Summary
Created: December 7, 2021 1:53 PM
Disaster risk management and development
Only about 11% of People living in low development countries are affected by droughts, earthquakes, floods, windstorms, and other natural disasters. However, these same people account for 53% of total deaths from these disasters. Therefore, people in poorly developed nations are more vulnerable to these natural hazards. Direct economic, physical, and human disaster are not the only impacts that natural disasters could cause. Indirect impacts, which gets over looked far more often for more immediate concerns, causes lost of production time in industries and the drop in market share due to the unstable worker’s safety and productivity. There are also secondary losses that are felt by regional and national economies. These losses increase indebtedness and inflation in the country impacted by the disasters that carry on as long-term burdens. The reason why people in poorly developed countries suffer from these disasters more is due to international trade inequalities. Rich countries get richer, while poorly developed countries gets poorer. Furthermore, these poor countries have poor labor rights and environmental standard due to the incentive for captialistic competition for foreign direct investment. National and local development can further expose people to hazard through privatization, public sector savings that also reduce government’s capacity to provide social safety nets and efforts to reduce the risks also backfire, relocation schemes disrupt livelihoods and social networks that don’t allow society to heal.
Disasters and the Millennium Development Goal
We already have a international framework in place in aiming for a more sustainable future in the MDG. The United Nations Millennium Development Goal is a international development goal adopted in 2000 which aims to reduce ‘the number and effects of natural and man-made disasters’. The MDG plans to encourage governments to incorporate disaster risk reduction into their national planning process and to make the intended goals happen. The MDG aims for 8 different impacts.
- Demands eradication of extreme poverty that is undermined by other impacts
- Demand universal primary education because disasters makes schooling expensive and require children to work more.
- Promote the empowerment of women as disasters can increase sexual violence against women and children and gender inequality.
- Seek to reduce child mortality rate as they are vulnerable to the disasters but also post-disaster disease.
- Aims to improve maternal health as damaged health infrastructure, stress, and cost impact pregnant women.
- Seek to combat chronic diseases like HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis that disasters can make more common of.
- Aspire to ensure environmental sustainability to ensure disaster management does not neglect aquatic and land-based ecosystems.
- Calls for global partnership for development especially for small island developing states who are vulnerable to climate change.
Challenges to integrating disaster risk reduction into development planning
Disaster risk management is divided into two forms. First is risk reduction, where preventive actions and preparations are made to mitigate the negative effects of hazards before they happen. Secondly, humanitarian and development actions are those that responds to emergency crisis, to provide relief, and reconstruction after a disaster. The first challenge to integrating disaster risk reduction into development planning is that it is less visible than more immediate emergency relief. Government officials see risk reductive actions as unattractive and would rather chase votes and international recognition by providing emergency reliefs. Blame is set on the hazard rather than the incompetence of risk reduction. It creates the Samaritan’s Dilemma where states rely on relief supports rather than working on hazard prevention instead. The second challenge is that development specialists have a challenge with focusing on disaster risk reduction, while distracted by more immediate needs. However small administrative changes like the introduction of risk assessment as part of a project appraisal methodology will make a big difference. Another challenge is the misconception that disaster risk management is already incorporated into pro-poor development. However, vulnerability and poverty is not the same thing. Disaster risk reduction try and strengthen the livelihoods of the vulnerable regardless of their income. Finally, the misconception that disaster are beyond human control is also obstructing developments in risk reduction. Studies have shown disasters are not a natural phenomenon. When disasters are seen as the accumulation of risk and vulnerability over years leading to a triggered events, then clear actions can be taken.
Case Study: Mekong Dams and the Perils of Peace
The Mekong River has been the sole source of traditional farming fisherishes and the livelihoods of many in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. However, it is being threatened by a new development. The issue is the problem of who controls the water, how it should be used, and for whose benefits. China’s rise in economic dominance and geopolitical objectives has also caused it to try and get a hold on the Mekong as well. The Indochinese countries have short-sighted policies that sometimes are in proxy with China itself. To begin, the Mekong river starts off in the Tibetan highlands of China and makes it’s way through Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam before opening into the South China Sea. The river is special because of its wet and dry seasonal extreme flows. In the wet-season flood build and the river reverse direction filling up the Tonle Sap river in Cambodia, then the lake empties back into the river into the delta with countless species of fish in the period of 3 months. Allowing for fisheries and a third rice harvest in Mekong Delta. The Mekong River Commission was signed in a treaty between Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam in 1995 all agreeing to maintain ‘acceptable natural reverse flow’ into the Tonle Sap.
River at risk
However, the eight or more massive hydropower dams in construction in China and eleven further proposed pose doubts about the viability of the use of the buffer. Large dams hold back soil-renewing silt, destroy fish habitat, wiping away fields and villages. China is where most of the benefits of the Mekong comes from. First, eventhough China only possesses one-fourth the length of the Mekong, it accounts for 90% of the 5,000 meters of elevation drop to the ocean level. Secondly, Summer glacier and snow melt on the Tibetan Plateau of China accounts for as much as 40-70% of the dry-season flow. The Upper Mekong also contribute half of the sediment annually replenishes farmers’ fields and rebuild the Mekong Delta during the monsoon floods. China’s dams plan to maintain enough flow downstream to Yunnan and dams planned for Laos and Cambodia to keep them running during the drought seasons and to allow for year round commercial navigation. China further promises to put 40% more water in the river during the dry season and reduce the monsoon flow by 17%. However, Biologist and natural scientists says this unnatural change of the river’s reversing flow will destroy the characteristically productive feature of this river. The delta is the Vietnamese rice bowl, producing 40% of the country’s crops. Annual floods replenish the soil naturally without the need for fertilizers, allowing 3 crop yields per year. Changes in the flow pattern will cause large negative impacts. Eleven more dams are planned for Lower Mekong by Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia. These dams will pose an absolute barrier to spawning migration of a large variety of fish species that makes up 80% of animal protein of 6 million people. Moreover, Half of these dams are financed by Chinese banks and official development assistance. With all these dams, there were no relocation efforts that worked. Fish ladders projects to allow fish to move through damns were worked on and failed. Dams in operation is silting up and blocked far more frequent and early than anticipated. The winter snow caps are shrinking from the Tibetan Plateau leading to reduced flow in upper Mekong. Therefore, there are many issues that the construction of dams along the Mekong River has created