Need a disaster management system that mentors not just monitors - Shriji Kurup

"We need a disaster management system that 'guides, mentors, monitors, evaluates and has a power to make corrections or give justice to the vulnerable' rather than just a monitoring system capturing or recording events/process." - Shriji Kurup,  Centre for Environment Education (CEE), Chennai

I. Reflections on the 'early warning' and vulnerability reduction vis a vis new challenges that have emerged for disaster risk reduction

• Early Warning systems have improved in terms of communication-operational structure and technology. However, these 'early warnings' are largely to predict natural hazards. I would like to look at 'early warning' in a broader sense of early warnings against unplanned and unsafe development or early warnings against human induced hazards. In this context, we may not have really improved.
• Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs): EIAs are also a sort or 'early warning legal document' on possible impacts and mitigation needed while siting projects. We could very well call these "Early Impact Assessments" -- literally they are supposed to be 'early' assessments against environmental destruction. 
• Over the last 10 years, along the tsunami affected coastal districts of Tamil Nadu, we see a pattern in the emergence of mega power plant projects, ports and huge infrastructure establishments; often coming up at the cost and destruction of coastal ecology/landscape, traditional livelihoods and making the area more vulnerable to various natural hazards.
• A review of the EIAs that have been submitted/accepted by different proponents in the tsunami affected coastal districts can therefore help in quantifying whether they "warn" about the impacts or do they ignore the impacts. What are the risks produced and how are they going to be addressed.
• Similarly, reflecting about the Uttarakhand floods - hazard - (2013) - did it become a subsequent disaster because people could not be evicted due to a lack of Early Warning Equipment/Machinery or was it that safe development norms were ignored and EIAs in this area did not adequately warn about such risks?
• Early Warnings of the Violent Human Hazard - the terrorist attacks and mass massacre of people: A new emerging threat world-wide is that of multi-stakeholder conflicts and violence that manifests as brutal killing of innocent people. This also results in large infrastructure damage, disruption of services, mass migration of people and a non-functional society that lives in fear and disparity. This situation is certainly more destructive than the situation when a natural hazard like tsunami, earthquake occurs. But are such terrorist and violent attacks being considered as "Human made Disasters". Would current DRR measures consider addressing "Human Violence" as an emerging aspect for reducing risks and vulnerabilities.
• The recent terror attacks in Assam (Kokrajhar and Sonitpur) happened in spite of 'early warning' by intelligence agencies. The terrorist attacks of school children in Pakistan is also an 'early warning' of how new human made hazards are going to evolve in societies.

II. Need to improve engagement of citizens in development planning, monitoring and implementation

• There is a scope for participatory EIAs; scope to involve citizens in several aspects of monitoring "development" and even engaging them for disaster risk reduction plans. 
• The Biological Diversity Act (2002), for example, has legal provisions to create Biodiversity Management Committees at village level and also provisions to create their biodiversity management plans. Using these legal provisions, we could build a society that is resilient and nurtures eco-friendly development. 
• Similarly, the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) 2011 Notification has several important provisions to ensure safe coastal development and engage coastal communities/ district CRZ committees in coastal development planning and monitoring. One of the provisions is that the industries given permission for operating their business in the CRZ areas need to submit a six monthly compliance report on public domain. This information on the compliance undertaken and measures undertaken for CSR and also for CSR planning can be shared with the local community and engage their participation for better CSR planning and conflict resolution. All these contribute to peaceful societies.
• Citizen action in social movements, clean up campaigns is also increasingly needed to promote peaceful and cooperating societies. This is also a way to improve vigilance and build a social barrier against spread of violent thoughts, dialogues and actions. 

III. Other observations and suggestions:

• Analyse HFA Country reports and other global decadal assessments (e.g. of global warming, pollution levels, literacy, poverty, MDGs, ecosystem assessments, HDI, etc.) to cross-check, validate the status and identify trends as to whether globally there is a movement towards ‘safe development’ and resilience. Whether global developmental patterns are risk reducing or risk producing - in which sectors, ecosystems and to what extent.
• Like the concept of ISO, emerge a global brand, standards, guidelines for ‘safe development / sustainable development’ that focus more on processes rather than the product. E.g. A building in itself may be earthquake resistant but the processes employed in making the building might have caused several risks / damages. This concept has potential for measuring developmental processes, quantifying risks, costs and benefits. Have provisions to have Certification of "sustainable, safe and resilient" products or processes and incentives people engaged in such actions. 
• Target DRR education to those groups who are in position to contribute substantially and whose approach matters most in influencing developmental patterns and E.g. industries and corporate sector, manufacturing sector, political parties.
• Invest in traditional knowledge systems and leverage from existing cultural wisdom to create a culture of safety and eco-friendly living at individual and societal level.
• Identify global hotspots which are having the most risk index and form special partnerships, programs, packages to encourage global contribution towards improving coping and adaptive capacities in such regions and ecosystems.
• Consider special focus on and global plan of action for island nations.
• Prepare a "State of Disaster Preparedness - Report to the People" by National and State Governments. This should help bring in mechanisms to generate national reports from local and regional level inputs. Incorporate indicators that are measureable, quantifiable and verifiable. Consolidate information periodically using GIS based process and provide open access information database that help citizens world over to visualize better the vulnerabilities – temporal and spatial.
• Explore synergizing HFA with other UN Conventions and action plans (that may also culminate in 2014-15 and those that contribute to risk reduction, sustainable development, environment protection etc. E.g UN Decade for Education for Sustainable Development (UNDESD), Rio+20, Climate Change discussions, biodiversity conventions, Earth Charter etc.).
• Explore evolving ethical frameworks to address disaster response and risk coverages.
• Allocate more technical and financial resources for developing the capacities of the officials mandated to look after disaster management duties at the district and state levels.
• Form a consortium of NGOs / technical bodies to assist the government bodies and local administration in assessment of risks, monitoring existing risk reducing programs, etc. These could effectively work as voluntary back end offices also
• Analyse organizational preparedness of NGOs, CBOs in our country and identify strengths and weakness. It would also be helpful to identify duplication of works, significant gaps and opportunities for improvements, in the context of disaster management.
• Recognize exemplary work in disaster management, sustainable-safe development and create brand ambassadors for carrying forward the message for disaster risk reduction.
• Evolve programmes on Disaster management (e.g Disaster management clubs, First aiders, search and rescue workers etc.) in colleges and form a cadre of well trained youths.
• Increase focus on Gram Panchayats for participatory planning, allocating finances and human resource development for improving skills, particularly in safe handling, use of technology etc.
• Target industries and corporate sector for investments in research on disaster risk reduction, industrial safety, manufacturing process, organizational preparedness and pro-active contribution to safe infrastructure creation.
• Analyse existing schemes / programs in Panchayats and quantify how these help in reducing vulnerabilities and can improve capacities. Train grass root members in vulnerability assessments and creation of micro-level information for planning regional level DRR measures.

IV. Suggestions/Recommendations for developing a monitoring mechanism for capturing progress at all levels (multi-stakeholder framework)

More than monitoring progress at all levels, it is the question of what to do when it is recorded that progress is not there? In India, the majority of problems are not due to non-availability of monitoring systems, but more because of in-effective implementation and non-punishment of violators. (e.g. A classic case is the Coastal Regulation Zone 1991 norms where mechanism for safe coastal development is available, but yet coastal areas of our country continue to be pushed into increasing vulnerability and risks due to violations of CRZ and also due to the violators not being brought to justice or the wrong doings corrected).

Therefore, in disaster management context, we need a system that 'guides, mentors, monitors, evaluates and has a power to make corrections or give justice to the vulnerable' rather than just a monitoring system capturing or recording events/process.

• Public stakeholder meetings and consultations: Design public consultation meetings at local level and state level to share actual observations, learnings and shortcomings.
• Crowd sourcing technology and open access platforms: Use IT and public involvement to capture ground level data, information and situations and make available on real time basis preferably with options to view them on a temporal and geographical space. E.g. google earth images with photographs of existing structural vulnerabilities in different areas can bring out patterns or risks, violations and corrections required across the country.
• GIS enable query systems, data capturing systems to visualise data and current status – both temporally and spatially.
• Engaging legal professionals and judiciary more proactively and voluntarily to observe trends, events around them and take legal course for corrective actions for risks created due to unplanned developmental activities or violations.