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The Greater Caribbean This Week

Platforms for disaster reduction

by Luis Carpio

"For the cliff is all right, if you’re careful," they said, "And, if folks even slip and are dropping, It isn't the slipping that hurts them so much As the shock down below when they're stopping." So day after day, as these mishaps occurred, Quick forth would those rescuers sally To pick up the victims who fell off the cliff, With their ambulance down in the valley."

Joseph Malins, 1895

The urge to include another stanza from the old poem was irresistible, as it so well captures our racial bias for the pound of cure over the ounce of prevention. Shiny, new helicopters and warehouses full of water and candles will always seem more sexy to us than, say, baseline assessments. This is not to say, of course that preparedness is not crucial, but rather that all stages of the disaster cycle need to receive appropriate attention if we are to save lives and reduce the impact of natural phenomena upon our development.

As reported in the last installment, representatives of more than 100 governments converged in Geneva from 5th to 6th June to launch a new United Nations-chaired forum on disaster reduction aimed at becoming the principal international consultative group on the issue.

The Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction brings together governments, the UN and other specialized organizations, academic institutions, financial associations, and other civil society groups to tackle threats posed by natural disasters, including those posed by climate change and urbanization. According to Sálvano Briceño, Director of the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction Secretariat “We certainly need to continue reducing carbon emissions but as global warming is already here, we need at the same time to find other ways to reduce the impacts of climate change,”

The main purpose of the meeting was to gauge the level of success at the national level of the Hyogo Framework of Action, adopted in 2005. As such, the meeting stressed some of the main Hyogo themes and reiterated the great need for advocacy, with clear and consistent messages, to stimulate awareness and support by politicians, managers, professional groups, and the general public.

All participants also agreed that disaster risk reduction must be an integral part of sustainable development planning. “Good governance, effective planning, courageous budgeting and implementing policies to prevent human settlement in hazardous areas are indispensable; we have to ensure that hospitals, schools, transportation and water systems are hazard-resilient,” said Briceño.

The meeting recognized that many countries face great challenges in building their basic institutional capacities, to develop or revise legislation and policy frameworks, and to implement national platforms, action plans, and budgets. Other countries, however, have made considerable progress and have a wealth of experience. This is particularly true in our Greater Caribbean region, which is recognized by all to be a veritable crucible of growing disaster risk, but where an important number of regional and national bodies stand ready to bring their expertise to the table whilst managing to avoid duplication, paralleling and overlapping of initiatives.

This cooperation will allow all counties in the Greater Caribbean to, among many other things, establish systems to monitor and report on their risk profiles and on the implementation of the Hyogo Framework, including best practice codes, verifiable indicators, benchmarks and targets, in order to guide action and improve accountability for results. The most important regional effort towards this goal will be the Greater Caribbean conference on disaster reduction to be held in Haiti from 14-16 November 2007 which was officially announced by the Haitian delegation in Geneva.

The purpose of the conference is to exchange experiences, lessons learnt and best practices in the areas of natural disaster risk reduction, mitigation and recovery within the region, as well as determine areas of intra-regional cooperation in all three areas, which will inform a plan of action for regional cooperation in the Greater Caribbean to be adopted by the meeting.

Luis Carpio is the Director of Transport and Natural Disasters of the Association of Caribbean States. The opinions expressed are not necessarily the official views of the ACS. Comments and reactions can be sent to mail@acs-aec.org

Sirias, An interview with the editor
Bernal, Assault on truckers
Hill, Fast track to trade failure?
Colombia Support Network, The killing of FARC hostages must be condemned
Committee to Protect Journalists, Cuban independent journalist gets 15-month sentence
Muslim Council of Britain, The terrorists are everyone's enemy
Schaeffer, Will the Pink Tide wash over Paraguay next year?
Skog, Bolivia's constitutional birth pains

Pilgrim, Injecting solutions into the illegal drug economy

Carpio, Disaster reduction policies that make sense

Leis, What to do about the national ombudsman's office?

Schwab, Remarks at the signing of the US-Panama Trade Promotion Agreement