Sergio Abranches

Over the last seven years disasters related to extreme natural events have hit all regions of the world. There was not a single year without a major disaster. A significant amount has been related to extreme weather events. Still a majority of the vulnerable countries in the developed and emerging world are not adequately investing in disaster prevention and reduction.

Several new studies are providing evidence of the relationship between rising risk of disasters and climate change. The so-called ‘problem of attribution’, i.e. of relating a series of specific events to a changing climate is becoming less relevant, given the amount of new data supporting attribution. Looking at these trends one can see that there is a decoupling between the political agenda in a great many countries, and the demands of our times. We should be changing our development patterns to adapt to higher risk of disaster and climate change instead of looking for ways to prolong the life of the old patterns.

Over the last decade the number of disasters seems to have been relatively stable, although there are indications that their intensity has increased. Mortality is down, but economic losses are up, says the new report by the United Nations on disaster risk reduction (GAR 2011). It was release at the onset of this week meeting of the UN Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction, in Geneva, where representatives from 175 governments, scientists, experts, and NGO’s will be seriously discussing disaster risk reduction. The Global Network for Disaster Reduction’s has simultaneously launched “Views from the Frontline”, a survey that interviewed 20,000 people in 58 different countries.

There are no natural disasters, only natural hazards, and social catastrophes. Disasters are the result of the interaction between natural phenomena, the built human environment, and the social environment. The probability of disasters is dependent on three main factors: the risk related to natural events, the degree of people’s exposure to these events, and the degree of vulnerability of exposed populations and their built environment.

The proportion of the global GDP exposed to tropical cyclones has increased from 3.6% in the 1970’s to 4.3% in the first decade of this century. The UN report warns that “the extensive risks of today can become the intensive risks of tomorrow when they accumulate in places exposed to major hazards such as earthquakes or tropical cyclones”. In other words, high frequency, low severity risks disseminated throughout most of a country’s territory could gain severity in the future as they hit a same area cumulatively. Almost 97% of the losses caused by extensive disasters (high frequency/low severity) are associated to weather-related events. Fatality is low, but infrastructure and property loss is high. They hit harder the households of low income communities.

“Extensive disaster losses and their downstream impacts on health, education, structural poverty and displacement go unaccounted for in most countries, hiding the real cost of disasters.”

Since the 1970’s the number of countries exposed to tropical cyclones has increased. Population growth, urbanization and the territorial spread of the built environment increases exposure, the risk of disasters and economic losses.

“Decisions on land use and building can push up risk significantly, especially in cities with large informal settlements and limited local government willingness or capacity to manage city expansion in the public interest.”

Disaster reporting has improved in many areas, as well as access to information. The gap between detected and reported disasters is closing. Closing this gap, apart from indicating an improving governance, increases disaster awareness and helps further advances in governance. (See the chart)

Human exposure to tropical cyclones and floods is rising rapidly. The number of people exposed to floods has jumped from 32.4 million per year, in 1970’s, to 69.4 million, in 2000’s. Economic exposure, the global GDP exposed to floods, escalated from an yearly average of US$ 36 billion to US$ 100,1 in the same period. (See the charts).

In Latin American and The Caribbean, people’s exposure more than doubled, going from 600 thousand to 1,3 million a year. Annually average exposed GDP, moved from US$ 2.5 billion, to US$ 5.4 billion.  (See the charts).

Population exposure to tropical cyclones  increased sharply from 65.9 million, in the 1970’s, to 122.5 million, in the 2000’s. Economic exposure has also increased fast, from around US$ 626 billion to US$ 1,575 billion. (See the charts).

In Latin America and The Caribbean people’s exposure was 1.1 million a year, in the 1970’s to reach 5.2 million a year in the 2000’s, a five fold change. Economic exposure was multiplied by ten, from US$ 2.3 billion to US$ 24.3 billion. (See the charts).

In spite of sharp increases on the degree of exposure and economic losses, raising the social and economic risk for these populations,  progress in governance capacity to prevent and reduce disasters has been slow.

“There is continuing difficulty integrating risk reduction into public investment planning, urban development, environmental planning and management, and social protection. Few countries reported the systematic recording of losses or comprehensive assessment of their risks. Less than half of these countries undertook, multi-hazard risk assessments and less than a quarter did so in a standardized manner.”

The UN report calls attention to the fact that whereas weather-related disasters are often characterized as a consequence of unexpected weather events, in reality they are the outcome of “an unseen but continuous accumulation of risk”.

“Disaster risks can increase or decrease over time according to a country’s ability to reduce its vulnerability and strengthen risk governance capacities.”

Progress in disaster governance has been modest overtime, especially when compared to the pace of increase of disaster risk, and losses caused by disasters. Extreme weather-related disasters have grown exponentially. Investment in preparedness, prevention, and adaptation have been slow.

The average degree of global progress in disaster governance and institutional arrangements has moved only slightly between 2007 and 2009, from 3.3 to 3.4, where the minimum is 1 and maximum 5. Advances in preparedness and response went from 3.2 to 3.4.

“Views from de Frontline”, shows that 57% of interviewees from 58 countries say disaster-caused losses have increased. But governance improvement has been far too low, only 2.4. South American countries showed the third lowest index of governance progress.

As the intensity of risk increases, the cost of risk reduction increases exponentially, whereas the probability of realizing the benefits in a given period of time decreases. (UN Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction)

Comparing the 2009 and the 2011 surveys the Global Network for Disaster Reduction found that it shows a mixed picture: “there are reported improvements in government coordination, partnerships and planning; but overall there appears to have been little or no progress over the two-year period.” Local governance is key to disaster reduction, but not enough. Cooperation at the national level and international coalitions to help the more vulnerable populations are also indispensable.

“Whilst each country has different governance arrangements there are consistent functions and characteristics which lead to progress. For example the rights of all groups to information about risks and risk reduction measures, participation in decisionmaking, budgeting, planning and implementation must be explicitly recognised in policy, legal and institutional provisions. These must shape local government practice.” (“Views from the Frontline” – The Global Network of Organizations of Civil Society for Disaster Reduction)

Sergio Abranches

Put together an extreme natural event, a vulnerable population and a reckless government and a social catastrophe is very likely to obtain. The cost: a large preventable death toll.

“Carelessness could be the biggest enemy. In the past, even if the waves were not so big, there has been great damage with 2-metre high tsunami,” prime minister Yukio Hatoyama said about the alert after the earthquake in Chile.

The government ordered 245,000 households along Japan’s Pacific coast to evacuate. Afterwards the risk may have seemed overstated. One should consider, however, that Chile’s was the sixth most powerful earthquake ever registered on a seismographer. Fortunately, only waves of up to 30 cm (12 inches) hit Japan’s northern Pacific coast and the town of Nemuro, 970 km northeast of  Tokyo, said Reuters.

Hatoyama is right. There are no natural catastrophes. Catastrophes are always human-made. They are social, not physical, phenomena. A catastrophe happens when a high-intensity or extreme natural event meets a vulnerable population, with a weak, unprepared or reckless government.

Natural events are largely unpredictable, uncontrollable and large-scale. It is not possible to avoid them. That’s why adaptation and preparedness are so important to reduce the death toll and widespread public and private property damage. Prevention requires urban and land-use planning, buildings adapted to the most frequent events, early-warning systems, preparedness measures, well trained, equipped and alert disaster rescue teams.

It is far better to apologize for overrating the risk of tsunamis, as the Hawaiian and Japanese authorities have done, than accounting for the deaths due to unpreparedness. On both countries, the memory of other actual extreme events justifies every precautionary measure. And we are talking about people of developed countries.

Poor populations are the most vulnerable to extreme natural hazards: they’re largely unassisted, there are no nearby disaster rescue resources. Such resources are generally deployed near the wealthier parts of the cities. Their homes are inadequate and highly vulnerable. They often live in high concentrations of people per square foot, increasing the social scale of harm. It is a tragic recipe for catastrophe all too common in large regions of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Add any strong natural ingredient to this recipe and human tragedy becomes a certainty: tropical storms, flooding, land and mudslides, earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes, tsunamis will provoke a massive number of deaths.

A decade ago, an analysis of ‘natural disasters’ in Latin America already alerted that the majority countries in the region would rather adopt a policy of reconstruction and post-disaster international assistance, than a strategy of disaster prevention.

Rather than taking a proactive approach towards risk management focused on risk reduction and preparedness, the region continues to rely upon costly reconstruction processes and post-disaster international assistance. This reactive stance is not only costly in terms of lives and destroyed assets, but also appears largely unsustainable as worldwide international assistance decreases and natural disaster proneness increases everywhere. This is why the improvement of risk management appears essential to guarantee the protection and future progress of economic and social development in the region.

A study recently published by the Wilson Center shows that poverty is a central component of vulnerability to natural hazards.

The capacity to survive and recover from the effects of a natural disaster is the result of two factors: the physical magnitude of the disaster in a given area, and the socioeconomic conditions of individuals or social groups in that area. Vulnerability is differentiated by social groups in almost all natural disasters. Altogether, it is estimated that 90% of victims and 75% of all economic damages accrue to developing countries.

In Central America and a large part of South America, social conditions significantly increase the risk of catastrophes due to exposure to frequent extreme natural events. In richer countries like Brazil, social inequalities coupled with bad governance have the same effect: vulnerable populations are as exposed and fragile to natural hazards as the dispossessed from the poorer countries of the region.

In Central America, the relationship between socio-economic conditions and the impact of natural disasters can generally be expressed as follows: economic constraints force the poor to live in precarious homes, made of flimsy, nondurable materials, on the least-valued plots of land. The poor build their shacks on steep hillsides; on floodplains; in fragile ecosystems and watersheds; and on contaminated land, right-of-ways, and other inappropriate areas. Even government housing and urban-development policies tend to overlook environmental constraints and lack adequate information for land-use planning. Inappropriate location invites serious social and environmental problems, which are aggravated by deforestation as well as by inadequate management of rainwater and wastes. During disasters, inadequate services and infrastructure further complicate survival efforts.

An impact analysis of 1998 hurricane Mitch shows that in Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala, the most badly hit municipalities had the higher indices of poverty. In Honduras, the illiterate population had a relative risk of being affected my Mitch about 80 times greater than the population from the highest educational levels. Huge differences were also found between households headed by illiterate persons and those headed by persons with at least elementary education.

Haiti is just like that. Even worse. Look at Haiti’s death toll: more than 200,000. Chile is nothing like that. Its death toll will probably end below 2,00o people, in spite of having been hit by a much stronger earthquake and a larger tsunami. Chile has trained rescue teams that have already proved effective during other disasters of large dimensions. Concepción, the city that was directly hit by the earthquake and the tsunami this weekend, has faced other extreme events. In 1960, a 9.5 quake on the Richter scale, the largest ever registered by instruments, hit its southern coastal area.

After decades of continued growth, Chile has a US$ 14,000 per capita income.  The difference of the 10% highest earnings to the 10% lowest  has dropped by 21% between 1990 and 2006. The proportion of poor people in the population has dropped 64%, and the proportion of  people in extreme poverty, 75%, over the same period.

Chile’s social problems are not solved. There is still a lot to do. But the vulnerability of its population has been considerably reduced. This helps to explain to a large extent why the death toll is smaller today than it was when events of a lesser strength have hit the country in the past. Preparedness helps to explain another important part of the reduction of human losses.

Extreme climatic events will increase in frequency or intensity, or both over the next years and decades. Countries like Brazil, fortunate not to have severe earthquakes, are particularly vulnerable to climate change. In its urban centers and peripheries there are large numbers of people exposed to very high risks. The country spends billions of dollars every year on recovery and only a few million on prevention. Its housing policies do not consider environmental and natural risks and vulnerabilities. Location studies are inept. Application criteria lack transparency, and house distribution does not give priority to the people under higher environmental and climatic risk. A perfect recipe for disaster.