South-East Asia has suffered from neglecting planning for disasters. Governments must heed the warnings and act now, argues Crispin Maslog.
In the closing months of 2011, flash floods caused by the wayward Pacific typhoon, Washi,swept some 1,500 people to their deaths overnight and left at least 2,000 missing in the southern Philippine island of Mindanao.
Typhoons strike Mindanao very rarely, every 40 years or so. But when it hit Mindanao this time, it lashed with a vengeance. The newspaper reports were dramatic, painting a vivid picture where "swaths of impoverished urban settlements mainly from the hard-hit cities . . . disappeared in the deadly brown torrents of slime and mud". [1]
And in Thailand, a deluge in October triggered by the northeast monsoons was the country's worst in half a century. It inundated 65 of Thailand's 77 provinces, including Bangkok, drowned at least 800 people and unsettled more than 12 million others. The World Bank estimated damage at 1.4tn baht (US$44.8 billion), making it one of the costliest disasters in human history.
The floods that inundated not only the Philippines and Thailand but also Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and most of South-East Asia towards the end of 2011 are not only a sign of things to come, but a warning that governments need to act now — with a serious and sound approach to planning.
Disaster waiting to happen
The sad truth is that the deaths and devastation could have been minimised if governments and international agencies had heeded early warnings.
The flash floods that struck the cities of Cagayan de Oro and Iligan in Mindanao were a disaster waiting to happen. Three years ago, the Philippine Imperative for Climate Change (PICC), World Wide Fund for Nature-Philippines (WWF) and Filipino scientists simulated the effects of extreme weather phenomena linked to climate change.
The simulation findings were shown to Philippine lawmakers in 2009 and to newly elected Philippine President Benigno Aquino III when he assumed office in 2010. But the government dismissed the warnings as "too alarmist", according to the PICC. [2]
The shortcomings in preparedness were matched by deficiencies in response. In Thailand, environmental watchdogs have challenged the government to take responsibility for reacting too slowly to the disaster. "The blame for the floods is 30 per cent with nature and 70 per cent with the mismanagement of the authorities," said a representative of Thailand's Stop Global Warming Association. [3]
Read in detail at :- http://www.cdrn.org.in/show.detail.asp?id=23159
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
New climate change models for Maldives predict rising sea temperatures
The Regional Integrated Multi-Hazard Early Warning System (RIMES) has completed a nine-month research into developing a model interpreting the future climatic change scenarios for the Maldives that can provide projections which can referred during national and local development planning.
RIMES, based in Bangkok, provides regional early warning services and capacity building to its member states in Africa and Asia – including Maldives- in the end-to-end early warning of tsunami and hydro-meteorological hazards.
Speaking at a press conference on Thursday, Dr Govindarajalu Srinivasan, technical adviser-climate applications and research, who headed the research in Maldives, explained that “we tried to interpret the scenarios of future climate change for the Maldivian context”.
He noted that the existing global climate change models (GCMs) which are the most important tools to study climate change and make projections, do not provide descriptions for regional or local scale.
Therefore, he revealed that the GCMs were statistically downscaled, and prior reports addressing climate change concerns for Maldives were examined to “generate a high a resolution climate change scenario for Maldives”.
Read in detail at :- http://www.cdrn.org.in/show.detail.asp?id=23160
RIMES, based in Bangkok, provides regional early warning services and capacity building to its member states in Africa and Asia – including Maldives- in the end-to-end early warning of tsunami and hydro-meteorological hazards.
Speaking at a press conference on Thursday, Dr Govindarajalu Srinivasan, technical adviser-climate applications and research, who headed the research in Maldives, explained that “we tried to interpret the scenarios of future climate change for the Maldivian context”.
He noted that the existing global climate change models (GCMs) which are the most important tools to study climate change and make projections, do not provide descriptions for regional or local scale.
Therefore, he revealed that the GCMs were statistically downscaled, and prior reports addressing climate change concerns for Maldives were examined to “generate a high a resolution climate change scenario for Maldives”.
Read in detail at :- http://www.cdrn.org.in/show.detail.asp?id=23160
Flash Flood Risk Management : A Training of Trainers Manual (2011)
Flash Flood Risk Management : A Training of Trainers Manual (2011)
Download full doc [3.09 MB] Print publication info Permalink
ISBN: 978 92 9115 223 0
Language: English
Author(s):Shrestha, A. B.; Chapagain, P.S.; Thapa, R.
Keywords: Water resources and management /Floods /Risk /Hazards and disaster /Training /Manuals
Subjects: Hazards and Disaster; Floods; Water management
Abstract
Unstable geological conditions and steep topography, combined with frequent extreme weather conditions, make the Hindu Kush-Himalayan (HKH) region prone to many natural hazards. Among these, flash floods � severe flood events that occur with little warning � are particularly challenging for communities, threatening lives, livelihoods, and infrastructure. Vulnerable groups such as the poor, women, children, the elderly, and people with disabilities are often the hardest hit. This Training of Trainers Manual is designed to help build the capacity of trainers in flash flood risk management, who can then disseminate the knowledge to a larger number of practitioners. The manual presents an eight-day course including a three-day field trip. Detailed lesson plans for 21 sessions are followed by resource materials that will enable the trainers to replicate the course in their own work areas.
Read in detail at :- http://www.cdrn.org.in/show.detail.asp?id=23162
Download full doc [3.09 MB] Print publication info Permalink
ISBN: 978 92 9115 223 0
Language: English
Author(s):Shrestha, A. B.; Chapagain, P.S.; Thapa, R.
Keywords: Water resources and management /Floods /Risk /Hazards and disaster /Training /Manuals
Subjects: Hazards and Disaster; Floods; Water management
Abstract
Unstable geological conditions and steep topography, combined with frequent extreme weather conditions, make the Hindu Kush-Himalayan (HKH) region prone to many natural hazards. Among these, flash floods � severe flood events that occur with little warning � are particularly challenging for communities, threatening lives, livelihoods, and infrastructure. Vulnerable groups such as the poor, women, children, the elderly, and people with disabilities are often the hardest hit. This Training of Trainers Manual is designed to help build the capacity of trainers in flash flood risk management, who can then disseminate the knowledge to a larger number of practitioners. The manual presents an eight-day course including a three-day field trip. Detailed lesson plans for 21 sessions are followed by resource materials that will enable the trainers to replicate the course in their own work areas.
Read in detail at :- http://www.cdrn.org.in/show.detail.asp?id=23162
Coping with climate change
Analysis: Coping with climate change
Photo: WFP Cambodia/Polly Egerton
Recurrent exposure to natural hazards teaches you a thing or two about resilience
JOHANNESBURG, 25 January 2012 (IRIN) - In the past five years, “resilience” (the ability to absorb shocks and recover) has become quite a buzzword in the aid community. Discussions on adapting to a changing climate are increasingly peppered with the “need to build resilience” of people, infrastructure and governments in the face of shocks such as soaring temperatures, rising sea levels, severe storms and flooding.
In a review of its humanitarian operations (HERR), the UK government was among the first donors to place resilience at the centre of its “approach both to longer-term development and to emergency response” and announced its intention to scale-up work on resilience.
Aid experts and NGOs provide various reasons for the growing popularity and emergence of resilience as a concept. Some are sceptical. But they all agree it is a positive approach that will bring the worlds of development and humanitarian aid closer.
What does resilience mean in the aid world?
Some call it just another addition to the growing aid jargon. But mostly people call it a new approach, a “lens”, which has given new meaning to “sustainable development”.
Maarten van Aalst, director of the Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centre and co-ordinating lead author of the summary of the special report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change (SREX) produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2011 explains it thus: Under the conventional sustainable development approach, if a road had to be constructed in a rural area, benefits - such as the impact on the lives of the communities living alongside, creation of job opportunities from the maintenance of the road and development of markets for the farming community - would have been taken into consideration.
This is what Peter Walker, a leading aid expert, calls the “linear” approach. The old development models “made projections into the future from recent trends and assumed that, all other things being equal, life would get better”.
But with a resilience lens on, the government or aid agency responsible for the road will consider the possibility of external shocks or unexpected developments that might affect the road and people’s lives. “What if the area becomes prone to floods or if there is an earthquake, what if food prices increase because the contractors are better off than the local population? [These] would be some of the factors that the project would now consider,” explains Van Aalst.
The SREX defines resilience as “the ability of a system and its component parts to anticipate, absorb, accommodate, or recover from the effects of a hazardous event in a timely and efficient manner, including through ensuring the preservation, restoration, or improvement of its essential basic structures and functions”.
A much simpler definition is offered by Simon Levine, a member of the Africa Climate Change Resilience Alliance (ACCRA), a consortium of NGOs and the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), where he is a research fellow: “It is the ability [of people, systems] to maintain their well-being.”
Paul Cook, Tearfund’s director of policy, says the climate change community in its efforts to integrate “resilience to climate change across all development sectors”, is seeking a definition of resilience or “strengthened development" that is broad and “ensures communities and ecosystems have the capacity to adapt to uncertain change”.
Source:- http://www.cdrn.org.in/show.detail.asp?id=23161
Photo: WFP Cambodia/Polly Egerton
Recurrent exposure to natural hazards teaches you a thing or two about resilience
JOHANNESBURG, 25 January 2012 (IRIN) - In the past five years, “resilience” (the ability to absorb shocks and recover) has become quite a buzzword in the aid community. Discussions on adapting to a changing climate are increasingly peppered with the “need to build resilience” of people, infrastructure and governments in the face of shocks such as soaring temperatures, rising sea levels, severe storms and flooding.
In a review of its humanitarian operations (HERR), the UK government was among the first donors to place resilience at the centre of its “approach both to longer-term development and to emergency response” and announced its intention to scale-up work on resilience.
Aid experts and NGOs provide various reasons for the growing popularity and emergence of resilience as a concept. Some are sceptical. But they all agree it is a positive approach that will bring the worlds of development and humanitarian aid closer.
What does resilience mean in the aid world?
Some call it just another addition to the growing aid jargon. But mostly people call it a new approach, a “lens”, which has given new meaning to “sustainable development”.
Maarten van Aalst, director of the Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centre and co-ordinating lead author of the summary of the special report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change (SREX) produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2011 explains it thus: Under the conventional sustainable development approach, if a road had to be constructed in a rural area, benefits - such as the impact on the lives of the communities living alongside, creation of job opportunities from the maintenance of the road and development of markets for the farming community - would have been taken into consideration.
This is what Peter Walker, a leading aid expert, calls the “linear” approach. The old development models “made projections into the future from recent trends and assumed that, all other things being equal, life would get better”.
But with a resilience lens on, the government or aid agency responsible for the road will consider the possibility of external shocks or unexpected developments that might affect the road and people’s lives. “What if the area becomes prone to floods or if there is an earthquake, what if food prices increase because the contractors are better off than the local population? [These] would be some of the factors that the project would now consider,” explains Van Aalst.
The SREX defines resilience as “the ability of a system and its component parts to anticipate, absorb, accommodate, or recover from the effects of a hazardous event in a timely and efficient manner, including through ensuring the preservation, restoration, or improvement of its essential basic structures and functions”.
A much simpler definition is offered by Simon Levine, a member of the Africa Climate Change Resilience Alliance (ACCRA), a consortium of NGOs and the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), where he is a research fellow: “It is the ability [of people, systems] to maintain their well-being.”
Paul Cook, Tearfund’s director of policy, says the climate change community in its efforts to integrate “resilience to climate change across all development sectors”, is seeking a definition of resilience or “strengthened development" that is broad and “ensures communities and ecosystems have the capacity to adapt to uncertain change”.
Source:- http://www.cdrn.org.in/show.detail.asp?id=23161
Monday, January 23, 2012
NASA Finds 2011 Ninth Warmest Year on Record
The global average surface temperature in 2011 was the ninth warmest since 1880, according to NASA scientists. The finding continues a trend in which nine of the 10 warmest years in the modern meteorological record have occurred since the year 2000.
NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York, which monitors global surface temperatures on an ongoing basis, released an updated analysis that shows temperatures around the globe in 2011 compared to the average global temperature from the mid-20th century. The comparison shows how Earth continues to experience warmer temperatures than several decades ago. The average temperature around the globe in 2011 was 0.92 degrees F (0.51 C) warmer than the mid-20th century baseline.
"We know the planet is absorbing more energy than it is emitting," said GISS director James E. Hansen. "So we are continuing to see a trend toward higher temperatures. Even with the cooling effects of a strong La Nina influence and low solar activity for the past several years, 2011 was one of the 10 warmest years on record."
The difference between 2011 and the warmest year in the GISS record (2010) is 0.22 degrees F (0.12 C). This underscores the emphasis scientists put on the long-term trend of global temperature rise. Because of the large natural variability of climate, scientists do not expect temperatures to rise consistently year after year. However, they do expect a continuing temperature rise over decades.
The first 11 years of the 21st century experienced notably higher temperatures compared to the middle and late 20th century, Hansen said. The only year from the 20th century in the top 10 warmest years on record is 1998.
Read in detail at :- http://www.cdrn.org.in/show.delhidetail.asp?id=23143
NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York, which monitors global surface temperatures on an ongoing basis, released an updated analysis that shows temperatures around the globe in 2011 compared to the average global temperature from the mid-20th century. The comparison shows how Earth continues to experience warmer temperatures than several decades ago. The average temperature around the globe in 2011 was 0.92 degrees F (0.51 C) warmer than the mid-20th century baseline.
"We know the planet is absorbing more energy than it is emitting," said GISS director James E. Hansen. "So we are continuing to see a trend toward higher temperatures. Even with the cooling effects of a strong La Nina influence and low solar activity for the past several years, 2011 was one of the 10 warmest years on record."
The difference between 2011 and the warmest year in the GISS record (2010) is 0.22 degrees F (0.12 C). This underscores the emphasis scientists put on the long-term trend of global temperature rise. Because of the large natural variability of climate, scientists do not expect temperatures to rise consistently year after year. However, they do expect a continuing temperature rise over decades.
The first 11 years of the 21st century experienced notably higher temperatures compared to the middle and late 20th century, Hansen said. The only year from the 20th century in the top 10 warmest years on record is 1998.
Read in detail at :- http://www.cdrn.org.in/show.delhidetail.asp?id=23143
Time to redefine: urban aid sets fundamental challenge
Over the last two days I’ve been reminded, whilst participating in the 27th ALNAP annual meeting, that a shared professional language can be a hindrance as much as a help. This is especially the case when the topic is the challenge of urban disasters, until recently largely overlooked by (and therefore fairly new territory for) development and humanitarian NGOs and donors. Your mission, should you choose to accept: find a colleague working on disaster risk reduction or development and ask about ‘resilience’ or ‘vulnerability’. Does their definition tally with yours? These artificial gaps in our approach only serve to exacerbate problems in the complex, compressed environments of cities.
Meetings like this – with over 130 NGO and government participants from across the globe – are also a good chance to get a feeling of what the aid sector has on its collective mind. Most people here have their eyes very squarely fixed on how international aid agencies urgently need to work in new and different ways with government agencies and local CSOs. The words ‘demand-driven’, ‘collaboration’, ‘information sharing’ and even ‘disengagement’ have popped up more than a few times.
Robert Piper, UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Nepal, gave an excellent keynote address on the situation in Kathmandu, Nepal. He really painted a rich picture of what it might mean to tackle the ‘wicked problem’ of urban disaster planning and response in a country with two armies, a complex political setting and ongoing development challenges. The bottom line seemed to be: the underlying issues that perpetuate vulnerability are just as important as responding to immediate disaster situations. Within cities there is also increased likelihood that multiple local actors have established their own development and/or emergency priorities and can organise effectively to resist agendas they perceive to be imposed by international agencies.
This means that, in reality, these concepts – increasing focus on disaster risk reduction and closer working with local NGOs and authorities within cities – appear to challenge some fundamental tenets of humanitarian aid. To engage fully with them, it may mean rethinking who we directly work with (affected populations), andwhen we move in (after a disaster). Is the sector ready to answer these difficult questions? Such a paradigm shift would transform aid as we know it, perhaps expanding into the remit of disaster risk management and development actors.
http://www.cdrn.org.in/show.detail.asp?id=23145
Meetings like this – with over 130 NGO and government participants from across the globe – are also a good chance to get a feeling of what the aid sector has on its collective mind. Most people here have their eyes very squarely fixed on how international aid agencies urgently need to work in new and different ways with government agencies and local CSOs. The words ‘demand-driven’, ‘collaboration’, ‘information sharing’ and even ‘disengagement’ have popped up more than a few times.
Robert Piper, UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Nepal, gave an excellent keynote address on the situation in Kathmandu, Nepal. He really painted a rich picture of what it might mean to tackle the ‘wicked problem’ of urban disaster planning and response in a country with two armies, a complex political setting and ongoing development challenges. The bottom line seemed to be: the underlying issues that perpetuate vulnerability are just as important as responding to immediate disaster situations. Within cities there is also increased likelihood that multiple local actors have established their own development and/or emergency priorities and can organise effectively to resist agendas they perceive to be imposed by international agencies.
This means that, in reality, these concepts – increasing focus on disaster risk reduction and closer working with local NGOs and authorities within cities – appear to challenge some fundamental tenets of humanitarian aid. To engage fully with them, it may mean rethinking who we directly work with (affected populations), andwhen we move in (after a disaster). Is the sector ready to answer these difficult questions? Such a paradigm shift would transform aid as we know it, perhaps expanding into the remit of disaster risk management and development actors.
http://www.cdrn.org.in/show.detail.asp?id=23145
UNISDR warns against ignoring seismic threats as quakes wreak havoc for second year
For two consecutive years the long-term disasters trend has been bucked by major earthquakes which claimed thousands of lives and affected millions in both 2010 and 2011, according to new statistics published today by CRED and the UN office for disaster risk reduction, UNISDR.
UNISDR Chief, Margareta Wahlström, said today: “The Great East Japan Earthquake and the accompanying tsunami is a reminder to us all that we cannot afford to ignore the lessons of history no matter how forgotten. The many major cities located in seismic zones need to take seriously the probability of return events even if many years have passed since the last seismic event of major magnitude.
“In 2010 we saw this phenomenon as well when over 220,000 people died in Haiti which had not been hit by an earthquake of such strength for almost 200 years. Unless we prepare for the worst then many earthquake-prone urban areas around the world are destined to see even greater loss of life in the future as more and more people move to cities.”
Figures released today by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) at a UNISDR-hosted press conference in Geneva showed that 20,943 people lost their lives in earthquakes last year out of a total of 29,782 people directly killed by 302 disasters. The earthquake fatalities included 19,846 who died in Japan while the remainder were largely accounted for by the October earthquake in Turkey.
The year was marked by the fact that major disasters in terms of human impact and economic losses occurred in high and middle-income countries. These included the Brazil floods (January); the New Zealand earthquake (February); the Japan earthquake/tsunami (March); two waves of severe storms and tornadoes in the USA (April and May); Hurricane Irene in the USA, (August/September); floods in Thailand (August to December); the October earthquake in Turkey and the December storm Sendong (Washi) in the Philippines.
In the case of Brazil, the floods were the deadliest in the country’s history (900 deaths), and in the case of Thailand, the country’s most expensive natural catastrophe ($40 billion).
Read in detail at :- http://www.cdrn.org.in/show.detail.asp?id=23131
UNISDR Chief, Margareta Wahlström, said today: “The Great East Japan Earthquake and the accompanying tsunami is a reminder to us all that we cannot afford to ignore the lessons of history no matter how forgotten. The many major cities located in seismic zones need to take seriously the probability of return events even if many years have passed since the last seismic event of major magnitude.
“In 2010 we saw this phenomenon as well when over 220,000 people died in Haiti which had not been hit by an earthquake of such strength for almost 200 years. Unless we prepare for the worst then many earthquake-prone urban areas around the world are destined to see even greater loss of life in the future as more and more people move to cities.”
Figures released today by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) at a UNISDR-hosted press conference in Geneva showed that 20,943 people lost their lives in earthquakes last year out of a total of 29,782 people directly killed by 302 disasters. The earthquake fatalities included 19,846 who died in Japan while the remainder were largely accounted for by the October earthquake in Turkey.
The year was marked by the fact that major disasters in terms of human impact and economic losses occurred in high and middle-income countries. These included the Brazil floods (January); the New Zealand earthquake (February); the Japan earthquake/tsunami (March); two waves of severe storms and tornadoes in the USA (April and May); Hurricane Irene in the USA, (August/September); floods in Thailand (August to December); the October earthquake in Turkey and the December storm Sendong (Washi) in the Philippines.
In the case of Brazil, the floods were the deadliest in the country’s history (900 deaths), and in the case of Thailand, the country’s most expensive natural catastrophe ($40 billion).
Read in detail at :- http://www.cdrn.org.in/show.detail.asp?id=23131
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