opinion

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Kuna General Congress of Madugandi, Our just claims and the government's repression
Avnery, 12 years after Rabin's assassination
Amnesty International, Making a diplomatic issue of violence against women
Weisbrot, A bank of Latin America's own
Carpio, Disaster reduction and the media

Pilgrim, The Trinidad-Tobago election

Sánchez, Lula's yellow submarine

Jackson, Republicans and Democrats and Latin America

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As with the Moon landing and 9/11, everyone remembers where they were on 26th December 2004, when an undersea earthquake set off a series of merciless tsunamis against communities across South and Southeast Asia, resulting in unspeakable death (more than 180,000) and destruction. The impact of the images was overwhelming, as their sheer, inherent horror was multiplied by the unusual ethnic mix of those fleeing the waves from tennis courts and pool-side bars as well as the more usual shantytowns.

Global Villagers, however, were unfazed when these news stories almost instantaneously overshadowed and quickly superseded all information regarding one of the deadliest and most costly Atlantic (Caribbean) hurricane seasons on record, only a few weeks prior. The season that brought us Charley, Frances, Ivan, and Jeanne, causing the deaths of over 3,000 people and millions in damage, was suddenly old news everywhere, even in the Greater Caribbean. Few remembered when Jeanne struck Haiti the hardest, whilst Ivan affected Grenada, Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, or when Frances and Jeanne both hit the Bahamas with full force and Charley caused significant damage in Cuba.

Similarly, when dozens died or disappeared in Haiti and hundreds were left homeless in Jamaica over the past couple of weeks of flooding and when Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) says it expects cases of dengue to top 1,000,000 this year in the worst outbreak in decades, it barely makes a blip against a (certainly terrifying) worldwide backdrop of melting icecaps and starving, puppy-eyed seals. Add to the mix the babble from Babylon, “perverse” Persians, financial fiascoes and toxic toys, and even our worst tragedies fade away.

We must reexamine the role of the media in our age of increasing disasters, one-minute cell phone clips and sound-bites as well as reprinted wire feeds. It is tempting to place the media on the bench, treat it as a hostile witness and convict it for the sins of others. As with many of our Kafkaesque tendencies, this would be intellectually slothful and ultimately self-defeating, if only because it is inconsistent to encourage media as a legitimate business and then attack it for acting like one.

Whilst it would be disingenuous to expect disaster reduction planning to compete with Dantesque images of post-disaster destruction or with the raw heroic sexiness of scores of helicopter descending upon devastated towns, there is a clear need to narrow the gap between these and the message that planning/response actors need delivered, not only to the grass roots, but to our leaders as well.

The Hyogo Framework for Action, adopted by the World Conference on Disaster Reduction as the global blueprint for building the resilience of nations and communities to disasters, depends to a large extent on all cross-sectoral stakeholders to be fully invested in the processes of disaster reduction. To this end, champions to the cause of disaster reduction must rise to harness the power of all modern mass communications (including IT) and bring it to bear on this most pressing problem of our times.

We go towards Haiti for the first ACS Conference on Disaster Reduction (14th-16th November) at the tail end of this year’s relatively tame hurricane season with a prayer that La Niña will let us reach the shores of Hispaniola with no further casualties. We hope as well that the eyes of the world and especially of our region will be upon us and remind our electronic and print colleagues that the disaster is in the eye of the beholder.

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 mailto:mail@acs-aec.org

Also in this section:

Sirias, A Wounaan journey
Kuna General Congress of Madugandi, Our just claims and the government's repression
Avnery, 12 years after Rabin's assassination
Amnesty International, Making a diplomatic issue of violence against women
Weisbrot, A bank of Latin America's own
Carpio, Disaster reduction and the media

Pilgrim, The Trinidad-Tobago election

Sánchez, Lula's yellow submarine

Jackson, Republicans and Democrats and Latin America

Bernal, Setting up a presidential re-election?

Leis, Who watches the watchers?