Courting disasters

Courting disasters IN Pakistan, disaster management (DM) largely means rescuing people hit by disasters and providing immediate succour. But this is band-aid work. Comprehensive DM systems address root causes and nip disasters in the bud. Comprehensive systems first attempt to reduce the frequency of disasters, eg, major floods. Flood frequency in Pakistan has increased considerably. This has to do with global warming. Per capita-wise, Pakistan is a minor contributor to climate change, the main culprits being rich countries. Nevertheless, studies identify it as the third most vulnerable country to climate change. While Pakistan cannot directly combat climate change, it needs to be more active in global climate change talks to pressurise major CO2 emitters to curb their emissions. The second cause lies within Pakistan and is linked to massive deforestation and soil erosion. These processes result in more floods as riverbeds rise due to soil erosion. Thus, curbing deforestation and undertaking river dredging can reduce the frequency of floods. However, government prog­­rammes to do this are limited and ineffective. We are said to be the third most vulnerable country to climate change. Since there will still be some floods despite such steps (in fact some flooding is beneficial), the next step in effective DM is building buffers between remaining floods and communities, eg, bunds, embankment walls etc. Unfortunately, rural and poor urban communities lack such protection. Consequently, floods always affect poor people most. In fact, in recent floods, such structures were deliberately breached to protect powerful people or collapsed due to poor maintenance, hence causing increased flooding among poor communities. Since building such structures everywhere may take time, the next DM step is to have strong early warning and preparedness systems to warn and evacuate vulnerable communities before the floods hit them. This requires coordination between the Met department which predicts rains; irrigation departments which must monitor rising river levels and protection structure sturdiness and inform provincial and district authorities accordingly, which in turn should evacuate people in time. However, the Met department lacks the latest technology; irrigation departments are unable to translate river level information accurately into the likely flood radius and local authorities usually fail to warn vulnerable communities in time. Thus more than 90 of the hundreds of communities I have visited throughout Pakistan since the 2010 floods had received no prior government flood warning while others ignored it. EU and UNDP have recently helped the six regional governments establish state-of-the-art emergency control centres for such preparedness. In visiting three, I found that only KP plans to recruit permanent centre staff. In Punjab and Sindh, the centres are being managed part-time by one to two personnel due to budgetary constraints and are not very effective. Since the floods, NGOs have filled this void partially by establishing community-level preparedness systems. They provide communities with contact information for flood warning government departments and media; help identify evacuation routes and shelter places; provide evacuation and rescue equipment; and develop collaborative linkages among communities and relevant government departments. And so, over the last three years, I have observed a nascent preparedness system starting to emerge. The last step is rescue and relief for people who could not be evacuated in time. However, the last step in countries with effective systems becomes the main step in Pakis­tan. Ideally, this step should be needed for a tiny minority. But, due to weak preparedness, it has to serve very large numbers in Pakistan and does so inefficiently. The main reason for this overall situation is that since floods largely affect poor people, DM is a low government priority. This apathy causes three main problems. The first is inadequate funding. Pakistani governments must develop detailed costing for the steps mentioned and allocate resources accordingly under a five-year comprehensive plan. The second problem is an inefficient and uncoordinated DM organisational structure. The steps mentioned above are divided across nearly two dozen agencies which do not coordinate well. Some such agencies must be merged. A clear coordination structures must be created among remaining agencies, with one agency, eg, NDMA nationally and PDMAs provincially, having clear authority over others. Finally, community participation within government DM programmes is low — a problem exacerbated by non-existent LG systems. Promisingly, the pending KP LG system envisages village councils which, among other tasks, will facilitate effective DM. Until these steps are implemented, Pakistan will unfortunately continue courting disasters.