Disaster Risk Reduction in a Shifting Climate

SVRK Prabhakar

1. What can you tell from recent typhoon in Philippine and Cyclone in India? Are there any commonalities and differences and why?

One of the ways of judging the efficacy of disaster risk reduction (DRR) systems of any country is to look at how the government and other stakeholders have responded to a disaster and the subsequent impacts in terms of lives lost and property destroyed. However, comparison of disasters in two countries would have to be made with more caution and require deeper analysis than what the numbers suggest on the surface since the efficacy of DRR measures could be vastly different within a country because the DRR is the primary responsibility of local governments which differ in their capacities, depending on the strength of the event in question and can vary at what time of the year and time of the day of landfall of the event etc. Table 1 provides a comparison of tropical cyclones Phailin that hit Odisha, India on 12 October 2013 and Haiyan that hit Eastern Visayas of Philippines on 8th November. The following observations explain the reasons behind severe damages from Haiyan: a) The typhoon Haiyan was unarguably the stronger typhoon and was at its peak strength when it made landfall, b) The short early warning period (the first early warning available for a stronger Haiyan was 5th November that forecasted a wind speed of 167 kmph while the IMD was able to track the cyclone Phailin 4-5 days before with a forecasted wind speed of 180 kmph), c) early landfall than expected, d) slower and insufficient evacuation measures before landfall of typhoon; also partly due to unwilling people to relocate, e) slow rescue and relief operations due to complete disruption of local government machinery depriving any support to the national government and non-governmental agencies, f) relatively poorer DRR measures due to insufficient financial investments arguably due to skewed political decision making.

Table: Comparison of cyclone Phailin and typhoon Haiyan

Parameter	Cyclone Phailin	Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda)
Sustained maximum wind speed at landfall (kmph)	200-210[1]	235[2]
Saffir-Simpson Tropical Cyclone Scale[3]	Category 3-4	Category 4
Areas affected	Most of coastal Odisha and two Coastal districts of Andhra Pradesh	Central Philippines with maximum damage in Tacloban area
Last event of similar intensity	14 years	22 years
Time of landfall	22:30 hrs	4:40 hrs
Total deaths[4]	44	5759
Total affected	12 million	15 million
Number evacuated	1.5 million	1 million
Estimated total damage (billion USD)	0.7	2.4
Associated secondary disaster	Heavy rainfall and floods	Heavy rainfall and flood
Advance prediction of landfall and intensity	4-5 days	2-3   days

*Information, other than cited, was compiled from various web sources that can be easily traced using Google.

2. Can these recent extreme events be attributed to climate change? How can we make sense out of these?

The topic of attribution has its origin in perceptibly growing number of extreme events and related impacts. Attribution of any particular climatic event to climate change is the most difficult aspect of climate services and our understanding of climate system as a whole has not reached a point where the models employed can help us attribute certain climatic event to climate change with greater accuracy (Read Nature Editorial 19 December 2012). Irrespective of the purpose of attribution (e.g. climate negotiations), the emphasis on attribution may not yield as much value and usefulness compared to putting efforts on advanced early warning systems, strengthening dissemination and efficient application of early warning information for definitive actions on the ground. There is a sufficient agreement among climate researchers for high probability of extreme events in the future and there is a clear evidence for increasing number of extreme events historically. Despite this, there is certain difficulty in attributing the impacts on the ground to climate change for the reason that more and more people have been living in vulnerable areas putting them in the harm’s way than before. The rapid economic growth is only making this trend worse as more and more infrastructure is being constructed in vulnerable areas. Hence, understanding the dynamics of population growth and distribution and its interaction with the natural hazards assumes greater significance in understanding the observed impact trends and for achieving effective risk reduction.

Figure: While authorities were able to save thousands of lives, Phailin has left behind widespread devastation (Photo Courtesy: A. Shreekanth).

3) How government can prepare, nationally, internationally and locally, especially in the Asia Pacific Area?

Thanks to Hyogo Framework of Action (HFA) and subsequent efforts at national and international levels, more countries have some kind of disaster preparedness and response plans and strategies and hence the picture of DRR is far better today than a decade ago. Today, several countries in the region have national authorities, ministries and departments for focused action on DRR. As a result, national and local systems have become better in handling the disasters and cyclone Phailin provides an important evidence for it. The accurate early warning has triggered authorities to evacuate large number of people and hence were able to avert a major disaster. Even in the case of Philippines, despite the widespread criticism, the authorities did manage to evacuate nearly a million within the short period of time available to them. However, there is a lot to be achieved along the continuum of disaster management cycle in a rage of areas which includes strengthening early warning and educating the communities on the importance of heeding to early warning, establishing sufficient number of evacuation shelters, enforcing proper regulations (land use and urban plans) restricting spread of infrastructure in vulnerable areas and strengthening coordination and communication channels across ministries and stakeholders engaged in DRR. While post-disaster rescue and relief has been perfected over the years due to traditionally response oriented national systems, more can be done in better relief management and post-relief and reconstruction planning. DRR cannot be achieved without proper information to rely upon and disaster databases that assist in identifying vulnerable and channeling resources are to be strengthened. The loss and damage databases being established by UNDP are able to bridge this gap to a greater extent. Risk information coupled with strengthened disaster mitigation measures will pave the way for designing and implementing appropriate insurance programs that will reduce the burden on national exchequer and put the people in the driving seat of managing their risks. While these traditional measures are most needed, there is also need to embark upon prospective planning by taking into consideration the increasingly perfecting climate projections into planning processes. Taking up adaptive management practices will go a long way in adjusting the institutional and regulatory systems as our understanding on climate change improve. There is lot of synergy between DRR and climate change adaptation and the tools and strategies perfected by these communities could be mutually beneficial. Today there are more opportunities for these two communities to work together due to growing number of networks and epistemic groups operating in these areas. The discussions for post-2015 Hyogo Framework Action and the future climate regime under UNFCCC begin to provide impetus for this nexus to happen on the ground.

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[1] 3 minutes sustained, Cyclone Warning Division, Indian Meteorological Department, 2013

[2] 10 minutes sustained, Severe Weather Bulletin No 6, Philippine Met Agency, PAGASA

[3] There are several tropical cyclone classifications. Following IMD classification, the Cyclone Phailin is classified as Very Severe Cyclone Storm and Typhoon Haiyan as Super Cyclonic Storm.

[4] IMD for Phailin and UN OCHA for Haiyan

Loss and damage from climate change: back to adaptation drawing board?

The term ‘Loss and damage’ refers to the residual losses and damages associated with climate change after all mitigation and adaptation activities are implemented. Though the issue of loss and damage received attention in the sixteenth session of the Conference of Parties that drafted Cancun Agreements in Cancun in 2010, scientists have far before warned the possibility for residual damages from climate change. The Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC released in 2007 has clearly identified the reasons why climate change adaptation, as we know today, may fall short of expectations. Some of the reasons identified were the inability for some of the adaptation actions not implemented to the extent at place and time they are needed, limitations such as policy imperfections that may work counter to adaptation practices, limited understanding on the effectiveness of known options to date and failure of adaptation practices to prove effective for longer time periods. Over and above these imperfections, barriers such as limited capacity to implement adaptation projects, limited financing and limited available adaptation options further pose bottlenecks to achieving maximum adaptation globally. The failure of adaptation practices can happen in all developmental contexts. As evident from the literature reviewed by the IPCC 4^th Assessment Report and reports emerging from elsewhere, adaptation practices could fail to prove effective both in developed and developing countries though such possibilities might be higher in developing countries due to underlying developmental and capacity factors. The residual losses associated with climate change has both historical and future angle to it. As discussed above, the evidence has started emerging on the extent to which adaptation practices have failed to perform. Though our understanding on the future climate impacts continue to emerge along with the improving climate predictions, scientists are certain that limits to adapt continue to be an issue for years to come. The greater recognition of residual losses raises several important questions for different stakeholders involved in climate change: how much more adaptation and mitigation is needed to reduce the residual damages, can hard-pushing the existing options will suffice or there is a need for greater innovation, to what extent overcoming the known barriers to climate agenda will help and what does it mean for communities and countries already at risk?

Farmers are one of the most impacted and least heard communities

Taking this entire paradigm into planning strategies is vital for sustaining and improving adaptation efforts at all levels. Recognizing this, the Cancun Adaptation Framework has clearly identified the requirement for international cooperation to understand and mitigate the loss and damage associated with climate change particularly to help the most vulnerable developing countries and has decided to establish a work program on loss and damage for enhancing the related work. Further to these efforts, the Conference of Parties that met at the Doha Climate Change Conference has decided to establish an international mechanism, in the form of a network or forum, to address the loss and damage and to prepare technical papers that identify gaps in our understanding on non-economic losses and gaps in institutional arrangements. The Conference of Parties have also decided to organize an expert meeting to understand and bridge gaps to address slow onset disasters such as droughts and sea level rise.

As is the case with other elements of climate change discussions, the issue of loss and damage has attracted divided response from developed and developing countries. Monitoring the submissions made to the Conference of Parties and related discussions on the sidelines of these events show clear division in terms of components to be included in the international debate on loss and damage (e.g. the issue of compensation to loss and damage emanating from residual climate change impacts after implementing adaptation actions) and necessary institutional arrangements. While developing countries have proposed to introduce international financial mechanisms such as insurance and compensation mechanism for the historical and future residual damages, developed countries have urged to focus on efforts to greater understanding of the issue and implement capacity building measures to address the issue. While this difference in opinion will continue to exist for a foreseeable future, it is incontestable fact that all countries need to work together to address the residual losses associated with climate change since the evidences suggest neither developed nor developing countries are immune to it. Loss and damage could just mean relentless innovation and relentless effective adaptation. People, get back to your drawing boards!

Community based Approaches: Their Importance and Relevance for a Comprehensive Development in Today’s Vulnerable World. Interview with Dr Atiq Rahman, Executive Director, BCAS, Bangladesh

The original version of this interview can be found at: http://www.iges.or.jp/en/news/topic/isap2011dialogue_rahman.html

We had an opportunity to interview Dr Atiq Rahman, Executive Director, BCAS and Friend of the Earth awarded during ISAP2011. Here is the transcript of the same. Read it and let me know your views on the choice of questions and what you think you would ask if you had a chance.

Photo Credits: IGES, Japan

Transcript

Prabhakar: At the outset, can you please introduce our audience to the institute you are currently leading and basic values and approaches you are trying to promote through your work?

Dr Rahman: I am the technical head of Bangladesh Center for Advanced Studies. BCAS works at different levels, with the communities, local level planning, international agencies, and global systems. The publications from BCAS show the work we do. I sit in various government committees while working with an independent institute like BCAS so what I say here comes from both the perspectives. 25 years ago, while teaching at Oxford University, I said that Bangladesh will go under water. I was at the peak of academia when I moved to Bangladesh to work with BCAS. I made that decision since I believed that there is much to do in my own country to improve the policy processes by linking to the science. We developed a model where the policy, science and people are linked. We do implementation of ideas up to the pilot phase, to the level at which we establish science beyond reasonable doubt, and let others multiply them. In most industrialized countries, the science and policy talk to each other as most environmental problems have scientific basis. The same is required in climate change too. However, some policy makers are influenced by the oil lobbyists and other industry agents and are taking the policy in a wrong direction. We realized that in non-functioning democracies, represented by huge number of countries, people are not included in the debate and the policy is hijacked by the industry. Over the years with dedicated work, we have challenged the science-policy model and changed it into science-policy-people model. Environment and development are very much linked. In climate change, most of the professionals are from environmental background and hence it became ‘environment only’ problem. Soon we realized that we have various sectors involved in it such as infrastructure, food, rural areas etc. So, now, we are talking about developmental implications of climate change. This understanding brings poor people into the domain of decision making. Environment and development, poverty alleviation, good governance and economic growth are the elements that make our concept of sustainable development where other crosscutting elements interact.

Okubo: Now, it is clear from your discussion that your institute in particular and Bangladesh in general has been promoting community based development to an extent that people look at Bangladesh as a land of community based approaches (whether it is for disaster risk reduction or climate change adaptation or other areas). Can you educate us on what made this possible and what lessons other countries can learn from this great success story?

Dr Rahman: I am both a geo-engineering scientist and a policy expert in community based adaptation. Bangladesh has a tradition of local level management partly due to the culture and partly due to the failure of the government. ‘Democracy is democracy of the elected’ and ‘richness is the richness of elected’. So, the question is how to reach the people? Bangladesh is one of the highly disaster prone countries in the world. We thought that the best way is communities leading their own life and not to wait for scientists to tell them to adapt. Communities are already raising their land in the coastal areas and nobody told them to do so. You will find several such practices prevalent among communities. Using community approaches, we are able to solve problems that are long-term in nature. For example, the saline front has already moved deep into the land where we planted the varieties developed for future and these varieties could able to give good yields. This understanding may not come without understanding of the local issues and indigenous knowledge. Development community tries to do development but with limited results since the baseline is shifting based on which decisions are to be made by these communities. Once these development communities talk with climate change communities, they understand the issue clearly and are able to achieve good success as in the case of Action Research for Community Based Adaptation (ARCAB). Several local NGOs are coming together to make development climate friendly. International NGOs came together and have decided to work with BCAS where this ARCAB was designed. These lessons would be taken to other countries like Africa, Latin America etc spanning for 30 years. It is a long-term social learning where baseline will not be the same. We have developed a methodology called participatory monitoring and evaluation where people are involved using the indicators identified by participatory approaches. The SEI, Oxford University, Harvard University etc are helping us with the science part of the process. We hold world conference on community based adaptation every year that is gaining attention by the world community. We would soon be publishing a book from this exercise by the contribution of the conference participants.

Photo Credits: IGES, Japan

Prabhakar: One of the understandings from your discussion is that community based approaches are good in developing countries where governance problems are the reason behind many problems. Do you think these approaches are applicable in developed countries and if so how they can be fit into the context?

Dr Rahman: Communities are communities wherever they are, whether in developed or developing; I have worked with communities in both countries. The story I told about developing countries is slightly better in developed countries. When I was visiting Japan years ago, everybody used to wear formal dress and there used to be only one NGO and NGOs used to be perceived as anti-government. That Japan has changed now, correct me if I am wrong, my last three days of experience tell me that the recent earthquake has shaken the psyche of Japan and you have realized that the infrastructure cannot solve the problem but you need some community involvement. Now, you are talking about dignity of the people, inclusion of the people (can we include everybody from all ages and socio-economic groups etc) etc. We have been working with communities in Bangladesh for years where communities have said that they need some ‘fall back mechanism’ such as animals etc which they can use after they return from a cyclone shelter after the cyclone. So, the systems need to consider things like if old people can be evacuated or not. These approaches would have to be ‘molded’ to Japanese conditions. One should also know the limits, what one can do and what one cannot do. For example, one cannot remove the nuclear radiation for several years down the line. Appropriate support such as shelter, water, food, employment should be provided. One should rejuvenate the local industry. One should also remember that a 1000-year event need not necessarily repeat only after 1000 years but it may come even in the next year but the probability may be low. So, policy makers need to keep this probability aspect while planning for disasters.

Photo Courtesy: IGES, Japan

4.       Questions from the audience:

a. Can you tell us how effective it would be to take the climate change debate to the UN Security Council for its intervention?

Dr Rahman: Security Council may not be able to make much difference to the climate change problem. It has not been able to do anything of this sort other than stopping big wars. The problem is not with the Security Council but with the failure of the UNFCCC system. My long association with the UNFCCC indicated that it has its own limitations. When Kyoto Protocol was agreed with targets, people said that it is the best protocol one could achieve. It indicated that we could work out a lowest common denominator and our governments couldn’t even achieve it. Most population in some developing countries is still undernourished and they are not able to feed themselves but still they are talking about mitigation. So, it is a failure of the governments. Security Council may be able to stop a war or bring additional money but climate change has enough money built into the system so it may not make much difference. You may not agree with my opinion and I would be happy to listen.

b. You said most of the professionals in climate change are from environmental field and though over the years there has been infusion of social and policy professionals into the process, do you think governments are still approaching the problem in a single discipline or multi-discipline?

Dr Rahman: Reality is that it is neither single nor multi-disciplinary but it is the dollar that is dictating the decisions being made. No decisions are made in the UNFCCC negotiations, all decisions are made back in the country, in the ministry of environment. However, no MOE personnel are trained on negotiations, negotiations are about legal issues, foreign affairs, and it is about protecting the best interest of the country and environment is about protecting the common interest. Everybody’s individual interest must fit into common interest. Other problem is every policy maker has 5 year tenure while the climate change is a long-term problem which needs new ways of governance. All the available funding is neither additional nor adequate. NAPAs are being poorly supported, not even equivalent to the money spent by UN agencies on their sanitation consumables. If we want to go fast, single disciplinary approach is the way; however, if we want to go far, multi-disciplinary approach is the way. We need to change the attitude of finance ministries regarding the climate change funding. It is the least priority for them, indicated through the junior most officers they send to any climate change meeting at national or international levels. No single ministry talks to other ministries in our countries.

c. Citizen from Japan: I liked your comment about the ARCAB. I know that there are similar projects going on everywhere but the problem I see is that they are isolated and not connected to other processes.

Dr Rahman: We call this a garland theory where no bead is connected to another bead. NGOs have limited time line where they have to spend the money, so end up pushing the money and spending on bad projects. I think one need to give responsibility and respect to the recipient of the fund, make it participatory, and give time to them to implement while making them accountable. Evaluation has to be continuous but not at the end. So, most of the time, these projects can be termed as ‘the world of mutual cheating.’ Research has become so predictive that even communities know how to respond to any survey, they will start answering questions even before they are asked. We need to learn from bad practices as well. Plagiarism has become so rampant too in this information age. No new ideas are being developed without deep thinking. I think the day we develop that deep thinking, we are able to identify solutions to the problems we are facing today. This is resultant of several problems such as pedagogic, allocation, gender etc.

c. Prabhakar: How do we link the Rio+20 with the community based development model?

Dr Rahman: I was very much involved with the Rio process in 1992 as a part of the Global Forum on Environment and Poverty. A group which was few in number has grown to 10,000. I said at that time that the climate convention is not going to solve the problem. Biodiversity convention is a problem of people, who destroyed their biodiversity and wants others to protect it; climate change is a problem created by developed nations and faced by the poor people; and desertification convention has no teeth in it, it is meant to satisfy African countries. Instead, we proposed a poverty convention. New York has destroyed its wetlands and created the city that is today and the very same country say that we need to protect our wetlands. It is for these countries to solve the issues they created and then talk with the poor. However, we need to move forward. So, we had Rio+10 where MDG was an outcome. Rio+20 is about green economy and institutional structure. We haven’t achieved much on the green economy. Green economy will be possible only if there is enough happening in terms of alternative energy, food systems etc. We didn’t do any of this and want policies, this may not work well. One of the tragedies is that where are the young people shouting and fighting for green economy? The global job market has changed, and the smarter people from developing countries are going for global market, like Google jobs. We need to bring them back to the land that needs them. We need to bring back the idealism. When there is no idealism, we get what happened in Norway. With idealism, we should be able to say that there will not be a single person on the planet who will go to bed with hunger. This is what Security Council should have achieved but it didn’t. I may have given some pessimistic view of UN system but that is a perceived reality. The point I am making is that we have to have a vision for the planet, so that the population growth is controlled, so that we have less people and less carbon. Climate convention was supposed to reduce GHGs as per the Kyoto Protocol, but we increased the emissions instead. It is just about carbon. We have ocean acidification, nitrogen and phosphorous cycles that are going to be a huge challenge. We need young people to fight for these causes so that we are able to feed everybody on the planet. This is just about basic needs such as food and water, not even about flying and driving. There is more food on the planet than we need, more medicines than we need, and more water than we need; why that one third of the world is starving, something isn’t right!

Risk insurance in the Asia Pacific Region: How the processes under UNFCCC can help?

This is not a full article. Read the full article available here.

Summary
Risk insurance can provide an effective means of catastrophic risk reduction and climate change adaptation in the developing countries. The ongoing discussions by the Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change are putting substantial efforts to promote climate change adaptation through international cooperation in the form of providing additional finances and technologies including proposals to promote a global or regional climate risk insurance facility. Case studies from within and outside the Asia-Pacific region provide valuable lessons which could be used for promoting risk insurance by the future climate regime (post-Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012). The analysis of these risk insurance proposals to the Convention and comparison of what they intend to achieve with that of the existing issues within the risk insurance sector in the developing Asia-Pacific indicate that these proposals address some of the major issues that are limiting the spread of risk insurance. However, no single proposal is comprehensive enough to address all the issues and all the proposals lack details in terms of how they can achieve what they intend to achieve. There is a need for the proposals to the Convention to give more thought on how they address the issues such as high base risks, lack of historical data required for designing risk insurance systems, limited awareness in the utility of insurance instruments, keeping the premium prices within affordable levels, encouraging the role of private sector, enabling greater access to reinsurers, and instituting enabling policies to create a proactive risk mitigation environment with an eye on sustainability. A convergence approach wherein the proposals incorporate lessons from on-the-ground experiences from regional, national and local initiatives could provide an effective model for promoting the risk insurance.

.........Not a full article......

The natural and man-made hazards have historically undermined the developmental gains across the world. The Asia-Pacific region is one of the most vulnerable regions to a range of primary hydro-meteorological natural hazards such as storms, floods, and droughts. The data from EM-DAT suggest that the number of hydro-meteorological natural disasters has been increasing at an average annual rate of 217% over the past 40 years in the Asia-Pacific region (EM-DAT, 2010).

 In the region, the total human lives lost due to disasters were 3729 with estimated damage costs of 11.54 billion USD in 2009. Similar increase in the number of catastrophic natural disasters and related losses was also reported by Munich Re according to which both the insured and uninsured losses have been increasing over the years.

Climate change has brought an additional dimension to disaster risks in the Asia-Pacific region as it is projected to exacerbate the intensity and magnitude of various natural hazards such as storms, high-intensity rainfall events, heat waves, floods and droughts. Especially, the projections suggest high probability for an increasing trend in the high-intensity and low probability events (IPCC, 2007; Kunreuther and Michel-Kerjan, 2007). These increased catastrophic risks will further undermine the developmental gains already made in the Asia-Pacific region.

Taking agricultural sector as an example, being one of the highly vulnerable sectors in the region, farming communities are in particular at greater risk due to weather related crop failures. Often, farmers borrow loans from local banks prior to the cropping season. However, farmers, banks, and governments are put at higher financial risk due to increasing frequency of crop failures, and often governments are forced to waive the loans. In case of India, estimates suggest that the government waived off crop loans worth 16 billion USD in 2008 alone (Srinivasan, 2008). Similar incidences are observed across other countries in the Asia-Pacific region (Sompo Japan Insurance Inc., 2010).

Hence, in order to address additional risks brought by the impact of climate change, there is a need to relook at and reframe the current risk reduction strategies especially in terms of development and utilization of risk spreading instruments within the Asia-Pacific region. This working paper reviews the current status of risk insurance and identifies emerging issues and experiences. These issues and experiences are applied to various risk insurance proposals made by the Conference of Parties (COP) to the UNFCCC for assessing the extent to which they consider experiences to address issues for promoting the risk insurance.

The concept of risk transfer or risk spreading entails that the individual (the insured) risks be reduced by spreading or transferring the risks from the insured to the insurance provider (the insurer) since the insurer is in a stronger financial position than the insured (Njegomir and Maksimovic, 2009). The insurance provider is able to insure the risks of the insured largely due to the fact that the insurer obtains premiums from a large number of insured who are at different levels of risks by making sure that the total amount of premiums collected are far greater than or exceeds the underwriting of risks (termed as law of large numbers). Insurance agencies in turn underwrite some of these risks with reinsurance firms that provides needed buffer against catastrophic event related losses. In sum, the risk insurance scheme functions as part of the social security net through risk transfer mechanism and thereby contribute to build the resilience of vulnerable societies.

Risk transfer has been widely advocated as one of the best means of risk mitigation across the world (Arnold, 2008; Siamwalla and Valdes, 1986; Swiss Re, 2010) due to several advantages it provides:

 

·         Promotes emphasis on risk mitigation compared to the current response-driven mechanisms.

·         Provides a cost-effective way of coping financial impacts of climate and weather induced hazard events.

·         Supports the climate change adaptation by covering the residual risks uncovered by the other risk reduction mechanisms.

·         Stabilizes rural incomes and hence reduce the adverse effects on income fluctuation and socio-economic development.

·         Provides opportunities for public-private partnerships.

·         Reduced burden on government resources for post-disaster relief and reconstruction.

·         Helps communities and individuals to quickly renew and restore the livelihood activity.

·         Depending on the way the insurance is designed, the insurance mechanism can address a wide variety of risks emanating from climatic and non-climatic sources.

Read full paper available here.