Helsinki Presentation May30-2010

8/9/2019 Helsinki Presentation May30-2010

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Social resilience in flood management

Disaster Risk Reduction or Disaster RiskDisplacement?

Jeroen Warner


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Quick onset disasters


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The great wave


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Some observations based on

Systematic work by Annelies Heijmans onCBDRR/CBDRM in Asia and other DS staff aftertsunami

Anecdotal evidence from my PhD field researchon flood politics in NL, UK Bangladesh

2010 Just started research with students in theNL

Nuwcren: Learning from UK and US.. Butespecially from the global South


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What is normal? W

hat is exceptional?

Normality (the everyday) can

be full ofhazard while complex

emergencies have pockets of

normality

An extra (climate-induced)

flood or drought may not make

all the difference when everyday disease, civil war, poverty,

traffic pose constant risks


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Risk landscape

Local perspective

Puts into question notions of vulnerability, resilience,

climate change

But they are adopted by the South because it brings inmoney (and awareness)

The North does not practice our own concepts for the

South- community, participatory, preparedness


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Role of local actors

In disaster:

First burden of disaster is on the affected

Cooperation rather than panic

Currently dominant article of faith: multi-

stakeholder involvement: proaction, preparedness

After disaster, stakeholders are supposed to takeownership of systems put in place by emergency

actors


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Local knowledge works if practiced a lot

Some Pacific islands: 15 minute lead time and

it works; Boulder, Col. has 45 mins for flash flood

Bangladesh: rodents means: The river is comingTsunami: Fishers were safer than tourist resorts

But what about : rare events; supralocal events;

modernising societies (alienation from directenvironment)?


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Flood adaptation in Bangladesh

Rapid-onset (flood) & creeping catastrophe (erosion): mutliple hazards- Sea level rise => mitigation?

- Riverbank and coastal erosion => hundreds of thousands

have to move into hazardous areas

Receiving areas not welcoming more people; what w

hen t

hey come back?Bangladesh impressive mutual aid e.g. joint use of riverboats

also land appropriation and violence from musclemen

(Ahsan): Some better off than before thanks to aid system: this

is present-day local knowledge

There is good money for NGOs in climate change


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Adaptation in the North

NL

Adaptation = technology

Decentralised river management: central govt. Setssafety standards, local actors can shape approach

Western Europe: Space for the River

Safety, Natural values, development

Whose safety, whose natural values, whodevelopments?


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Water boards

12th century: Monks started draining and reclaiming land

(and brewing beer)

Groups of farmers got together to protect land If one defaulted, collective safety was compromised

1421/3 200,000 died in St Elizabeth floods

Whole villages disappeared under the water

1953 1800 died in NL(and 300 in UK) in coastal floods


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For better or for worse?

Traditional risk reduction strategies reproduce powerrelations and inequalities

Modernist project: banning (or equalising) risk foreveryone with centralised food protectio n

New safety regime brings new inequalities Centralised dikes eroded local capacities: false sense of

security;

Risk displacement: Dikes create bathtubs: from highincidence, low consequence to low incidence, hig

h consequence Cntrol paradox: the better protected, the more people go

and live there


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Where are the people?

Disaster drills (VIKING, Floodex) only involve

authorities, not civic organisations

In practice, disasters are always dealt with bylocal people and they do

E.g. Enschede made a comparison between NL UK

and ITALY


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Dutch disaster preparedness and resilience is low

The 1953 coastal flood, 1992 Amsterdam plane crash and

2000Fireworks depot explosion in Enschede, were real

disasters.. A fire like in the town of Volendam was morelike a major accident even then we are dumbfounded

say Dutch security experts like Uri Rosenthal and Rob de

Wijk


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Some history.

Netherlands: until 1950s thousands of water boards

(sometimes just 4 farmers)

But rich landowners decided (interest => pay => say)

Religious divisions

Dike wars: shifting risk onto neighbours

1798: French occupation: centralisation

More safety, less resilience


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Back to the future

1995-2005 Movement from resistance to

resilience approach

From illusion of excluding risk to accepting and

reducing risk Reintroduction of time-honoured practice of

controlled flooding of sparsely inhabited areas

(calamity polders)

Accepted in expert community., not by

politicians and civil society!


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Flood management

approaches Resistance approach

Aims for zero risk:ignoring preparedness

Based on

solidarity

Technocraticmanagement

Resilience approach

Accepts residual risk=> Integrated chain

Differentiation of

protection standards

Depends on wideractor base and

awareness


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Knowledge

NL: Very little reliance on local knowledge

In participatory processes, people defer totechnological knowledge

Opposing groups find countervailing expert knowledge

(professors forhire)


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State-society collusion in non-preparedness

Who are the community?

In W Europe active civil society is town professionals and farmers -opposed to nonstructural flood measures e.g. flood detention, Spacefor the River, as it affects land value and housing prices

Netherlands allows building in floodplains and deep polders

- Corruption, no enforcement in housing standards:

- Allowing building in floodplains

- Illusion of risk free protection


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Observations in Wales, France, Limburg

(Southern NL)

Houses of long-term residents are flood-prepared

- powerpoints high up, no fitted carpet, escape toroof

Tourists and second-home owners are unaware; it

is not in local authorities inetrets to tell them..


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Risk profiling, cost cutting

Governments: risk reduction, worst case scenario

Fire services invest in prevention at the source, to

becomelean and mean

Violence against ambulance; no doctor in in no-go areas

Insurance companies: Actuarial data

Unobtrusive control

Human rights activists worry about civil rightsinfringements


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Resilience = bouncing back?

Coping and resilience does not mean people

survive unscathed whether for individuals andsocial systems, the pieces of the puzzle never fall

into place again

Resilience reinstates old vulnerabilities


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Disaster Risk Reduction cycle

Reconstruction

Prevention

Mitigation

Response

Recovery

DisasterDisaster Risk Reduction

Cycle

Preparedness


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Disasterhelix (Lee Bosher)Boundaries are blurred


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The safety chain

Proaction : the elimination of structural causes of danger, therebypreventing the development of dangerous situations.

Prevention: the minimization of risks and the restriction of the

consequences of any accidents that occur.

Preparation: the preparations for the control of accidents, disasters

and crises.

Response : the operational control of dangerous situations that have

occurred, inclusive of the provision of the necessary assistance.

Aftercare : the concluding link in the safety chain. Aftercare focuses

on the return to the normal situation, together with evaluations that

result in procedural improvements.


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Disaster Management Cycle


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Problems with Chain Approach

Expansion of security concept: Expansion of state

control or of stakeholder control?

Coopting stakeholders for others aims

Technocracy looms (e.g. Dutch water sector

approach to adaptivity).

Helsinki Presentation May30-2010

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Transcript of Helsinki Presentation May30-2010