Why it's so much harder for a Bangladeshi woman to escape a cyclone

Bagerhat, Bangladesh, August 2011. Picture provided by the British Red Cross
By Katie Nguyen

When Cyclone Sidr battered Bangladesh in 2007, hundreds of women and children died.

Not because they didn't know there was a big storm coming, but simply because the men weren't home to give them permission to leave the house and seek safety elsewhere. Paralysed by the shame of being seen alone in public, many women could not save themselves. It seems almost too tragic to contemplate.

Since then, however, the Bangladesh Red Crescent and British Red Cross have been working with the country's coastal communities to encourage women's needs to be taken into greater account.

Through a project to boost disaster preparedness, they have enlisted influential religious and community leaders to help dispel, for example, the stigma around women being unaccompanied by male members of their families.

They have also provided women with training on how to respond to cyclones - smoothing the way with the men first - and recruited female volunteers to spread the word.

"The coastal areas are very poor and the communities don't have much access to information. The women don't know their own rights even," project leader Ali Asgar told me.

"Literacy is very poor. In the coastal areas it is probably less than 35 percent," he noted.

Simple, life-saving tips are passed on to other women. For example, they are told to change out of their long saris into baggy trousers to make escaping from a cyclone easier.

They are taught to bury documents, money, dried food and drinking water in a bucket attached with a rope to an empty plastic bottle. This gives them a head start in resuming their lives once the cyclone passes, the Red Cross says.

The women also have a chance to voice their concerns.

At one women’s forum, some women complained that a lack of electricity in cyclone-resilient shelters made them feel unsafe, so solar panels were installed, Asgar said.

There have also been efforts to observe purdah - the strict separation of men and women - in cyclone shelters.

"We have worked with the most vulnerable groups - particularly pregnant women and children. Women are very vulnerable for a number of reasons, including their long, traditional dress and long hair," said Nazma, a housewife who helps circulate information about cyclones and how to prepare for disasters.

"Also, women will not go outside even when they receive information that a cyclone is coming unless their husband tells them to, and women can't swim because they have not been allowed to learn," the Red Cross quoted her as saying.


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Anchor climate change policies on protecting poor

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Steam billows from a coal power station in Germany. We need to see the social face of the fight against climate change whose pain is greatest among the poor. File

By Collins Aseka (email the author)

Posted Friday, December 2 2011 at 00:00

In development circles, climate change policies are being informed by many factors. There are instrumental concerns that climate change will slow down progress in poverty reduction, especially achievements made in the Millennium Development Goals and Human Development Outcomes. Extreme weather events are more frequent and with them come significant erosions of physical, natural, financial, social and human assets critical to people’s well-being.

Closely related to this is the fact that policy efforts should be integrated with existing wider poverty reduction efforts. This is because climate change is interacting with other challenges such as rapid population growth, high prevalence HIV/Aids and malaria, weak or fragmented markets, seasonality, unplanned urbanisation, scarcity of resources and economic shocks. The combination makes life most difficult for the poor.

There are also the inherent injustices that are being felt hardest by those who have least contributed to climate change particularly in Africa and Asia. Consequently, climate change is causing serious human rights violations. Seen from this perspective, on the one hand are the duty-bearers — those responsible for the high level of carbon emissions — who should be compelled to take bigger responsibility in financing and facilitating coping with and adapting to climate change activities. On the other hand are the rights-holders — the most affected by climate change — who must be allowed to participate fully in decision making.

Lastly, is the importance of the differentiated nature of poverty in any poverty reduction effort. In the climate change context, its impacts are not evenly distributed due to the multifaceted nature of the hazards in different parts of the world and also due to people’s varying abilities to cope with and adapt to the shocks and stresses. To this end, the extent of vulnerability to climate change is largely determined by inequalities in income, education and healthcare, and accessibility to economic opportu­nities.
Therefore, while acknowledging that climate change is a reality whose impacts will be felt across generations, efforts to fight the problem should be integrally mitigating and adaptive. In other words, we cannot halt climate change — it is already with us. Rather our real chances of fighting climate change lie in ability to come up with effective ways of reducing its impact on life.
These efforts are grouped into three; disaster risk reduction strategies, climate change adaptation and adaptive social protection.
Firstly, disaster risk reduction encompasses the development and application of all policies, strategies and practices that minimise impacts of hazards and unfolding disaster impacts throughout a society in the broad context of sustainable development.

Apart from mitigating impacts of on-going climate change effects, one of its other priorities for action is reducing underlying risk factors.

Disaster risk reduction activities include development of sound early warning systems; collection and analysis of potential risk information; identification of differentiated vulnerabilities of different sectors within the society; strengthening of local resilience and capacity to prepare and respond to hazard events; creation of a catastrophe financial pool; and supporting of pro-poor financing mechanisms such as microfinance and micro-insurance.

Secondly, climate change adaptation strategies are those employed in design and implementation of processes that help people learn to live with impacts of climate change. In agriculture for example it includes efforts such as development of drought-resistant and early-maturing crop varieties and alternative crop and hybrid varieties (this is where biotechnology comes in handy), investment in water-harvesting, dam building and drip irrigation, diversification of livelihoods, strengthening of existent social networks and social capital, public education in risk awareness and assessment, expanding agricultural education and extension services, continuous improvement in the state of the infrastructure, and efficient use of fertilizers and irrigation.

Social transfers

Thirdly, social protection describes all public and private initiatives that transfer income or assets to the poor, protect the vulnerable against livelihood risks, promote access to economic activities and enhance the social status and rights of the marginalised. As a policy, social protection has become a key response to risk and vulnerability, including those related to climate change.

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Climate change will hit Indian cereals, benefit legumes

Climate change will hit Indian cereals, benefit legumes

Athar Parvaiz Bhat

28 November 2011 | EN

India could produce fewer cereals but more legumes due to climate change.

David Dickson

[NEW DELHI] Indian farmers could be producing less rice and wheat and more legumes as a result of global warming, a senior crop scientist has said.

Climate change would have a negative impact on cereal crops such as wheat and rice, Bandi Venkateswarulu, director of Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture, Hyderabad, told a South Asia media workshop on climate change in Delhi this month (17 November).

On the other hand, Venkateswarulu told the workshop organised by the Delhi-based non-government organisation, Centre for Science and Environment, legumes such as soybean and groundnut will benefit from the change in temperature.

The productivity of most cereals in India would decrease due to rise in temperature and decline in water availability. "A projected loss of 10–40 per cent will occur in crop production by 2100," he said.

A rise of one degree Celsius could reduce yields of major food crops by three to seven per cent in India, with higher losses during the winter (rabi) crop season, he added.

The growing period for crops in rain-fed areas, which account for two-thirds of India's cropland, could reduce.

Rainfall variations would impact summer (kharif) crops; while changes in minimum temperatures would influence the winter crops. Both temperature and rainfall changes would affect rice production in the Indo-Gangetic plain.

Wheat production in irrigated lands is projected to decline by six per cent by 2030. “The higher temperature will also make the wheat crop susceptible to wheat rust because wheat is found to be more susceptible to rusts at higher temperatures,” he observed.

Soyabean yields are projected to rise by 8–13 per cent and groundnut by up to seven per cent by 2030, he said.

"Apart from this, it has been found that there has been a shift of the apple belt to higher elevations in Himachal Pradesh state because of inadequate chilling in the plains — crucial for good apple yields," Venkateswarulu said. ]

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UN-SPIDER: Space-based information for Crowdsource Mapping

A UN initiative to boost emergency response by crowdsourced mapping and space technology

How to ensure that space-based information for crowdsource mapping benefits the emergency response community and disaster risk reduction?

This is the key question that specialists around the world will attempt to answer during the Expert Meeting being held in Geneva, this November, which is being held to coincide with the International Conference on Crisis Mapping.

The Expert Meeting is a fundamental part of the programme that is being organized by the United Nations Platform for Space-based Information for Disaster Management and Emergency Response (SPIDER). The SPIDER program was established by the United Nations General Assembly with the mandate of ensuring that all countries, international and regional organizations, have access to space-based information, and to ensure they develop the capacity to use all types of space-based information to support the full, disaster management cycle. This includes the need to ensure that space-based information supports the crowdsource mapping efforts for the benefit of the disaster community.

The meeting will focus on exploring the different ways that the space technology community can collect, organize and provide greater access to its information and how it can better coordinate the communities through which it crowdsources information.

Some of the issues the experts are talking about:

1. Disasters are increasing

First of all, making the issue particularly important is the indisputable fact that the number of disasters is on the increase and that the impact of disasters is becoming increasingly more severe on a global level, requiring hightened efforts by multilateral organizations to better manage their consequences.

The UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, said recently that climate change is a real threat to international peace and security. He urged developed countries to lead the global effort to find ways to both mitigate and adapt to the detrimental effects of disasters but also said that emerging economies must shoulder their fair share of the responsibility and take necessary actions.

“Extreme weather events continue to grow more frequent and intense in both rich and poor countries alike, not only devastating lives, but also infrastructure, institutions, and budgets – an unholy brew which can create dangerous security vacuums,” said Mr. Ban.

Achim Steiner, the Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme added that humanity was at a point in its history where it has the capacity to fundamentally alter, within one or two generations, the conditions on which societies have evolved over millennia.

“It is the speed of environmental change, including climate change, that will be increasingly at the heart of our collective concern and response,” said Mr. Steiner. “There can be little doubt today that climate change has potentially far-reaching implications for global stability and security in economic, social and environmental terms which will increasingly transcend the capacity of individual nation States to manage,” he added.

Mr. Steiner also said that the international community’s ability to manage the consequences of climate change will depend on a “proactive strategy of evolved and perhaps new international platforms, mechanisms and institutional responses” which anticipate security concerns and facilitate cooperation.

2. Crowdsource communities are working hard

Secondly, it is important to understand that an essential part of working to provide support to disaster preparedness and emergency response efforts is carried out by thousands of people around the world linked to NGOs, government or multilateral agencies and, in many cases these communities of contributors are volunteers.

In recent years, advancements in technologies have made it possible for platforms such as OpenStreetMap, Ushahidi, Sahana, CrisisMappers, Virtual Disaster Viewer, Google MapMaker and INSTEDD to operate by being directly linked to communities around the world.

OpenStreetMap

OpenStreetMap is a free editable map of the whole world. It is made by ordinary people and allows to view, edit and use geographical data in a collaborative way from anywhere on Earth.

Ushahidi

Ushahidi is a non-profit tech company that specializes in developing free and open source software for information collection, visualization and interactive mapping.

Sahana

The Sahana Software Foundation is dedicated to the mission of saving lives by providing information management solutions that enable organizations and communities to better prepare for and respond to disasters.

CrisisMappers

The International Network of Crisis Mappers is the largest and most active international community of experts, practitioners, policymakers, technologists, researchers, journalists, scholars, hackers and skilled volunteers engaged at the intersection between humanitarian crises, technology and crisis mapping.

Virtual Disaster Viewer

Virtual Disaster Viewer is a kind of “social networking tool” for earthquake impact assessment, developed by an international consortium, including The Earthquake Engineering Research Institute.

Google MapMaker

Google Map Maker allows any person to add and update geographic information for millions of users to see in Google Maps and Google Earth. By sharing information about the places each person know, like businesses in town or places on school campus, it can ensure the map accurately reflects the world.

InSTEDD

Innovative Support to Emergencies Diseases and Disasters designs and uses open source technology tools to help partners enhance collaboration and improve information flow to better deliver critical services to vulnerable populations.

Important cornerstones of this virtual effort are the possibility to access and take advantage of post-disaster satellite imagery as well as the use of other space-based technologies such as telecommunications satellites and global navigation satellite systems.

3. The gateway to space-based information is opening

Thirdly, taking note of the need to connect these pioneering communities with the space industry as well as the disaster management community, the UN-SPIDER Programme is carrying out a one-year project Space-based information for Crowdsource Mapping aiming at identifying specific actions that could ensure a closer cooperation among the three communities.

The UN-SPIDER programme is focusing on being a gateway to space information for disaster management support, by serving as a bridge to connect the disaster management and space communities and by being a facilitator of capacity-building and institutional strengthening.

See the UN-SPIDER promotional video:


UN-SPIDER is being implemented as an open network of providers of space-based solutions to support disaster management activities.

Working together to mitigate effects of disasters

This is work-in-progress, a huge effort to gather critical information that can be used to save lives. During the Expert Meeting in Geneva, around 70 leading experts representing crowdsource communities, space and remote sensing agencies, disaster management communities, NGOs, private companies, and regional and international organizations will meet to find the answers to the questions being raised.

If you are an expert currently working in any of the relevant areas (disasters, crowdsource mapping, space-based information) you can still apply to attend this meeting through the cut-off date of 30 September. Alternatively, if your organisation would like to cooperate in the Space-based information for Crowdsource Mapping Project you can contact Teresa Kokaislova.

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