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THE trends are disturbing — escalating worldwide conflict resulting in migration; a spike in the number and frequency of disasters; the world becoming ever hotter because of climate change. These trends coincide with an impending fall in aid money, which is crucial to tackling these challenges. To overcome the latter, the 2016 World Disaster Report makes a case for investing more in resilience efforts.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies defines resilience as “the ability of individuals, communities, organisations or countries exposed to disasters and crises and underlying vulnerabilities to anticipate, reduce the impact of, cope with, and recover from the effects of shocks and stresses without compromising their long-term prospects”.
The report advocates a new approach that is aimed at strengthening the resilience of vulnerable and at-risk communities.
In 2015, 574 disasters, caused by floods, earthquakes, landslides and heatwaves hit the world, affecting 108 million people, killing 32,550 and causing damage to the tune of $70.3 billion. By investing in long-term resilience measures, disasters can be mitigated, and perhaps avoided in the long run. Take Bangladesh, which is perennially exposed to regular loss of life due to cyclones; it has reduced casualties from a high of 500,000 in 1970 to a little over 3,000 in 2007 by investing in disaster preparedness and improvements.
Pakistan has allocated little aid to DRR strategies.
Resilience always forms a significant part of the important international instruments, such as the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change. More recently, the link between climate change and migration has been addressed in the Nansen Initiative on Disaster-Induced Cross-Border Displacement in its ‘Agenda for the Protection of Cross-Border Displaced Persons in the context of Disasters and Climate Change’. These international instruments are the basis on which national governments can build upon disaster risk and resilience policies.
However, there are two important obstacles in the way of mainstreaming such policies. First, putting resilience on top of the priority list has been resisted for its perceived clash with ‘humanitarian imperative’ or the right to give and get humanitarian aid. In fact, resilience and response are not mutually exclusive. Building resilience is part and parcel of humanitarian imperative.
Second, the development-disaster divide is often an obstacle. Humanitarian agencies have resisted the idea of combining humanitarian action, with development action as the latter is seen as often impeding a life-saving response. However, the World Humanitarian Summit in 2015 sought to bridge this divide by urging enhanced engagement between humanitarian and development actors.
Both are intertwined: development actors need to incorporate disaster prevention strategies in their planning while a resilience-based approach requires humanitarian actors to look beyond limited horizons of mere relief provisions, as the report explains.
And yet, very little of development or humanitarian finance goes the way of resilience spending.
Between 1991 and 2010, $13.6bn international financing has been spent on disaster risk reduction. DRR financing is only a tiny fraction of the total development assistance.
According to the report, of the funds allocated to disasters, $69.9bn (65.5pc) went to emergency response, $23.1bn (21.7pc) was spent on reconstruction and rehabilitation, while only $13.6bn (12.8pc) was spent on anticipatory DRR. In fact, disaster spending constitutes only a small fraction of the $3.3 trillion worth of total international aid finance. And DRR spending of $13.6bn accounts for just 0.4pc of the total amount spent on international aid. In other words, for every $100 spent on development aid, just 40 cents were invested in defending that aid from the impact of disasters.
As for Pakistan, the country has received $5.9bn, which accounts for 5.5pc of total global funding spent on disaster. Of this, only $161.5m has actually been spent on DRR. On the other hand, it is pointed out that $3.3bn has been spent on response and $2.5bn on reconstruction and rehabilitation. As is apparent from the figures contained in the report, Pakistan has allocated a small fraction of disaster-related aid to disaster risk-reduction programmes. This is so even at the country remains exposed to floods and other natural disasters, as is evident in the regular episodes of flood, cyclones and earthquakes that are witnessed.
Pakistan can ill afford to postpone investing massively in resilience programmes. The report rightly shows Pakistan as a country that needs to make a serious attempt at investigating how it can divert massive volumes of aid into schemes and programmes that contribute to long-term disaster prevention and reduction strategies.
The writer is a consultant and policy analyst.
Twitter: @arifazad5
Published in Dawn, February 23rd, 2017
