Structural response to building capacities needs for DRR

Sarbjit Singh Sahota, Director, RedR India

www.redr.org

The problems of our times—from fighting global epidemics and terrorism to preparing for natural disasters, from mediating ethno-political conflict to preventing wars, from revitalizing cities to revolutionizing health care—cannot be understood or solved by insulated thinking and uncoordinated action .

Practitioners need the tools of multiple disciplines to understand these challenging issues and to contribute to their resolution.

- University of Pennsylvania

Agenda for this session

Explore the type of capacity building required to achieve DRR. Quality, intensity, Scope; will focus on Non-Governmental initiatives.

Capacity Building for DRR is about fostering an integrated approach

In multiple domainsDevelopment planningPreparedness planningContingency planning andEmergency Response

Across disciplinesBreaks-down/over-come boundaries ofsector, scale and discipline to ensure that RISK is managed at the most appropriate level by the most appropriate people

in a manner that leads to safe development.

Fundamental Premise

Disasters are essentially a social and health issue Disasters tend to intensify pre-existing status, differences and inequalities. DRR can be a supper goal; an organizational priority for all its activities.

What are the Sectors, common to any post-disaster Responses?

WaterShelterSanitationFood and Nutrition

Education

Curative Health CareLivelihoodsMental Health Care……

All these are essentially services, which may have existed pre-disaster

as well and The quality of these services reflect in the form of

development index of any place.

Securin

g

Public H

ealth

Services during non- disaster time?

•About 30 million persons in rural areas suffer form sanitation-related disease•5 of the 10 top killer diseases of children aged 1-4 in rural areas are related to water and sanitation•About 0.6-0.7 million children die of diarrhea annually•Typhoid, dysentery, gastroenteritis, jaundice and malaria claim the lives of over a fifth of the children aged 1-4 in rural areas•Economic loss of Rs. 1200 crore annually due to loss of man-days on accidents of diseases

Source: Central Bureau of Health Intelligence, Ministry of Health and Family

Welfare, GoI, 1998-99

Post disaster Suspension of services like water, sanitation…..

adverse effects on well-being, quality of life, and development of affected populations as well as those who are not directly affected.

Improving sustainability of existing services- an integral approach to risk reductionReducing vulnerability to disasters can be a Public Health

Priority.

First Level of Capacity building

Perspective building on:Disasters and development as a continuum Public Health Approach

Infrastructural Causes

Population Environment

Primary Vulnerabilities

Structural CauseGovernance

Society

Culture

Economy

Socio- Economic Vulnerability and Capacities

Natural Hazard Man-Made Hazard

Underlying cause

Immediate Cause

Manifestation

Development, Disaster Prevention and Preparednes s Planning

Contingency Planning and Early Warning

Emergency Response

Disasters and development continuum

Information for

Information for

Information for

Environmental Health in Support of Public Health

Sanitation

Health and Hygiene Promotion

Wat

er S

uppl

y

Shelter&

Settlement

Decision Making (What to do?)

Disaster situation are unstructured problemSimilarly DRR is a goal with multiplicity of options, choices and complexity Hence both pre and post disasters pose a significant challenge to decision making.‘effective decisions’ = Contextual decisions

Organisational capacity Intelligence

Design

Choice

Implementation

Monitoring

Dec

isio

n m

akin

g

Prob

lem

Sol

ving

Various sciences and perspectives feed into making the intelligencerequired to do effective disaster management.

collective intelligence needs to interact with established decision support systems to produce effective decisions e.g tools to facilitating user decision making , standards

disaster decision making is a kin to problem solving,

Vulnerability

HazardDEVELOPMENT

PLANNING

PREPAREDNESS PLANNING

Policies, Laws and By Laws

Awareness and Partnerships

Institutional and Operational Systems

Early Warning Systems

CONTINGENCY PLANNING

Environment Service Delivery System

Population GovernanceInfrastructuresFood Security Poverty ReductionLifelines

CAPACITY BUILDING

Risk Reduction Planning (two pronged approach)VulnerabilityReduction

Risk management

Vulnerability Analysis

Mapping vulnerability is not enough, analysis along different pathways [inequality stemming from race, class, gender…..demographic processes (growth and population distribution) etc.] is important for targeted risk reduction. Analysis need to be followed by policy and structural responses. Explores the relationships between "event vulnerability" and "consequence vulnerability" and to understand the recovery process.event vulnerability refer to household vulnerability that is associated with the direct impacts from a disaster agent; and consequence vulnerability will refer to the household's vulnerability associated with the social and political processes of recovering from the disaster event.

Addressing vulnerability:

Vulnerability reduction is a political-economic phenomenon, which more than often reinforces the existing patters.institutions define problems in terms of what their own capacities

Need is to go much beyond 'technical fix' approach and consider the opportunity costs and how that capital might be spent in other ways to deal with the forces that generate peoples' vulnerability.

Policy Response to Vulnerability Analysis

state to engage in activities that deal with inherent inequality and prejudice?What if, state is part of the problem in maintaining such power systemthere are few governments in the world which

officially claim that they are uninterested in protecting their own citizens.

They may be interested in potentially cheaper/practical ways of reducing vulnerability.

We all need to engage in DRR but what about resource, technologies, implementation….?Do resource constrained regions and countries have a chance?

The earthquake triggered tsunamis that crossed the Indian Ocean with

great force. A 90 foot wave was measured in Sumatra, Indonesia, and

a 12 foot wave was measured in Puntland, Somolia.

Risk Reduction: ProsperityN

atur

al H

azar

ds

Through vario

us steps

Disaster R

isk Reduction is

achieved

Food

Educ

atio

n

Hea

lth

Comprehensive Risk Reduction

Disaster RiskIdentification

Comprehensive Risk Reduction in Community

Step-I: Community Organisation

Wat

er

Sani

tatio

nFacilitatedNegotiation

Disaster Prone CommunityRR is a sectoral responsibility delivered in coordination with others.

Tran

sitio

n

Task Based Consciousness based

What Capacity do we need?

A. skills, attitude and aptitude required to be a RR facilitators with:Capacity to Communicate and work with….….Cross sectoral perspective; Integrated Knowledge-Ref. Uni.of Penn statementCapacity to help in planning and managementCapacity to channel technical knowledge and wisdom from….

RedR supports individuals and organisations to create comprehensive capacities and capabilities to work on

DRR, hence create communities of practice; an important step towards institutionalisation of DRR.

B. TechnologyTechnology for Disaster Risk Reduction

Technology for Disaster Response

Overarching Issues

Housing and settlement Early WarningDrinking Water Sewerage and sanitationSolid Waste managementHealth SystemsCommunication

Housing andSettlement PlanningWaterSanitationLogisticsHealth CareCommunicatio n

Appropriate standardsBest Operating PracticesResponsive to Environment and ecologyCulture SpecificTransferable, Adoptable

What Capacity do we need?

•For RedR, appropriate technologies are part of the knowledge that we deploy for sectoral risk reduction. •The knowledge is delivered though its members and the training courses.

Lev

el o

f Res

ourc

e A

vaila

ble

for

Dev

elop

men

tSpace for Civil Society Increase

•Resources Decrease as we move away from the administrative capital•Essentially reach of resources reduces

We

have

gre

at a

Cha

nce

Quality and Quantity of Services

What do we need? C. Resources

Build organizations with capacity and capability to plan and implement strategic action for development

disaster preparedness & response; disaster risk reduction.

Thank you

E.g. of a resource rich ….

2005 Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Katerina and the city of New Orleans, USA

Many of our mitigation efforts themselves degrade the environment and contribute to the next disaster … simply postponing events of even greater ultimate magnitude …the building of levée banks ... encourage development behind them which increases losses when eventually they fail.”

E.g. of a resource constraint ….

Bangladesh Flood Plains

Flood shelters: just one example of how communities can protect themselves from the worst of the floods.Banks of earth are raised by up to 15 feet and cover an area of couple of football fields. People dig huge pond in middle & use this earth to raise the ground. Whenever the floods come, people can bring their livestock, possessions – even their homes – to safety. The pond in the middle becomes an important source of food, as it is used to farm fish.

“Disaster risk is an unresolved problem of development” Hence

Development need to be responsive to our needs (localised/contextual): link people, place and local Government structures. Find integrated solutions that target direct and indirect risks Community based planning for risk reduction is one way forward. Community based planning was a vision behind 73rd and 74th

amendment.

The key issue on emergency service deliveryEmergencies threaten wellbeing of large population over a very short span of timeAll the services need to be planned and managed in an express mode that can match the fast changing emergency environment.This demand for daily or short cycle monitoring.In doing so it is also important to understand interdependency of these services; Complex decision making. Coordination of various service providers to access and analyse the information and mount appropriate responses is critical to achieve optimum service levels.

Hence Improved decision-making at all levels- Development of disaster risk reduction strategies in a multi-lateral environment

Pre-disaster Service level

In groups, brain storm and come-up with recommendations for sustainable services for DRR in Urban Areas.20 min. for discussion followed by presentation.

The way forward for RedRCreate and institutionalise decision support systems (DSS), tools and techniques that integrate various sectoral perspectives and modes of implementation.Sphere standards for emergencies, Dynamic Risk Register for DRR in urban settings are some of the existing DSS, which can help in integration of knowledge. RedR supports individuals and organisations to understand and use such tools, hence create communities of practice; an important step towards institutionalisation of DRR.

Risk Register in urban governance can fulfil the need of:

participation and involvement of broad range of stakeholders in decision-making. Allocating responsibility for disaster risk reduction Integrated planning and decision making framework. A coordinating framework

Risk Register in urban governance can fulfil the need of:

participation and involvement of broad range of stakeholders in decision-making. Allocating responsibility for disaster risk reduction Integrated planning and decision making framework. A coordinating framework

A tool to facilitating user decision making