AID POLICY: Humanitarianism in a changing world

Photo: Wetland Resource Development Society

Madrid-based think-tank DARA believes the number of countries adversely affected by changing weather will rise from 15 today to 54 in 2030

DUBAI, 4 April 2012 (IRIN) - There is “worrying evidence” that the scale and scope of disasters will increase significantly in coming years and “the international community is not prepared,” says Ross Mountain, director-general of Development Assistance Research Associates(DARA), a Madrid-based think-tank which advocates better humanitarian policies.

He was speaking at the Dubai International Humanitarian Aid & Development Conference & Exhibition, which ran from 1-3 April.

In vulnerable countries food prices, urbanization, migration, the impact of climate change and population growth are all increasing. But as the challenges grow, the resources available in OECD countries - the traditional donors - to respond to humanitarian crises are shrinking.

“The challenge will be huge,” Johannes Luchner, head of the Middle East, Central and South-West Asia unit of the European Commission’s humanitarian aid arm ECHO, said at the conference. “We need to do things differently in order to cope with this development.”

Part of doing things differently is planning for the future.

“Given the increased scale of needs and vulnerability, we need a radical shift in attitude and working practices to integrate anticipation, disaster risk reduction, preparedness and resilience into our programmes,” Mountain said.

“Many governments and many organizations still operate on a model that focuses on short-term crises, rather than looking at the longer term trends and their humanitarian implications… If we do not take a more participatory preventive approach, we will be responsible for countless avoidable suffering in the decades to come.”

His thoughts were echoed by Yacoub El Hillo, director of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR)’s Bureau for the Middle East and North Africa, who told the conference:

“I don’t think the international capacity today is well placed to respond - not to a collection of these mega-crises - even to one of them… And they are literally all over the world.” He said the international community needs to ask itself “whether the business-as-usual approach will continue to cut it…

“Prevention is better than a cure,” El Hillo told IRIN later. “A cure can never be adequate if the needs are growing by the hour, but the resources are declining by the minute.”

Speakers at the conference identified a number of trends, challenges and issues that humanitarians should take heed of if they are to “do better” in the future. Here are some of them:

Youth bulge: Almost 40 percent of the global population is under 24; over one billion people - one in five people - are aged 15-24; in one third of the world’s countries, more than 60 percent of the population is under 30; and 85 percent of the world’s youth live in the developing world. “Youth are a dominant demographic reality… a reality that demands urgent focus and consideration, especially in our development plans,” William Lacy Swing, director-general of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), told the conference.

“Without investments early on, youth remain trapped in situations of poverty and dependency, and are easily co-opted into criminality, social conflict, and patterns of inter-generational violence.”

Forging smart and strategic partnership is one way for the international humanitarian community to better respond to today's growing humanitarian challenges

Participants also stressed the need to better engage youth in humanitarian aid. “People under-estimate the capacity of youth,” said Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein, wife of the prime minister of the United Arab Emirates and a UN Messenger of Peace. “How is it that we give them so little role in setting the global development agenda or helping find new routes to ending political conflicts that deplete our energy and resources?”

Unemployment: With this “demographic tsunami”, as Princess Haya put it, “there are already too many people for too few jobs and the impact of technology, especially in the manufacturing sector, will be to reduce those numbers even further.” The Middle East and North Africa, for example, will have to create 20 million jobs in the next 10 years to align its unemployment rate of 25 percent with the global rate of 10 percent - a task that is “utterly daunting,” according to Justin Sykes, manager of social innovation at the Doha-based company Silatech, which focuses on creating jobs in the Arab world.

Migration: The rising number of young people, combined with high rates of unemployment, has been a key driver of global migration, which has reached unprecedented heights. Today, one in seven people in the world is a migrant. About 215 million migrants are crossing international borders and another 740 million are domestic migrants moving from rural to urban areas in search of work.

“Migration is with us to stay. It is a mega-trend of the 21st century,” Swing said. In some North African countries, more than three-quarters of youth said they intended to migrate at any cost, but had little information on the details of their journey or what job they would do once they reached their destination, IOM surveying has found. Increasingly, people who would meet the definition of a refugee are hidden in large groups of migrants, El Hillo added. This so-called “mixed migration” is making it harder to help refugees.

Climate change: DARA estimates that by 2030, there will have been 835 million deaths due to climate-related issues - not only extreme weather events, but preventable conditions like malnutrition and infectious diseases, which will be exacerbated by climate change. The number of countries adversely affected by changing weather will rise from 15 today to 54 in 2030. Mountain says the international community should focus on preventable illnesses and build the ability of vulnerable countries to adapt and mitigate the impact of climate change. See DARA’s 2010 Climate Vulnerability Monitor for more.

Politicization of humanitarian aid: Governments are increasingly linking humanitarian assistance to political, military or anti-terrorism objectives. Think Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, Sudan, Somalia and the occupied Palestinian territory. “This is a dangerous game which has deadly consequences in terms of access, protection and safety of civilians and humanitarian actors alike,” Mountain said. In other cases, like Syria, governments and/or armed groups have increasingly denied access to humanitarian organizations. Read more on the politicization of aid in the 2011 release of the Humanitarian Response Index, an annual survey published by DARA.

New actors in humanitarianism: There has been an explosion of NGOs in recent years; but also a change in the donor landscape. The economic downturn in the West has meant a growing role for donors and organizations from the Arab and Muslim worlds, for example. This means two things. First, the international community needs to better, and “more respectfully”, engage these new players. “The tendency on the part of many of us in the international community is to come thinking that money is to be given so that we, the experts, go back and do the work,” El Hillo said. “The talk should be more about strategic partnerships and not about money… Forging smart and strategic partnership is one way for the international humanitarian community to better respond to today's growing humanitarian challenges,” he told IRIN.

But as humanitarian aid becomes more popular, ECHO’s Luchner said, “we also need to be sure we can channel all this good will into a professional way of providing humanitarian aid.”

Local ownership: National actors have shown a desire to take on increased responsibilities in responding to crises, and the international community should welcome that, according to Ambassador Manuel Bessler, deputy director-general of the Swiss Humanitarian Aid Department. He said he learned this lesson during the floods in Pakistan, when, as the head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs there, he was not in enough contact with the authorities. The Arab Spring has also shown the capacity of civil society, and this must be embraced, El Hillo said: “Civil society organizations, NGOs in the Arab world are not there to be taught what they will do. They have a lot to teach.”

Innovation: The humanitarian community must move beyond traditional ways of thinking and look to innovative ways of dealing with the crises it faces. Bessler pointed to the success Switzerland has had in places like Somalia, with giving cash assistance instead of in-kind donations to vulnerable people. The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) is now experimenting with how to do this in emergencies. “It moves away from hand-outs to hands-on,” Bessler said, and also helps stimulate local economies. Another growing field is the use of text messaging on mobile phones to connect youth to potential employers, as Silatech has done in several new projects in the Arab world, or farmers to markets as has been done in sub-Saharan Africa.

Humanitarian versus development aid: As the lines between humanitarian aid and development work become increasingly blurred, humanitarians need to do a better job of advocating preparedness, Mountain said.

“When you deal with the military, they spend about 90-95 percent of their time planning and maybe 5 percent of their time doing,” he told IRIN, “whereas the humanitarians spend about 95 percent of their time, if not more, doing, and very little time planning… Even when people are not at war, they have an army. When there are no fires, you have a fire department sitting there. When you have a humanitarian crisis, by and large, you actually go out and try to get the firemen to come together and go out. So surprise surprise, we’re not as fast as we need to be.”

Link to the source:- http://www.irinnews.org/Report/95237/AID-POLICY-Humanitarianism-in-a-changing-world

Mumbai, Miami on list for big weather disasters, panel says

Climate change to inflict major crises, panel says San Francisco Chronicle - ‎36 seconds ago‎ Washington -- Global warming is leading to such severe storms, droughts and heat waves that nations should prepare for an unprecedented onslaught of deadly and costly weather disasters, an international panel of climate scientists says in a report ... Managing risk in a warming world Moneycontrol.com - ‎30 minutes ago‎ One of the most interesting facets of a new United Nations climate change report is what's not in it: much mention of curbing the greenhouse gas emissions that trap heat in Earth's atmosphere and in turn can spur some natural disasters. Mumbai, Miami on list for big weather disasters, panel says Boston Globe - ‎1 hour ago‎ By Seth Borenstein | AP Flooding submerged cars in Thailand's Ayutthaya Province last November. Extreme weather will increase, the panel said. WASHINGTON - Global warming is leading to such severe storms, droughts, and heat waves that nations should ... Global warming linked to extreme weather Sky News Australia - ‎1 hour ago‎ Global warming linked to extreme weather Updated: 15:07, Thursday March 29, 2012 One of the federal government's leading climate change experts says a United Nations report is an early warning that the world will face more deadly extreme weather events ... Extreme weather: it's about to get worse, say scientists Brisbane Times - ‎5 hours ago‎ As La Nina weather patterns subside the east coast can expect to stay wet right into April, reports Weatherzone's Josh Fisher. Global warming is leading to such severe storms, droughts and heatwaves that nations should prepare for an unprecedented ... Plan for climate change disasters, urges UN panel Irish Times - ‎6 hours ago‎ GOVERNMENTS NEED to have policies to “avoid, prepare for, respond to and recover from the risks of disaster” posed by extreme weather events such as floods and heatwaves, according to the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, reports Frank ... Report: Nations should prepare for weather disasters Salt Lake Tribune - ‎6 hours ago‎ By SETH BORENSTEIN | AP Washington • Global warming is leading to such severe storms, droughts and heat waves that nations should prepare for an unprecedented onslaught of deadly and costly weather disasters, an international panel of climate... Climate change report: time to start preparing for the worst Christian Science Monitor - ‎6 hours ago‎ It's time to start protecting people from the impact of severe-weather events, a panel says. The report offers further evidence of how the climate change conversation is shifting. By Pete Spotts, Staff writer / March 28, 2012 Fearing that climate ... UN climate panel ties some weather extremes to global warming msnbc.com (blog) - ‎6 hours ago‎ First for breaking news and analysis: Compelling world news stories from msnbc.com and NBC News journalists. Follow us on Twitter. By msnbc.com staff and news services Warming has led to changes in climate extremes such as heat waves, ... Mumbai, Miami on Weather Disasters List TIME - ‎8 hours ago‎ By AP / SETH BORENSTEIN Wednesday, Mar. 28, 2012 (WASHINGTON) — Global warming is leading to such severe storms, droughts and heat waves that nations should prepare for an unprecedented onslaught of deadly and costly weather disasters, an international ... All 140 related articles »

17 districts in Orissa,India get drought tag

The State Government declared 17 of the 30 districts as drought-affected on Thursday. The announcement comes a day after Opposition Congress and BJP slammed the BJD Government for the alleged delay in providing assistance to the affected farmers.

The decision was taken after receiving reports on possible crop loss of 50 per cent or more in 12,046 villages under 113 blocks and 100 wards under 25 urban local bodies in the 17 districts, Revenue and Disaster Management Minister SN Patro informed the Assembly.


The drought-hit districts are Angul, Bargarh, Bhadrak, Balangir, Boudh, Cuttack, Deogarh, Ganjam, Gajapati, Jharsuguda, Kalahandi, Koraput, Malkangiri, Nabarangpur, Nayagarh, Nuapada and Sonepur.


Patro, however, said the Government would not get the final crop cutting report from districts before January 15. Farmers who have lost crops of 50 per cent or more will be eligible for assistance as per the relief code.


While small and marginal farmers in the affected villages will get Rs 4,000 per hectare of irrigated land as agriculture input subsidy, the amount for non-irrigated land had been fixed at Rs 2,000 per hectare, he said adding, the compensation would be given to actual cultivators.

Source:- http://cdrn.org.in/show.detail.asp?id=23009

Adapting to Climate Change the Right Way

Faced with more frequent natural disasters caused largely by climate change, global and local decision-makers need to have greater foresight in their efforts to prevent and recover from future crises.

Tropical Storm Irene brought that need home brutally to Vermont, where authorities reacted earnestly but in ways which may worsen damage from future severe weather events. The storm caused little harm in urban areas of the mid-Atlantic and Northeast, so few expected the once-in-a-century flooding in rural upstate New York and Vermont that caused 56 deaths an estimated $10 billion to $15 billion in damage.

Although the damage was surprising, the causes behind it were not. For decades, scientists have warned that human-caused greenhouse gas emissions and the climate change they induce would result in weather extremes that grow more numerous and more intense. Climate change adaptation -- adjustments in natural or human systems in response to the impacts of climate change -- has thus become an international priority.

Such investments in adaptation make sense. Adaptation is necessary if communities and countries are to survive drastic changes in climate once environmental tipping points -- such as acidification of ocean, alteration of the Gulf Stream, or thawing permafrost -- are crossed.

Adaptation can also produce benefits beyond resilience to climate change, such as economic stability, improved environmental quality, community investment, and local employment. In many developing countries, climate change adaptation efforts are being integrated into strategies to reduce poverty. The Asian Development Bank has estimated, for instance, that every $1 invested in adaptation now could yield as much as $40 in economic benefits by 2030.

Global efforts are therefore underway to adapt in the face of droughts, rising sea levels, storms, and floods. The city of Perth in Western Australia, for example, is building a desalination plant to offset losses in water from declining precipitation. Planners in the Netherlands are constructing dikes, dams, and floating houses to cope with increased flooding and rises in sea level. Londoners are investing in a Thames River barrier system to better respond to floods.

Yet some of these interventions can have unintended, and dangerous, consequences. In Vermont, after Tropical Storm Irene, local and state officials allowed an unusual amount of dredging by heavy equipment in stream and riverbeds to collect gravel to help quickly repair roads. These actions, however, reduced the ability for ecosystems to lessen future flood surges, thus making those roads even more susceptible to storms and undermining the repair work itself.

Vermont is not alone in pursuing adaptation methods with unexpected consequences. In the Maldives, nicknamed the "flattest country on earth," poor coastal protection measures such as dredging to create sandbars and erecting seawalls have unintentionally reduced the flow of nutrients to coral reefs, weakening a natural shield against storm swells and surges. Coastal communities there have also removed vegetation to expand settlements and resorts and have mined sand for use in construction. These activities have increased the exposure of the Maldives to rising sea levels and floods. In Uganda, national leaders have planted thousands of hectares of fast-growing eucalyptus and pine trees to "sink" large amounts of carbon and create a buffer against strong winds. Such efforts, however, have inadvertently eroded the vitality of native forest ecosystems and displaced hundreds of communities from their livelihoods and land, lowering overall social resilience.

These examples -- and dozens more like them -- illustrate that sometimes the best intentioned adaptation efforts can increase environmental, economic, or social vulnerability. Part of the explanation may be the ad hoc and frenetic way local, state, and national officials sometimes respond to disasters. Following Tropical Storm Irene, some Vermont state policymakers were so overwhelmed that one local senator publicly announced that "the state became lawless for several weeks." He argued that Vermont's emergency policy amounted to a de facto "Do what you have to do and we'll sort it out later."

Economic incentives, some very understandable, can also play a role in the rush to action. The Ugandan tree planters mentioned above will receive millions of dollars for the carbon credits generated from their project. Vermont businesses, especially those involved in tourism, were anxious to see rapid road, bridge and other repairs completed before the fall foliage and winter ski seasons.

Good intentions, however, aren't enough. Climate change adaption efforts must meet the needs of the localities they intend to serve. The fact that such interventions are often done hastily should make us all the more diligent that they do not accelerate, rather than reduce, risk. Decisions made today on adaptation will greatly determine how vulnerable we are to future climate-induced events. Tropical Storm Irene was a powerful lesson that today's weather-related disaster can become tomorrow's humanitarian crisis.

The challenge now is to ensure that crisis recovery efforts rebuild for long-term resilience. After all, poorly designed and implemented investments in adaptation are worse than none at all.

Source:- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/benjamin-k-sovacool/adapting-to-climate-chang_1_b_1146910.html?ref=green

Fire crisis: Only few hospitals in city prepared

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM:� Ninety-three lives were lost in the blaze that engulfed the AMRI Hospital, Kolkata, last week. How many hospitals in fast-growing Thiruvananthapuram can tackle a similar disaster? ‘Few’ would be the answer. Flawed or non-existent fire-fighting mechanisms and absence of hospital contingency and mass casualty management plans will prove fatal for many hospitals in the city in the event of a similar disaster, experts say.

And this is not a problem confined to hospitals alone.

"The problem is that there is no periodic review of fire safety mechanisms in high-rises. The safety certificate is issued when giving building permit, and there is no subsequent inspection after that. This is a major handicap,’’ says R Viji, project officer of the City Corporation’s Disaster Management Cell.

Last month, the Corporation issued notices to high-rises, including hospitals, to pull� their act vis a vis safety together. The first periodical safety assessment in high-rises, including hospitals, will be carried out this month.

"It will focus on fire safety aspects as well as earthquake preparedness. Many high-rises even lack emergency exits such as fire escapes,’’ she said.

Unlike hotels and apartments, evacuation in hospitals assumes an altogether different dimension. Hundreds of patients, many of them incapacitated, have to be extricated in a matter of minutes, which calls for coordinated effort. But it is a fact that few hospitals have even emergency escape routes marked out.

Absence of hydrants, timely replacement of fire-fighting equipment and general complacency in the matter of fire safety are issues faced by the Fire and Rescue Service Department.

"Periodical inspection is crucial,’’ said K Sivanandan, Director (Technical), Fire and Rescue Service Department. "We have now framed rules for periodical checks in buildings. This will soon come into force,’’ he said.

But it’s not as if the issue of disaster management has never been discussed in hospitals. A few private hospitals have staged mock drills with the help of the Fire and Rescue Service. But government hospitals are more vulnerable when it comes to handling disasters on home patch, according to a senior disaster management official in the state.

On December 2, the Institute of Land and Disaster Management under the Revenue Department, in association with GeoHazards, the global partner of the World Health Organisation (WHO), organised a one-day workshop at the Government Hospital, Peroorkada, on disaster management in hospitals. In Phase II, mock drills are also planned.

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Source :- http://ibnlive.in.com/news/fire-crisis-only-few-hospitals-in-city-prepared/211884-60-123.html

CYCLONE WARNING INDIA : Depression over westcentral and adjoining eastcentral Arabian Sea

ARB 04/2011/22, Dated: 30.11. 2011

Time of issue:1400 hours IST

Sub: Depression over westcentral and adjoining eastcentral Arabian Sea.

The depression over eastcentral and adjoining areas of westcentral Arabian Sea moved northwestwards and lay centred at 1130 hrs IST of today, the 30^th November 2011 over westcentral and adjoining eastcentral Arabian Sea near latitude 17.5⁰ N and longitude 63.5⁰ E, 1000 km west-southwest of Mumbai, 600 km southeast of Masirah (Oman) and 950 km south-southwest of Karachi(Pakistan). The system is likely to move northwestwards and maintain the same intensity for some time.

As the depression will move further northwestwards, no weather will occur along and off west coast of India due to this system.

Alpine cities feel heat from climate change

Community risk assessment workshop in Lienz, Austria. (Credit: Andreas Kohler)

By Dizery Salim

GENEVA, 29 November 2011 - In Tyrol, Austria, a poster showing a green valley with snow-capped mountains in the distance greeted delegates to a conference on climate change – a beautiful summer scene which hides a potential nightmare scenario for winter tourism in the alps.

Climate change is raising the heat in mountain regions more drastically than in other areas of the world, with temperatures rising in Austria’s Tyrolean Alps by 2 to 2.2 degrees compared to the global average of 0.8 degrees.

Eric Veulliet, Managing Director of the Centre for Climate Change Adaptation Technologies (Alp-s) in Austria, told journalists at the Managing Alpine Future II conference, which ran from 21 to 23 November, that climate change will pose a “massive threat” to winter tourism, an important pillar of the Tyrolean economy.

“Snow is not known to tolerate much heat. Low-lying ski resorts had always feared for the future of the winter wonderland,” he said.

According to news reports, some ski resorts in the Austrian Alps have cancelled their season opening weekends because of a lack of snow, after the driest November since the 1920s.

Scenario-building conducted by neighbouring Switzerland warned of similar risks to Swiss tourism by 2030, because of “loss of attractiveness” due to reduced snow cover and a disappearing winter atmosphere in the Swiss Plateau.

The Swiss national tourism office, which published the report in 2008, said in addition to a decline in the next 20 years in the number of visitors interested in winter sports, the country would need greater investments to adapt to changing conditions, because of higher costs to protect against increasing natural hazards.

In the Austrian alps, the Centre run by Mr. Veulliet has held 200 workshops for local mayors and disaster management teams in the mountain province of Tyrol, producing detailed risk maps which are then distributed to emergency and risk managers. The maps show over 7,100 risk areas – spots exposed to dangers that range from rockfall and debris flow to avalanches and floods.

However, although community risk assessments have been compulsory in Austria since the 1970s, more needs to be done to translate policy into actual preparedness, local authorities say.

Andreas Kohler, Chief Risk Analyst at Alp-s, who is working to improve preparedness among local emergency management teams, said one challenge was that people were quick to forget the dangers, even after a big disaster.

Read in detail at :- http://www.cdrn.org.in

Himalayan nations yet to break the ice

Himalayan nations yet to break the ice

With global average temperature increasing, its most visible and direct effect can be seen on mountains. Sudeshna Sarkar Last Modified: 24 Nov 2011 13:06 inShare Email Print Share Feedback

Nepal, home to eight of the world's 14 highest mountains, including Mount Everest, has been using the iconic peak to draw global attention to the risks faced by its mountain community. [GALLO/GETTY] Kathmandu, Nepal - Chungda Sherpa, a former herder from eastern Nepal, has a warning tale ahead of the United Nations climate change conference in Durban. At World Wildlife Fund-Japan's 'Climate Witness' programme in Osaka and Tokyo this month, to apprise communities around the world how climate change is threatening lives and livelihoods, the 48-year-old described how the glacier on Mt Kanchenjunga, the third highest peak in the world, is shrinking rapidly. "In 1957, when Swiss geologist Dr Toni Hagen took the photograph of the Gangapurna glacier on the northern slope of Mt Annapurna, it lay over the Manang valley. But recent photos show the glacier is now just a hanging strip. We have witnessed the change in our lifetime." - Pradeep Moor "When I was young... I was told it was one of the largest non-polar glaciers in the world," he said. "But it has retreated now and I can see glacial lakes forming, which could grow larger over time and become GLOFs (glacial lake outburst floods), posing a threat to our lives and property." With global average temperature increasing by approximately 0.75 degrees Celsius in the last century, its most visible and direct effect can be seen on mountains, says Pradeep Mool, remote sensory expert at the Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD). "The health of glaciers indicates the state of the climate," says Mool. "In 1957, when Swiss geologist Dr Toni Hagen took the photograph of the Gangapurna glacier on the northern slope of Mt Annapurna, it lay over the Manang valley. But recent photos show the glacier is now just a hanging strip. We have witnessed the change in our lifetime." Shrinking glaciers The shrinking and retreating of the Himalayan glaciers - which provide life-giving water to over a billion people - became visible after early 1970. Three decades later, the phenomenon accelerated, resulting in the formation of moraine-dammed glacial lakes which are swelling ominously. There are over 20,000 glacial lakes in the Hindu Kush-Himalayas and a GLOF risk assessment report by ICIMOD in 2010 compiled a list of 179 potentially dangerous ones in China, India, Nepal and Pakistan. In addition, experts have identified another 25 in Bhutan. So far, China has recorded the highest number of GLOFs (29), followed by Nepal (22), Pakistan (9) and Bhutan (4). "There is a dearth of data," says Mool. "For instance, people talk of cold floods in India and Myanmar (Burma), which could have been GLOFs; even some satellite images indicate that. But there is no recorded literature." The geography as well as geopolitics of the region comes in the way of extensive surveys and information sharing. Disputed territory The high altitude of glacial lakes and glaciers - 4,800m above sea level and higher - makes them virtually inaccessible. Also, many of them are near international boundaries or in disputed territory, like the Siachen glacier near India's boundary with Pakistan and Arunachal Pradesh state in India, part of which is claimed by China. The disputes make them sensitive areas, often out of bounds for scientific surveys. Political instability and ensuing violence, like in Afghanistan and Pakistan, also obstruct research. But despite the difficulties, ICIMOD has now for the first time conducted additional survey of GLOFs in Afghanistan and Burma. The new inventory of nearly 1,700 lakes in the two countries, done mostly by satellite imaging, will be tabled in Durban during 17th conference of the parties (COP 17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Durban. Though most of the governments in the region realise the need to combat climate change and have individually formulated national action plans as well as laws on disaster management, there is still little collective effort. Climate summit For instance, on November 19, Bhutan hosted a 'Climate Summit for a Living Himalayas' to address climate change impacts on bio-diversity, food and energy security and the natural freshwater systems of the Himalayas. However, only India, Nepal and Bangladesh participated, besides the host country, raising eyebrows at the non-participation of China and Pakistan. "The meeting was intended only for countries from the eastern Himalayas," says Krishna Gyawali, secretary at Nepal's environment ministry. "We have to start somewhere and then gradually expand." However, it is felt that India's uneasy relationship with China and Pakistan could have kept them out. "Some of Asia's major rivers like the Ganga, Brahmaputra and Mekong flow through more than one country," says Mool. "Water-induced disasters spill over borders. "Ten of the GLOF devastations experienced by Nepal originated in Tibet. The effect is long-lived. Besides the immense cost of rebuilding infrastructure in mountainous regions, there is the possibility of increasing landslide and avalanche. So, regional co-operation is a must." Disaster management What is promising is that some of these countries are working with multilateral donor agencies to lessen GLOF risks, create an early warning system in case of floods and devise optional livelihood means for displaced people. According to Martin Krause, team leader at UNDP Asia-Pacific regional centre's environment and energy division, the agency is engaged in projects in Bhutan and Pakistan with a new one to start in Nepal next year. In Bhutan, it is focusing on the Buddhist kingdom's two most vulnerable areas, the Punakha-Wangdi and Chamkhar valleys, home to 10 per cent of the country's population and important infrastructure. The projects are co-financed by the UNFCC, Least Developed Countries Fund and the Austrian government. UNDP hopes that a component of the project - reducing the water level of Lake Thorthormi, ranked among Bhutan's most dangerous glacial lakes - will provide valuable experience to other countries like China, Pakistan, India and Chile In Pakistan, UNDP is working with the government to create an institution to address GLOF risks and other issues affecting communities and livelihoods in northern Pakistan and help them respond. Ironically, though Nepal remained closed to the outside world till the 1950s and was affected by a 10-year communist insurgency from 1996, it remains the most open to surveys, research and disaster mitigation projects. Next year, UNDP will start a many-layered disaster risk management programme in Nepal that, among other things, will seek to reduce human and material losses from GLOFs in two mountain districts: Dolakha and Solukhumbu. Nepal, home to eight of the world's 14 highest mountains, including Mt Everest, has been using the iconic peak to draw global attention to the risks faced by its mountain community. "In 2009, the then government of Nepal called a cabinet meeting at Kala Patthar (a 5,242 m high plateau at the foot of Mt Everest)," says Ghana S. Gurung, conservation programme director at World Wildlife Fund Nepal. Read in detail at :- http://www.cdrn.org.in/show.detail.asp?id=22871

Building Knowledge, Not Just Houses, in the Developing World

A bricklayer's daughter helps create safer homes after quakes in China, Indonesia, and Haiti

Haitians often build with concrete blocks that haven't been fully cured Jake Price

By John Tozzi

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When Elizabeth Hausler visited India in 2003 to tour areas devastated by earthquakes years earlier, she was dismayed. In Maharashtra state, where a 1993 temblor killed 10,000 people, relief agencies had built thousands of homes for survivors. Many people, though, used them only for storage and slept in ramshackle shelters. The nonprofits built the houses with little input from the locals, so residents didn’t trust that they would withstand another quake. In nearby Gujarat, which had been hit by a quake in 2001, Hausler saw houses built by aid groups that ignored local practice by placing doors on the street rather than facing the courtyard. “People would knock a hole in the wall and move the door,” says Hausler. “That’s not very good for earthquake resistance.”

An engineer trained at the University of California at Berkeley, Hausler had long known that earthquakes rarely kill people; shoddy construction does. Yet better construction isn’t the only factor in keeping people safe during earthquakes. When aid groups don’t understand local customs and construction methods, homeowners are often discontented and safety is compromised. On her India trip, Hausler discovered that in places where the government had given locals the money and some engineering guidance to rebuild their homes after earthquakes, residents wound up with houses they were more apt to live in.

That led Hausler, who worked alongside her bricklayer father near Chicago during high school and college, to create a more sustainable approach to rebuilding in developing countries. Her nonprofit, Build Change, teaches homeowners, architects, and contractors how to make structures stronger. For example, bricks in Indonesia tend to be dry and weak; soaking them in water before building can double the strength of a wall, Hausler says. “Small changes to existing ways of building” can go a long way toward making structures safer, she says.

Her group has helped construct 18,000 houses and has trained more than 4,000 builders in Indonesia, China, and Haiti since 2004. The focus on training runs counter to the approach of many disaster relief groups, says Kathleen Tierney, director of the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Build Change’s “primary goal is to help people learn how to construct a house,” Tierney says. “That’s really different from the kind of group that parachutes in and provides a service and then leaves.”

In Indonesia, where Build Change has helped tsunami and earthquake victims, some homeowners salvaged windows, door frames, and timber from their damaged homes and hired local contractors. They rebuilt their houses for $3,000 to $8,000, the group says. Homes constructed by outside relief agencies cost $12,000 to $20,000, Hausler says, because the groups bought new materials and had to pay overhead and salaries for expatriate workers. The bulk of Build Change’s 90 employees are local builders in Haiti and Indonesia. Five people run the office in Denver.

Materials matter as much as design. If relief groups import steel frames and drywall that aren’t available locally, homeowners can’t maintain the houses. And donor money that rushes in after an earthquake pushes up the price of local supplies. “It’s not sustainable to bring in something new if the supply chain isn’t set up,” says Hausler, who this year won the Lemelson-MIT Award for Sustainability, which recognizes innovations for the developing world.

In Haiti, government engineers trained by Build Change are teaching others how to retrofit houses to improve safety. And the group has advised the Ministry of Public Works on new building codes and overseeing the quality of construction. “Build Change is among the best organizations that we have worked with, especially when it comes to education,” says Charles Hygin Raymond, a director at the ministry.

Haiti’s recovery from its 2010 earthquake illustrates how the challenges of design, economics, and culture are intertwined. Over the past century the country has lost 95 percent of its original forests. That means there’s little wood for construction, or even for fuel to fire bricks, so most homes are made of concrete blocks. Blockmakers, though, skimp on cement and sell blocks without curing them for the full week needed to let them reach maximum strength. If manufacturers don’t sell the blocks as soon as they produce them, “they don’t have money to buy raw materials to make the next batch,” Hausler says. “This isn’t a technical issue but a matter of cash flow.” And it means rebuilt homes will be as weak as those that collapsed.

Source:- http://www.cdrn.org.in/show.detail.asp?id=22872