Gujarat: monsoon mayhem leaves 2 people dead

CNN-IBN
Updated Jun 13, 2011 at 08:54am IST.

New Delhi: Three straight days of heavy rain has left two people dead in Gujarat.

Roads and markets in Veraval and Somnath are waterlogged and standing crops have been damaged.

A cyclone warning was issued for the Gujarat coast on Sunday because of a low pressure over the Saurashtra region.

High speed winds which uprooted trees and electric poles in many places are expected to subside by Monday.

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ALL INDIA WEEKLY WEATHER REPORT - 8th June 2011

Government of India

Ministry of Earth Sciences

INDIA METEOROLOGICAL DEPARTMENT

ALL INDIA WEEKLY WEATHER REPORT

8^th June, 2011

MONSOON WATCH

• Southwest monsoon has further advanced over some more parts of Bay of Bengal and northeastern States.

• The northern limit of monsoon (NLM) on 8^th June passes through 20.0°N/60.0°E, 20.0°N/70.0°E, Dahanu, Nasik, Gulbarga, Rentachintala, Narsapur, 18.0°N/85.0°E, 20.0°N/88.0°E, 22.0°N/90.0°E, Agartala, Shillong, Itanagar and 28.0°N/94.0°E.

• Monsoon was vigorous over Konkan & Goa, Marathawada, Tamil Nadu & Pondicherry, Karnataka and Kerala during the one or two days of the week. Monsoon was active over Konkan & Goa, Madhya Maharashtra, Rayalaseema, Karnataka and Kerala during one or two days of the week.

• Heat wave conditions prevailed over Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, West Uttar Pradesh and West Madhya Pradesh during 5^th – 6^th June, 2011. Highest maximum temperature was recorded 48.3 C at Barmer (Rajasthan) on 6^th June, 2011.

  
  

  
  

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Be prepared for any monsoon disaster, states asked

Submitted by admin3 on 26 May 2011 - 6:34pm

• India News

By IANS,

New Delhi: Amid likelihood of monsoon to touch India at this month-end, the government Thursday sounded an alert and asked states to be prepared to tackle any possible disaster in the wake of floods triggered by heavy rains.

Another advice from Home Secretary G.K. Pillai for the state governments was to keep a close vigil on human traffickers who abduct those affected, particularly children, left vulnerable after devastating floods to work as bricklayers, domestic servants and even sold as brides.

Pillai, at the day-long conference on disaster management ahead of monsoon, "warned that human trafficking gangs become very active during all disasters and there was a need to monitor their activities".

The home ministry had organised the annual conference to review the status of preparedness of the states and union territories for southwest monsoon.

Pillai, in his address, emphasised the importance of disaster and its management in view of its rising trend and with climate change impacting health, agriculture and habitat of different species.

Speaking about the preparedness and mitigation measures, he pointed out that amendment of building bylaws as per vulnerability index of the states was "the key priority area and there was an urgent need to prepare for disaster scenarios through regular mock drills and exercises".

Secretary, border management, A.E. Ahmed in his address focused on hazard scenarios and impact coupled with climate change aspects.

He also asked the state representatives to prepare and forward consolidated memoranda for central assistance in case of disasters of severe nature.

"The states needed to gear up their machinery for coordination with all stakeholders engaged in disaster related activities and to follow the checklists issued by (the ministry) for better preparedness," Ahmed said

Source :- http://twocircles.net/2011may26/be_prepared_any_monsoon_disaster_states_asked.html+

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INSARG & NDMA Conduct Regional Group Earthquake Response Exercise

INSARG & NDMA Conduct Regional Group Earthquake Response Exercise

INSARAG (International Search and Advisory Group) Asia-Pacific Regional Group Earthquake Response Exercise was successfully conducted by the INSARAG Sectt., United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) in association with the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) at Agra today.

The three day exercise was designed to place participant under pressure to simulate, as far as possible, in a real-life earthquake response situation. The injects, delivered throughout the duration of the earthquake response exercise, were based on actual events and served to add an element of realness to the simulation exercise. Although the timelines was compressed, the exercise followed a well established pathway that is common to actual disasters.

Following completion of this exercise, it is hoped that all national and international participants will have greater level of awareness and understanding of international disaster response and will be better prepared during the times of a real disaster event.

Source :- http://cdrn.org.in/show.detail.asp?id=21736

Cost Of Natural Disasters $109 Billion In 2010

Natural disasters caused $109 billion in economic damage last year, three times more than in 2009, with Chile and China bearing most of the cost, the United Nations said Monday.

The 8.8-magnitude earthquake that struck Chile in February cost $30 billion. Landslides and floods last summer in China caused $18 billion in losses, data compiled by the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) showed.

Although Haiti's January 12 earthquake was the deadliest event of 2010, killing 316,000 people according to the government in Port-au-Prince, its economic toll was $8 billion. The July-August floods in Pakistan cost $9.5 billion.

Margareta Wahlstrom, the U.N. assistant secretary-general for disaster risk reduction, said fast-developing countries were facing increasing price tags from natural disasters.

"The accumulated wealth that is affected by disaster events is growing," she told a news briefing in Geneva, where most of the U.N.'s emergency and aid operations are based.

Cities are particularly vulnerable to big economic losses when poorly-maintained infrastructure is rattled by earthquakes or exposed to big storms, Wahlstrom said.

"With more extreme weather events, and more earthquakes in urban areas, the state of repair or disrepair in urban areas is really critical," she said.

CLIMATE CHANGE

The most populous cities on earthquake fault lines include Mexico City, New York, Mumbai, Delhi, Shanghai, Kolkata, Jakarta and Tokyo, according to the U.N.'s International Strategy for Disaster Reduction.

Many people also live in parts of urban areas vulnerable to landslides and floods, which are anticipated to occur more often as a result of climate change, Wahlstrom said, also warning of rising risks from "silent events" like droughts.

Of the 373 disasters recorded last year, 22 were in China, 16 were in India and 14 were in the Philippines, CRED said.

The storms, earthquakes, heatwaves and cold snaps affected 207 million people and killed 296,800, according to the data, which does not incorporate an increase of Haiti's death toll announced earlier this month by Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive.

The global toll estimates that 55,736 people died from a summer heatwave in Russia which led to crop failures and helped drive up food prices.

It also says 2,968 people were killed in an April earthquake in China and 1,985 died from the Pakistani floods.

The 2009 economic price tag of $34.9 billion was unusually low because of the lack of a major weather or climate event in the period, which nonetheless saw floods and typhoons in Asia and an earthquake in Indonesia.

A major earthquake in China in 2008 caused $86 billion in damage, bringing that year's economic toll to approximately $200 billion. In 2005, the hurricanes that struck the southern United States drove up the global disaster toll to nearly $250 billion.

The economic cost estimates are based on data from national authorities as well as insurance companies including Swiss Re, Munich Re and Lloyd's. CRED is part of the University of Louvain in Belgium and maintains a database of international disasters for the United Nations.

Source :-planetark.org
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Natural Disaster Contributed to Price Rise Could Spark Unrest

High and volatile prices for key commodities, including food products, could spark unrest in poor countries, warned the heads of the WTO and the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) on Monday.

Rising food prices “are now stoking global inflation, not to mention political unrest of proportions that we could have seldom imagined” said WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy, speaking at the opening of a two-day conference on commodities in Geneva this week.

UNCTAD Secretary-General Supachai Panitchpakdi echoed his comments, telling delegates that a predictable supply of commodities is needed “to address the acute problems of food and energy security, especially in environments of extreme poverty with the potential for social and political unrest.”

While neither Supachai or Lamy explicitly mentioned the political upheaval in North Africa and the Middle East, tension around food prices and unemployment may have been a factor that helped trigger protests.

Supachai cautioned that growing numbers of young people in the developing world “will not easily withstand” future price rises, especially given the lack of social protection in many countries, and “what has so far been a jobless recovery” from the recession.

Demand: Propelled by growth

Supachai told delegates that copper prices had risen 35 percent since the summer, while gold, sugar, and cotton were all at 30 year highs. The FAO´s agricultural commodity index had recently touched just one point below its maximum level reached in 2008, Supachai noted, “clearly signaling that the 2010-11 price hikes are similar in magnitude to 2008″.

Lamy predicted that prices for most commodities would continue to rise in 2011, as global GDP growth of 4 percent bolsters demand. Over 70 percent of the growth would come from commodity-intensive emerging markets, he said, with China, India and Latin America playing a major role.

“The ascent in prices is likely to be most pronounced for crude oil, due to contracting global inventories, copper, gold, corn, and soybeans” said Lamy. “Droughts and biofuels in several parts of the world have tightened the supply of corn and soy, together with much higher Asian demand for the latter”.

Natural gas, zinc and cattle would see the least pronounced price rises, Lamy said, with higher grain prices having slowed demand for live cattle.

Supachai argued that that the rise in commodity prices was likely to continue. “The historical trend is towards increasing demand, especially in high growth areas in the developing world”, he observed. Commodity producers could benefit from the increased demand, he said, if resource rents were properly managed.

Supply: Floods, fire, drought, and biofuels

Natural disasters had contributed to the tightness of supply, speakers at the conference acknowledged. Last year “major weather events, from floods in Pakistan to fires in Russia and drought in other areas of the world” had affected the prices of commodities such as wheat and cotton, Supachai said.

Lamy noted that corn and soy supply had been affected by drought as well, with biofuel policies an additional factor affecting the growth in demand.

“It is still open to speculation whether such events are related to climate change”, said Supachai, “but the balance of evidence points to the increasing impact of climatic changes on agriculture”.

Hunger rising

David Nabarro, who was appointed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon as a special representative on food security and nutrition, also echoed Lamy and Supachai’s concerns. During previous price spikes in 2008, a 30 to 50 increase in the food bill of the poorest one billion people “led to some very, very difficult choices”, Nabarro said, noting that small children and pregnant women had been hit particularly hard by the shocks.

Supachai underscored that the poorest communities were most at risk from sudden price changes. “Volatility has huge negative impacts on vulnerable groups, such as low-income households in developing countries, for whom food expenditure can account for up to 80 per cent of household budgets”, he warned.

More than one hundred million people are believed to have been pushed into hunger as a result of the 2008 price spikes. “These are people whose voices are not generally heard”, Nabarro noted, “but some of them did decide that this was just too much to bear, and in more than 32 countries we had riots by people who just could not cope with these food price rises”.

The current food price situation is therefore “not just an issue of hunger and nutrition, it’s also an issue of security,” he argued.

Debate on role of commodity markets

The magnitudes of recent price volatility “point to speculative distortions” which can complicate the management of commodities production and trade, Supachai told the meeting. The “financialisation” of agricultural commodities, and the activities of certain commodity funds that “seek to manipulate prices” also played a role, he said.

However, other participants at the forum argued that speculation had played little, if any role, in contributing to recent price spikes. “There is little evidence that speculators have been the underlying cause” of dramatic corn and wheat price increases in the last six months, said Brian Durkin, managing director and chief executive officer of CME Group, a Chicago-based operator of derivatives and futures exchanges.

At the instigation of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the G-20 group of leading economies is expected to highlight food price volatility in a series of summits throughout this year. France is reportedly keen to tackle speculation of commodity markets as part of this initiative.

Although Lamy made no mention of the relationship between price volatility and speculation in his remarks, he recently told a meeting of agriculture ministers that there was no consensus on how policy-makers should best respond.

Trade: Export restrictions and price volatility

Instead, said Lamy, governments should look at whether trade policies such as export restrictions have exacerbated shortages of commodities, especially for food. These measures “were the single most important reason for the 2007-08 price explosion on the rice market”, said Lamy, who also identified Russian and Ukrainian wheat bans as having made an important contribution to the 2010-11 price rise for cereals.

Lamy acknowledged that “there is an imbalance in the WTO rule-book between the stringency of the rules for imports and their laxity for exports”, even though export restrictions “could actually starve” net-food-importing countries. He suggested that the WTO’s ongoing Doha Round of trade talks provided countries with “a window” for tackling agricultural export taxes and export restrictions.

More broadly, Lamy suggested that a Doha deal would “oil the wheels of international trade in commodities, giving the developing world its fair share of the market”. Warning participants that “volatility is at its worst in tight and closed markets”, he emphasised that a Doha deal was an opportunity to reduce the developed world’s remaining tariff peaks, such as those on rice; an opportunity to reduce tariffs in emerging economies; and to cut developed country farm subsidies for products such as cotton. “These subsidies crowd out the developing world from international markets, and prevent it from fairly competing,” Lamy said.

Lamy also told the gathering that climate-induced pressures on resources would make a new global deal even more important. “Droughts, and other natural catastrophes, should not deprive parts of the globe from food,” he said.

Source :- http://ictsd.org
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Rs 30-cr plan for flood prevention in Capital

Taking a lesson from the Lalita Park building collapse which claimed 70 lives and injured around 100 people in east Delhi, the Delhi Government’s Flood and Irrigation Department has come out with Rs 30-crore proposal on flood prevention measures in the Capital.

A presentation on experiences of 2010 flood in Delhi and its preventive measures was made before Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit on Tuesday.

The presentation said that subsoil water level has improved considerably due to recharge of groundwater aquifer and structures along river embankments should be designed considering subsoil water condition post-2010 flood.

After the presentation, Flood and Irrigation Minister Raj Kumar Chauhan said that the department will bring a Cabinet proposal pertaining to flood preventive measures. The presentation further suggested that no drainage pipes on Ring Road should be connected to river and Yamuna Bazar wall needs to be raised by counter forts and grouting that would cost ` 1 crore.

According to presentation, to protect Tibetan Monastery and market from flood, wall should be constructed on river side which would cost Rs 10 crore. Some inlets on river Yamuna need to be remodeled or modified. This would also cost Rs 1.50 crore. "The gaps along Ring Road between Wazirabad and Old Railway Bridge plugged by placing earth filled bags mainly at Boat club and Qudesia Ghat. It was also observed that at some places river water entered through the drainage pipes along Ring Road between Boat Club and Qudesia Ghat. The Most vulnerable point between Wazirabad and Okhla was old wall near Yamuna Bazar and wall was temporarily strengthened by placing counter forts of earth filled bags," the presentation said. There are also needs to modify drainage system of DTC depot as laying pipes across the embankment by cutting not permissible.

Officials of Flood and Irrigation department said that they have also proposed to strengthen the marginal pusta bund road on the river embankment. Officials said that it was felt that pumps of adequate capacity were not available in market and during the flood; it was hired from private firms working in PWD and DJB.

On flood preventive measures, it has suggested that regular cleaning by removal of floating material and garbage dumped along the banks of drains that pass through thickly populated areas need to be done and fleet of pumps/motor boats/capacity of pumping stations need to be augmented keeping in view the experiences of 2010 flood and rains.



Source :- http://www.dailypioneer.com
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CDRN Team
Swati Pahuja
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New Delhi