2010 seems to have seen a procession of global disasters of biblical proportions. The horror of the Haiti earthquake, mudslides in Brazil and Rwanda, flash floods in Madeira, the earthquake in Chile and now the terrible floods in Pakistan and to a lesser extent China, just to name a few. The fatalities and devastation stack up while the global 24 hour news media rush from one disaster scene to the next to fill our TV screens with the suffering of others.
What is apparent is that one event is soon subsumed and eclipsed by the next and after a few months all but the every largest events are forgotten by the world at large and certainly by the media. The assistance that devastated areas can expect to receive from other countries is also on the wane due to the global economic situation. Likewise international NGO aid organisations can expect to receive declining contributions from the public due to economics but also due to “disaster fatigue”.
The terrible famine in Ethiopia in 1984-85 shocked the developed world and resulted in a massive outpouring of aid from regular people – subsequent famines however did not gain the same amount of attention. How much public assistance has there been for the starving, displaced multitudes in the Sudan? The 2004 Tsunami again had enormous media and emotive impact with massive global response, the same was true of Haiti this year. Will this still be the case for Pakistan?
There are only so many disasters that an individual can take on board, inevitably people become inured to the shocking images and tragedy or succumb to the sense of futility of attempting to address such large and recurrent problems.
All of the events cited in the first paragraph above will require long term measures and efforts to enable communities to recover and even further investment to mitigate against repeat events... yet most are already out of the global spotlight and will largely have to look within to achieve their goals.
This only serves to underline the importance of the thorough and comprehensive mainstreaming of Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) in national and sectoral activities. This is far from easy - people and agencies are always reluctant to devote a portion of already limited resources to eventualities that are in the short term unlikely to, and in the opinion of many never will, happen. Efforts in this regard need to be strategic and yet targeted, and above all persistent.
The Seychelles National Disaster Preparedness and Response project has as a primary objective: “the integration of disaster and risk reduction issues into national strategic documents and processes” . Works to promote this have included an assessment of ongoing national initiatives that offer scope for the mainstreaming of DRR and outreach to facilitate said mainstreaming.
The domain of environmental management is very active nationally at the current time with several GEF funded programmes in place, such as the Biodiversity Mainstreaming and Sustainable Land Management projects. Also of considerable significance and recently in the news is the project to develop the 3rd generation Environment Management Plan for Seychelles 2011-2020 (EMPS).
The EMPS is the main national strategic document that seeks to integrate environment into the development sectors. The EMPS is also moving towards becoming a more complete national approach to the pursuit of sustainable development. Sound environment management is a key component in many aspects of DRR, whilst disaster risk reduction is itself a component part of national sustainable development. The EMPS drafting process therefore offers a key, once in a decade, opportunity to mainstream DRR.
The Project Unit took the opportunity of the national EMPS inception workshop last week to propose DRR as a cross-cutting issue for incorporation into the proposed EMPS thematic areas. This represents a new concept for the EMPs and may not be easily incorporated.
Do check back periodically for updates on the ongoing activities to mainstream DRR.
