UN says 'be prepared' is key to disaster mitigation
Updated
The Asia Pacific region has been hit by multiple disasters in the past few weeks, with the earthquake in Indonesia's Sumatra province, the tsunami in Samoa and wild storms and typhoons in Asia.
Over a thousand people were confirmed dead in the Padang quake in Indonesia, while hundreds of thousands of people in the Philippines are still homeless, after three typhoons hit, within four weeks. Disaster management experts have long urged governments to focus on disaster preparedness - to reduce the level of crisis.
Presenter: Sen Lam
Speaker: Jordan Ryan, Director of the Bureau for Crisis Prevention & Recovery, at the United Nations Development Program
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RYAN: Now is the opportunity for what's called early recovery, in a sense providing assistance once the initial disaster relief efforts have been undertaken to plan for the country to come back from the destruction. And clearly there'll be big opportunities, whether it's in Indonesia, in the Philippines to really focus on that more coordinated effort that will bring together financial resources, skilled human resources and expertise to work with national authorities and assist the communities to reduce vulnerabilities to events like earthquakes or tsunamis. We're really concerned to assist national authorities, work in partnership with other governments, especially in the Pacific with Australia and New Zealand.
LAM: The Philippines for instance is still mopping up after being hit by three typhoons in a month and typhoons are not a new thing for the Philippines. What's your assessment of the country's preparedness?
RYAN: Well I think there's growing awareness that both the intensity of these storms and the frequency of these storms will only increase, in part because of such things as global climate change. Every country I think, and we've seen examples in some of the most advanced western countries that get hit by hurricanes and aren't at the top of their game in terms of response. So I think there's a lot of work that needs to be done and is being done increasingly in partnership with countries to put disaster risk management into the consciousness of finance officials, of not just the Red Cross people that work on the ground, but prime ministers and leading ministers. So I think there's a real effort that's increasingly underway, Philippines very much hit by those storms and the fact that there's been flooding and still dealing as you say with the impacts of those major disasters; there have been crop losses, that damage estimates alone to agriculture and infrastructure are well over 382-million dollars US. So the national response is that the national economic and development authority and the office of civil defence work together to sort of move forward in the efforts of planning and implementing the rehabilitation process. But there's a need in all of these countries I think to work with the national authorities, with local authorities to strengthen response, especially as it means getting prepared for new disasters so that they don't affect populations.
LAM: Well the Indonesian archipelago is prone to earthquakes, the Philippines open to typhoons, how does a nation prepare for natural disasters like earthquakes and typhoons?
RYAN: Well I think what we've seen in a number of countries, I've served in Vietnam before and we worked very closely with the national authorities. In a sense there were a number of their agencies, whether it was agriculture or infrastructure or rural development, got together with a single disaster management plan. First you need leadership, prime ministers often are the most effective conveners of crisis groups to really put the attention that's needed on the crisis. But what do you need after that? You need to follow through with both awareness raising, what was told to me in Samoa and Tonga, people still ran out to look at the sea rather than run the heck away from that episode. So the awareness is needed. Also the types of constructions; we saw the effects of the tsunami, some buildings were able to withstand the tsunami wave, a Red Cross building that had recently been built. The more that we can in a sense build back better, also lifting some of these villages away from directly being in the path of the sea surge, five metres would have made a difference. So I think there's a lot of work that needs to be done in terms of mapping out what the risks are, addressing them in a coherent fashion, having resources targeted to it and having leaders understand these things unfortunately cost so you've got to put it in your budget, you've got to be planning in advance. Might not happen this year, you hope it never happens, but it's much better to be prepared.
LAM: But Jordan Ryan you spoke of costs; one of the region's poorest countries Bangladesh is prone to annual flooding. Is Bangladesh getting any kind of foreign assistance in terms of preparedness?
RYAN: Bangladesh is one of the countries that we in the United Nations Development Program working very closely with the whole area of disaster risk management. The authorities there I think are well aware of the need to put a priority to disaster risk management, and the more sort of upfront thinking in terms of being prepared will result in reducing the horrendous cost that comes from dealing with it after the episode. So yes, definitely Bangladesh high on our list of countries that we work closely with. But much of the resources that we have within UNDP, the UN Development Program for disaster risk management actually going out to Asia and Pacific. It's an area of the world unfortunately that seems to be right in the path of many of these natural calamities. So a large portion of the UN development systems response to natural disasters is focused in Asia Pacific. We've got a disaster management team, one based in Fiji, another based in Bangkok that can react rapidly and working closely with governments, there are some nations in the Asia Pacific region that are very good at putting this on a sort of priority footing. And we hope that they reach out to other governments supported by countries like Australia and New Zealand who know first hand what these kinds of damages to bring to make sure that things work better the more prepared we are.
