High-risk South Asia inks pact on disaster response
11 Nov 2011 16:56
Taj Mohammad, 80, displaced by floods, sits with his siblings in a school building where they have taken refuge in the Badin district of Pakistan's Sindh province September 22, 2011. REUTERS/Akhtar Soomro
By Krittivas Mukherjee
ADDU CITY, Maldives, Nov 11 (AlertNet) - Eight South Asian countries agreed a pact on Friday to provide one another with quick assistance during natural disasters aimed at boosting response in a region that is among the world’s most disaster prone.
South Asia sits on a high-risk seismic zone and is home to one fifth of the world's population. It is susceptible to massive seasonal floods and storms and the dangers from climate change are probably the greatest in this poverty-blighted region.
Yet inertia, lack of funds and lax law enforcement have meant any progress in disaster preparedness has been slow. The Rapid Response to Natural Disasters agreement, signed off by the foreign ministers of the eight nations, seeks to change that by greater cooperation among each other.
"The agreement essentially aims to provide effective regional mechanisms for rapid response to natural disasters," said Vikram Doraiswami, an official from the Indian foreign ministry.
"The idea is to create the modalities by which countries in the region can provide each other assistance teams, how the assistance teams are to move, to build capacities to deal with post disaster relief delivery, and also to create contingency planning and post-disaster measures."
Six out of eight South Asian countries – India, Nepal, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Bhutan – are located within the seismically active Himalayan-Hindukush belt.
The region witnesses around 100,000 minor quakes every year, and one of magnitude 8 or greater every 25 years. The last major earthquake in the region was in Pakistan in 2005, measuring 7.6 and killing more than 73,000 people.
CLIMATE CHANGE
South Asia is also prone to floods with millions displaced almost every year from seasonal rains and deluge. In Pakistan, the second consecutive year of flooding has killed 430 people and disrupted the lives of nine million.
But climate change is possibly the region’s greatest long-term security threat as rising temperatures and droughts dry out farmlands which are then inundated by intense floods and storms.
Sea levels are also rising unevenly in the Indian Ocean, placing millions at risk along low-lying coastlines in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Maldives among countries in this region, scientists say.
For instance, the Maldives, a chain of low-lying sandy islands in the Indian Ocean famed for its diving and luxury resorts, fears being swamped by rising seas as the planet heats up.
The highest point of land here is two meters or about 6 feet above sea level. Future sea level is projected to rise within the range of 10 to 100 centimeters by the year 2100, which means the entire country could be submerged in the worst-case scenario, the World Bank says.
"By embracing climate change as an opportunity to do things differently, we can tackle emissions and earn a competitive advantage in the rapidly growing clean economy," Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed told a summit of the heads of state of the eight-nation South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC).
The grouping has India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and the host country, an archipelago of nearly 1,200 mostly uninhabited atolls.
(Editing by Nita Bhalla)
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Source:- http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/high-risk-south-asia-inks-pact-on-disaster-response/