsaw Puzzle: Restoring Agriculture and Food Sector Aftermath the Great Tohoku Disaster

 

 


A Thought Notes: Draft for Comments

 

 



SVRK Prabhakar

Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, Hayama, Japan

August 2011


Important Questions to Ponder

Following are some important questions raised among policy community.

ž  What measures are required to kick-start the agriculture and food sector in the affected areas?

ž  To what extent the civil and nuclear safety authorities are connected at the local level (or how best they can be strengthened)?

ž  What is the level of radiation safety preparedness in prefectures with nuclear power plants? [What level of changes happened in these prefectures before and after the Fukushima?]

ž  How people perceive and rate different aspects of responses by various agencies aftermath of Fukushima?

This thought notes mainly deals with the first question listed above i.e. what measures are required to kick-start agriculture in the affected areas!

Broad Category of Measures Needed: Immediate and Long-term

ž  Immediate measures

     Establish Agricultural and Food Restoration Committees at all levels

     Initiate damage assessment and decision support systems

     Make available information on immediate ‘deployability’ of agriculture in the affected areas (how-soon, how-far, how many, and how farmers can get to their normal lives)

     Enhanced insurance payouts and other relief measures

ž  Long-term measures:

     Strengthening Institutional systems (and farmer support systems)

     Strengthening capacity across the spectrum of stakeholders involved in food production and distribution chain

     Introduction of policies to enable the above

 

Establishing Agricultural and Food Restoration Committees and Guidelines

ž   Consist of an agricultural technology expert (preferably from a research center or university), radiological food health specialist, and JAs, local administrative representatives. Committees at local level can have farmer representatives.

ž   Would have to be established at the national, provincial (ken) and district (gun) levels anchored within the agricultural department of the prefectural governments and the Ministry of Agriculture at the national level.

ž   Able to engage experts on specific subject matters (e.g. salinity, infrastructure engineers, radiation safety etc) as the need may arise.

ž   Will assist governments at relevant levels in formulating plans for relief and rehabilitation of agriculture and food.

ž   Will come up with guidelines and procedural details for farmers for rejuvenating the agricultural activities and to avail various policy provisions that government has provided for them.

 

Initiate Damage Assessment and Decision Support Systems

Impacts of the triple-disaster:

ž  Salinization of vast agricultural land along the Northeast coast of Japan

ž  Radiation contamination in areas near Fukushima nuclear power plant

ž  Damage to irrigation and other related agricultural infrastructure due to the earthquake and tsunami

Legend for the Figure 1:

A: refers to areas with all forms of impacts: salinization, radiation and physical damage

B: refers to areas with physical damage and radiation

C: Refers to areas with salinization and radiation

D: refers to areas with salinization and physical damage

E, F, G refers to areas only with radiation, physical damage, and salinization respectively.

ž  Initiate measures to identify and quantify areas and impacts related to radiation, salinization and physical damage (this step spans from short to medium term but should be initiated at early stages of disaster management).

     Damage assessment teams at village and city levels.

     Self-assessment forms wherever possible and through websites if the nature of damage allow.

     Systems to collect soil samples for checking radiation and salinity levels.

     Livelihood and skill mapping to identify means of livelihood diversification for farmers who cannot farm sooner (or never).

 

Re-deploying Agriculture in Areas with No or Safe Radiation Levels

ž  Salinity could be a potential limitation in these areas. Classify areas with various degree of salinity

ž  Areas with low salinity

     Introduce saline tolerant rice varieties

ž  Areas with medium salinity

     Provide support for reclamation (scraping, leaching, flushing as has been done in Iraq and Australia)

     Introduce saline tolerant rice varieties

ž  Areas with high salinity

     Assess feasibility for reclamation (in addition application of gypsum)

     If no reclamation is feasible, Halophytes can provide alternative here (Science, 2008)

ž  More difficult to restore than areas affected with salinity and hence due care should be taken in finalizing plans for restoration in these areas.

ž  Where remediation is not feasible:

     Consider using land for alternative purposes such as wind-mills, solar power fields etc.

     Establishment of ‘sanctuaries’ in areas with relatively low radiation levels.

     Permanent compensation packages to farmers and others affected due to evacuation and loss of livelihood

ž  Where remediation is feasible:

     Initiate procedures for phytoremediation and other reclamation procedures.

     Continuous monitoring of radiation levels for timely restoration of permissible activities.

The role of JA and other Related Agencies

ž  Strengthen its own staff to provide suitable skills and knowledge to farmers on farming under saline conditions, phytoremediation etc.

ž  Participate and contribute to Agriculture and Food Restoration Committees

ž  Hazen insurance payments to those farmers who obtained crop insurance through JA and associated agencies.

ž  Assess its post-disaster performance and establish its own internal standard operating procedures for quicker response to similar events in the future.

ž  Assist agriculture extension centers to disseminate necessary information and skills to farmers for restoration.

 

Cooperatives and Extension Departments

ž  Strengthen agricultural cooperatives (especially the nōgyō kyōdō kumiai or JA) and local extension agencies including Japan Agricultural Development and Extension Association (JADEA).

ž  Assess its post-disaster performance and establish standard operating procedures to handle similar events in the future.

ž  Through the above agencies, provide appropriate knowledge and skills to farmers on possible livelihood alternatives in the short-term and long-term.

 

Communities

ž  Integrate radiation hazard and response procedures into community level disaster management plans and response procedures including earthquake emergency kits.

ž  Display of relevant SOPs and standards in community halls where jichikai and other community members meet on regular basis.

ž  Disseminate appropriate FAQs to bust myths and misperceptions related to radiation safety.

 

Prefectural and National Level Interventions

ž Agriculture and Food Specific Interventions:

     Assess the health impacts of indices proposed by the Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan and integrate the same into the Food Safety Standards of Japan.

     Integrate radiation standards into major food certifications offered in the country in consultation with Japan Agricultural Standards Association (JAS)

  Review and modify HACCP and TQM standards to accommodate related radiation safety considerations.

  Establish regulations for screening and certification procedures for radiation safety in food.

  Mandatory display of radiation levels in food in retail stores through labeling.

  Mandatory certification of farms for radiation safety in areas affected by radiation.

     Move from the primary responsibility of individual food vendors to check and report radiation safety  towards legally binding and compulsory monitoring and reporting procedures.

     Establish sufficient radiation safety testing equipment for food.

ž  Generic interventions:

     Assess radiation hazard preparedness learning from the Tohoku incident and strengthen the gaps.

     Greater connectivity between civil and radiation safety authorities for better radiation safety preparedness. This should be the priority at the prefectural and local levels and especially in those prefectures where nuclear power plants operate.

     Dissemination of necessary radiation safety information to communities (jichikai), integration with the civil disaster management planning, mock-drills, and other activities carried out as a part of ‘Disaster Countermeasures Basic Act’.

     Assess its post-disaster performance and establish standard operating procedures to handle similar events in the future for all relevant civil emergency management agencies.

 

Thank You

Please write your comments to prabhakar@iges.or.jp

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Climate Change Implications for Disaster Risk Management in Japan


Climate Change Implications for Disaster Risk Management in Japan: A Case Study on Perceptions of Risk Management Personnel and Communities in Saijo City

Abstract

This paper reviews climate change impacts and existing disaster risk management system in Japan and offers results of a structured questionnaire survey of the community leaders and disaster risk management personnel of Saijo city of Japan that assesses their perceptions about dealing with the extreme disasters by the existing disaster risk reduction systems. This study was inspired by the record number of typhoon landfall that has surprised the local government and communities in 2004. While unearthing the hidden vulnerabilities in cities like Saijo, this event has loosened the confidence of local communities on the disaster risk reduction systems. From the study, we conclude that the existing disaster risk management systems needs further fillip and that the proactive community involvement in disaster risk reduction is still in nascent stages. Associating with the scientific community, involving the local communities (including the elderly), enhancing the redundancy in disaster risk management systems, inculcating strategic thinking and micro-level planning, conducting vulnerability assessments by considering the special circumstances including resource constraints of small cities, and better policy coordination across the administrative hierarchy are some important considerations for dealing with the uncertainty brought by the extreme events.
Key words: Japan, climate change, uncertainty, perception, heavy rainfall, community participation, disaster risk management

Suggested citation: 
Prabhakar, S.V.R.K., Y. Iwata, R. Shaw, J. Soulakova, and Y. Takeyuchi. 2012. Climate Change Implications for Disaster Risk Management in Japan: A Case Study on Perceptions of Risk Management Personnel and Communities in Saijo City. Environmental Hazards [under print].

Extended summary and conclusions

From the review presented in this paper, it is clear that there is a growing evidence of the increasing impacts of climate change. The impacts in Japan in general and in the study location of Saijo city in particular are clear in terms of increasing incidences of heavy rainfall events. With the climate projections suggesting an even further increase in the number of such events, this signifies the need for more detailed strategic planning on the part of the governments and other stakeholders including communities. There is a need to uncover hidden vulnerabilities as extreme events and uncertainty increases over time. This call for holistic and inclusive developmental and risk reduction planning. Due to the low income of small cities (‘Chio toshi’), governments are more constrained to put in place effective risk reduction measures. The aged population and concentration of handicapped persons could even exacerbate the impacts of climate change. For example, the higher vulnerability could make climatic events turn worse while the hazard intensities also increase over the years. There is a need for special consideration of such cities while designing risk reduction measures at the prefecture and national levels.
As the subject of disaster management is rest with the local city governments, appropriate capacity building programs facilitated by the national governments by taking the local special circumstances of these cities becomes important. Enhanced preparedness by considering the perceptions of the communities is called for so that the implemented disaster risk reduction measures gains widespread public acceptance, as we see this point coming out very strongly in this paper. For example, involvement of elderly and those who have lived in the city for longer time have shown better memory about the past experiences those could be useful in designing the local disaster risk reduction plans. More micro-level hazard, risk and vulnerability assessments are needed for the city governments to enable people to be aware of their vulnerabilities and help them prepare. Where capacities of city governments are low, the linkages with the adjacent well-to-do cities and prefecture gain importance by reducing the time taken in initiating response and relief actions at the national level. This is more important in countries like Japan where much of the power is delegated to the local governments. Past disasters in Japan have highlighted the failure of national governments in initiating response and relief operations as these functions were fully delegated to the city level governments. While decentralization is important, it should be done in a phased manner accompanied with steady improvement in capacities of local governments such that they can take full advantage of being independent in taking decisions.
Community involvement in disaster risk reduction and coordination among the stakeholders needs to be improved in order to deal with the uncertain risks emanating out of climate change. Such capacity building measures needs to keep in mind the demography of the population of interest. This is important on two counts. Enhancing the disaster preparedness and response capacity of the communities, in addition to working on disaster mitigation, would help communities to be prepared for sudden surprises. Similarly, better coordination by establishing appropriate standard operational procedures would help various DRM agencies to deal with uncertain events. Redundancy in DRM system could help in reducing uncertain risks, for example. Redundancy in telecommunications would help the response machinery to fall back on other means of communication in the event that regular communication channels become defunct. It is evident from this paper that many of the DRM systems were developed in response to disaster events rather than due to the perception of imminent risk. This brings out the need for strategic thinking among the DRM community.
Local wisdom plays an important role in climate change risk reduction. This wisdom can come from relatively older members of the community who have lived in a particular locality for a long duration. Due to the wide gap between age groups in cities like Saijo, challenges typical of the ‘generation gap’ could create difference of opinion as observed in this study. Hence it is important to involve the old members of the community while preparing and implementing any DRM strategy as they are more likely to observe the climate change, as our study has brought out. As a result, their opinion could enhance the effectiveness of an initiative taken by the city government. Due to their familiarity with the local social and cultural characteristics, older members of the community could also be able to convince the other community members on important decisions related to climate change risk reduction. Similarly, the study also has brought out the influence of occupation on what one perceives. The community leaders who are more associated with agriculture, an occupation that is directly influenced by the climate and its change, are more prone to observe changes in the climate than others. Hence, it is relatively easy for the local governments and risk reduction personnel to obtain the consensus of those communities working in climate-risk prone occupations than those working in other occupations. Necessity for capacity building of the city government, in terms of financial and human resources was also raised as an important issue by the government officers who are responsible for disaster management. This corroborates with the fact that the small cities in Japan are resource starved due to outward migration of young generation and subsequent poor development of industries which are important source of income for the city governments. As the disaster management is the function of city governments, any decentralization of powers to city governments should commensurate with appropriate support from the prefecture and national governments. 
The study also brought out that those community leaders who could observe climate change saw existing disaster management systems in effective. As the climate change risks are uncertain, a certain amount of strategic thinking and vision at the local level would be helpful in developing long-term risk reduction strategies. This can be brought about by a better collaboration between the scientific community and the local level DRM functionaries. The majority of the interviewed DRM personnel indicated the lack of clear evidence of climate change impacts in their location, which emphasizes the need to develop tools and techniques that will help identify the local impacts of climate change so that appropriate steps could be taken to address the climate change related risks. Such a tool should also be able to bring long-term perspective thinking and planning to the risk reduction community at the city level. We also have seen that simple tools such as vulnerability maps could win the confidence of community leaders, as these maps could visually inform them about vulnerabilities and help them translate the same into action. Better policy coordination and regular hazard risk assessments can serve as important tools in dealing with the uncertainty. The regular revision of hazard maps could give a timely perspective of change in the hazard risk profile of the region and could give appropriate direction to the local and regional governments in risk reduction planning.