Devil's Advocate and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction

This is the sceptic's agenda for world-wide disaster risk reduction. A little scepticism is a good thing: too much of it makes one a thorn in the flesh - or worse.

1.    Do we need this document, and if we do, why?

2.    Whether it is good or bad, will it actually help to reduce losses caused by disasters?

3.    What are the alternatives to having a Sendai Declaration? Is there a better way?

4.    Who will hold governments to account, and how?

5.    Would changing the wording of the SFDRR have any impact upon disaster losses?

6.    Can a document like the SFDRR ever be anything but top-down, and if it can't, does this matter?

7.    The word 'should' appears 20 times in the SFDRR: does it have any real meaning in comparison with the word 'must'?

8.    In the face of 'disaster risk creation'*, do targets have any meaning?

9.    For whom is science, and who will ascertain this?

10.    What sort of framework will produce positive results if a government is corrupt and unethical?

11.    What if principles cannot be implemented at the national level because of globalism?

12.    Is it disingenuous of governments to wait for a framework to be published before embarking on a proper programme of disaster risk reduction? ("Houston, we have a problem. We can't fix it: no one has told us to.")

13.    Is the SFDRR part of a self-generated, self-justifying culture? If it is, what are the implications of this for disaster risk?

I expect a spirited defence of the Sendai Framework in retaliation.

*Lewis, J. and I. Kelman 2012. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly: disaster risk reduction (DRR) versus disaster risk creation (DRC). PLoS Currents Disasters 2012 Jun 7 [last modified: 2012 Jun 21] doi: 10.1371/4f8d4eaec6af8.

Syria, Security and Safety

As I write this, we are living through apparently momentous times in which the British House of Commons has voted to go to war with Syria. At least, that is the picture that has been portrayed in the mass media and propagated by the members of Parliament. The whole business of voting has been presented to the electorate as a mighty struggle akin to a decision to seek out and destroy Hitler (during the debate, that very metaphor was used in a variety of contexts).

Military strategists have described the decision as "insignificant". The addition of a few fighter planes and extension across a nominal border of their range of action will have little strategic impact on the situation in the Middle East. In any case, only ten per cent of bombing raids involve the dropping of bombs. One hopes that the targets are chosen on the basis of adequate knowledge about what they contain.

Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, IS, Daesh & Co.) obviously needs to be thwarted and most of us would prefer it to be destroyed. Aerial bombardment does not do that. Carefully aligned with concerted ground-based action, it can play a part. However, in Syria more than a hundred independent factions are fighting. Moreover, the Russians, with vastly greater firepower than the UK offers, are bombing some of the factions that would fight IS on the ground.

Bombing Iraq led to the spread of radicalisation, the fragmentation of the country, the widespread perpetration of atrocities and a domino-like destabilisation of the Middle East. It did not cause these things, but it certainly helped them to occur. Moreover, bombing campaigns are obscenely expensive. We cut support to the poor and needy and we splash out on riotously expensive military campaigns. The two Gulf Wars cost the Western coalition more than any other single human endeavour that took place in the late 20th century.

With a great fanfare, some distasteful jingoism, and plenty of irrelevant references to the 1930s and 1940s, Britain has "opted for war", or in other words made a great deal of fuss about a relatively small change. It may be small, but it could be significant if it increases radicalisation and terrorism in Europe in the way that past bombing campaigns have.

There is no way that bombing Syria will end the war there. One vital aspect of that endeavour is rarely discussed in public: the supply of arms and money to the combatants. Islamic State could be stopped if its resources were cut off. This would require concerted action against the world's tax havens and that is inimical to the decision makers. It would require much greater control of the circulation of oil and oil revenues than they are willing to support.

Now what does all of this have to do with disasters, other than the self-evident fact that warfare is a disaster in its own right? To begin with, there is the dialectic, and in present times the struggle, between 'safety' and 'security'. The latter currently has the upper hand (but wait for the next large "natural" disaster on our doorstep). Actions in the streets of Europe help bring security: at the same time, actions on the world stage reduce it.

In London the Tate Gallery, Tate Britain, is showing an exhibition entitled 'Art and Empire'. It includes a room full of military paintings that glorify British losses. The Afghan campaign of 1839-42 ended in a total rout and massacre for the British expeditionary force that initially conquered Kabul. It is shown in oils on canvas as a heroic last defence: General Custer, UK style. It was the premature conclusion to another proxy war carried out by the great powers in lands that were not their own. Such are Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq in the modern age. Military solutions are not necessarily futile or counter-productive, but much depends on what other strategies they are allied with. In Libya and Iraq there was no other strategy and the result was failure. Neither country is a 'failed state': both are hardly states at all, failed or otherwise.

After "Nine-eleven" in the United States, President Bush intoned "My fellow Americans, America is at war!" Disaster researchers pointed out that the premiss for war did not exist. Of course, there was a serious situation, but it was not a war (Comfort 2005). The response to 9-11, the 'phoney war', was so heavy handed and lacking in foresight that it undoubtedly encouraged opposition, destabilisation and radicalisation. Rather than learning the lessons of history, we now see the politicians making the same mistake.

Disaster research can learn much from the study of strategic issues, and 'security'. in the modern world, albeit often in a negative sense. Resources devoted to 'security' are taken away from 'safety' - and welfare. 'Security' is vastly more expensive than many forms of safety. Decision making in the security field tends to focus on part, not all of the chain. As with disaster risk reduction, it tends to ignore or undervalue the underlying 'risk drivers'. The most powerful people on the world stage may find it convenient to do so, but that is not the case for the millions of victims of conflict and disaster. Finally, the strategic situation forms a context that is now so powerful that, in disaster risk reduction, we may say that the context is the problem, not merely its environment.

Syria is a seismic country, and it has, or had, a well-developed civil protection service. Under the current situation, that matter-of-fact observation seems bizarre.

Reference

Comfort, L.K. 2005. Risk, security and disaster management. Annual Reviews of Political Science 8: 335-356.

Refugees as a "Threat": The Role of Misleading Information

Rational debate on the refugee question is being stifled by misleading information and wrong assumptions. Here are some common viewpoints and refutations. It is worth bearing in mind that the previous UK Government suppressed a report on the evidence base behind migration, describing the evidence as "one-sided". Some of the attempts to mislead are inadvertent, but it is clear that some are deliberate. Almost all the British mass media, including the BBC, are guilty of providing a conflicting picture of the refugee situation, in which unreconcilable information is offered. The tabloid newspapers are, as usual, the worst.

"We are being swamped by migrants."
Most migrants are refugees, hence the term ' migrants' is misleading. There will be opportunists among them, as there among the victims of 'natural' disaster, but the proportion will probably be small.

"This wave of immigrants is unprecedented."
Or so say the Jutes, Saxons, Vikings, Normans, Mediterranean Celts, Huguenots, Picts and Romans (and the vast numbers of Brits who settled abroad).

The Calais entrance to the UK is "under seige".
Fewer than 1% of migrants to Europe arrive there. France offers better benefits to refugees than does Britain, so they would be advised to stay where they are.

"Send them all back."
It is cheaper to integrate refugees than repatriate them.

"They are welfare tourists."
Refugees use health services less than indigenous populations do.

"The UK is the preferred destination."
The UK is not a particularly attractive destination for refugees and it offers them fewer and smaller benefits than some other European countries do. Per capita, Greece has proved to be a more attractive destination.

"We are not really involved."
European countries have a legal obligation to resettle refugees without discrimination. It comes from the UN Convention and Protocol, not the EU.

"They are a burden on our economy."
The aging population of Europe needs to be rejuvenated by in-migration, or tax revenues will decline and economies will suffer the 'Japan syndrome' (Japan has almost no in-migration and as a result it will lose 11% of its GDP by 2030 and find it very difficult to support its healthcare system). Refugees are seldom lazy.

"There will be rivers of blood." (Enoch Powell)
Despite the Conservative politician's firebrand words, integration of Ugandan Asian refugees in Leicester was highly successful and rejuvenated the local economy.

"They are taking over our country."
Many refugees would rather go home if it were safe to do so.

"We will build fences and walls to keep them out."
Futile: even the Great Wall of China was a failure.

"We are being dictated to by the European Union."
Member states decide EU policy - by common compromise.

Lastly:-
"We are on top of the situation."
There is a dreadful, hand-to-mouth lack of foresight and planning.

Immigrants

I am writing about a disaster before it happens. The study of disasters is, of course, not only about so-called 'natural' impacts such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and floods, nor is it enough to add technologically induced emergencies. There are also social and intentional crises.

The invasion of Iraq on a pretence in 2003 set off a chain of instability in the Middle East, fuelled by earlier interventions, including the partition of 1920 that created modern Iraq, British interventions in Iran in the 1930s and 1950s designed to safeguard British oil interests at all costs, and bombing of the families of Arab nationalists. Despite massive mortality in Iraq as a result of war and sanction, the same sort of intervention was employed in Libya, where, as in Iraq, there was no follow-up strategy that might have helped create a peace. So Iraq and Libya have turned into sectarian wars dominated by ideological extremism and Syria has become another proxy war between the great powers. It is therefore hardly surprising that there is a human tide of refugees from these conflicts, and from those in other parts of the Middle East and Africa.

It is plausible to argue that the disaster I mentioned above has already begun. Some 3,400 migrants died attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea in the first five and a half months of 2015. In a year, 150,000 were saved from a similar fate. Many others have struggled towards Europe across the land bridges of Greece and the Balkans. And still others are facing analogous dangers in Southeast Asia, the Pacific and Central America.

Europe has faced its migrant crisis like a rabbit in the middle of the road, mesmerised by the approaching headlights of the car that will crush it. On the one hand, everyone recognises that not to save the lives of those who will otherwise drown is a dereliction of moral duty, and in most cases international obligation. On the other hand, Europe fervently wishes that the migrants would simply go away. There is a school of thought, that has proved to be surprisingly influential, which argues that the migrants should be left to die as a warning to others who would make the crossing. How quintessentially Victorian: "If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population." Malthus was actually a kinder man than his apostles, and it is that latter that Dickens was lampooning.

Everyone agrees that the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees is an instrument designed for a world that no longer exists. It has not been replaced by anything more appropriate. In Europe, the front-line states, Greece, Malta, Italy and Spain, have struggled to cope, while northern countries, with the exception of Sweden, have done their level best not to help in any way. For years, Italy has been arguing that the burden is too great for it to bear alone. So it is, but the governments of the other countries have no sympathy for Italy's predicament and have withdrawn into a defensive position.

Paradoxically, migrants are not necessarily a bad thing for our economies. They tend to be light on health services, and, given the chance to work, on social services as well. They tend to make an energetic and positive contribution to the economy, and at the same time, by being relatively young and fertile, they help counteract the fiscal effects of a low indigenous birthrate. These are the conclusions of a report commissioned by the British Government and suppressed, not once, but three times, as a cabinet minister stated (rather bare-facedly) on British news television. Migrants are, of course, unpopular because of people's fear of unfamiliar cultures, ignorance of the benefits they bring and exaggerated ideas about the proportion of migrants. All of these negative attitudes are energetically fomented by the tabloid press, and the main political parties appear to be terrified of gainsaying them by pointing out the real evidence.

The sight of refugees in detention centres and the xenophobic quality of debate on migration is quite reminiscent of the early 1940s. Not infrequently some of the detention centres are compared with concentration camps, and not necessarily in irony.

Those who argue that the European Union is an anachronism would be well advised to remember that it was set up to prevent any return to the situation that prevailed in 1940. Nevertheless, the EU has performed remarkably badly on the migration issue. The reason is not hard to find. Although many Europeans imagine that the EU dictates policy to its member countries, it does not. Policy is the result of negotiation and consensus, to be implemented by national governments, and it is here that the cowardice lies. Adequate policy would involve rapidly resettling some immigrants in Europe and sending some back to Africa and Asia (I fear), as well as energetically fighting the human trafficking system and devoting very large resources indeed to the process of clearing up the mess in the Middle East (and African states) so that peace can be restored. Our politicians and governments seem to be terrified of the idea of having a joined-up strategy, even though knowledgeable advisers have told them what needs to be done.

In June 2015, there is absolutely no sign that a solution is imminent.

Right across the political spectrum, parties in Europe have preferred to feed the xenophobia rather than try to reduce it. With the exception of the front-line states, Europe's nations have simply tried to shut their doors. Where that has not worked, they have tried to pretend migration is not happening. When moral qualms are prevalent, we are treated to the spectacle of the Royal Navy saving migrants from leaky boats and then dumping them on the shore at Catania: "here you are, Italy, they're all yours!"

The G7's Middle Eastern policy is in tatters, and the crisis is worsened by the effect of the Ukranian proxy war in preventing East-West cooperation to bring order to Syria and Iraq. There are also negative influences from other conflicts or proto-conflicts, from Afghanistan to China.

In mid-2015 we face a summer of rapidly increasing migration, which will inevitably lead to social tensions. To be balanced, it is as well to recall that in 1968 the right-wing politician Enoch Powell predicted  that the arrival in Britain of 30,000 Ugandan Asian migrants ousted by Idi Amin would result in 'rivers of blood', whereas it actually resulted in prosperity and integration. However, there is every chance that a different kind of racial war will take place: one designed to keep the migrants out by force. One reason why this is such a danger is the utter lack of a strategy for coping with the influx.

Since the start of the recession in 2008, Europe, and very especially Britain, has become a substantially less egalitarian place. There has been a massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. Billionaires in the United Kingdom have doubled their wealth: the poverty rate has doubled as well. Given the disenchantment that this situation brings, no politician has the courage to propose a strategy for tackling the migrant issue, because it would inevitably be thoroughly unpopular, and bluntly opposed by the opinion-forming mass media. Hence we are faced with a resolute failure to act on a disaster in the making.

Strengthening the Links between Academics and Practitioners

The object of this brief essay is to outline some of the issues and challenges that academics and practitioners in the field of disaster risk reduction (DRR) and resilience face in communicating with one another and working together. My aim is to offer a preliminary contribution to discussions that will take place at the UCL Academic Summit on 24th June 2015.

With respect to risks, crises, emergencies and disasters, in their various phases, the function of academics is, broadly, to observe and deduce. This is part of a constant search for enlightenment, in which what events in the field form the raw material of research, teaching and advice. A body of existing knowledge is brought to bear on new developments. By synergy, it is augmented during that process.

Academics are the chief producers and utilisers of theory. If it is any good, theory explains, connects, validates, qualifies and makes practical action more efficient. As the eminent sociologist of disasters, Tom Drabek, noted, it is the road map of disaster reduction and relief because it clarifies issues and fundamental relationships. Leaving aside bad, irrelevant or misconceived theory, which clarifies nothing, DRR and resilience are distinctive, if not unique, in that the test of good theory is its immediate applicability to practical problems. There is much less emphasis on storing up theory for use at some undefined time in the future, although, of course, this can be useful as well.

Theory needs to be formulated and validated by measuring it against the evidence. The first of these steps involves creating models that, as elegantly as possible, simplify reality to its most important elements and filter out extraneous detail (to use an electrical metaphor, the model extracts the 'signal' from the 'noise'). The models are made by observation of reality "in the field", employment of existing methodology and building upon previous formulations. The evidence must be collected in the field and from statistical sources, as appropriate.

Caveat emptor: in academic research, much is made of the concept of an evidence base, as DRR and resilience are considered to be fields in which there has been something of a failure systematically to amass evidence. Although there is much truth in this observation, care needs to be taken over what is evidence and how it can be used. Evidence can be misleading, inconsistent, indeterminate or selective. It can defy interpretation, or it can be manipulated. Indeed, all use of evidence is selective, whether in pursuit of objectivity or not. Hence, any emphasis on collecting and using evidence throws up a series of questions. To what extent is evidence a surrogate for experience? Is evidence composed of "objective data", or is it mere perception of how the world functions? What is the connection, if any, between evidence and wisdom? How much evidence is enough? Finally, can we do without evidence and would explanation be more efficient if this were the case? These are all open questions, for which the answers require deep thought and much debate.

According to some commentators, there is a distinction between academics and practitioners, in that the latter inhabit "the real world". It is perhaps worth noting that there is nothing less real about the academic world. Indeed, in some cases it may well be more "real", in that academic work permits one to develop overviews and explicitly to measure situations against knowledge of how the world functions in ways that practitioners can seldom do.

Nevertheless, there is certainly a high degree of separation between the world of the academics and that of the practitioners, from policy formulators to front-line operatives. To make decisions about expenditure on risk reduction or humanitarian intervention; to run a business in the face of a risk that it may be interrupted or destroyed by disaster; to save lives after natural hazard impact; to make calculations about structural resilience; to provide shelter; these are examples of the work of practitioners and every one of them would benefit from a measure of sound academic work in both research and training, or education.

The simplest way for academics to be appreciated by practitioners is to produce something that makes the work of the latter simpler or easier. At their best, academics can generate insight, correct impressions, solve problems, provide learned commentary, invent new routines or instruments and connect up the pieces of a problem in ways that are creative and revelatory. At worst, they fall foul of the phenomena that obstruct common endeavour.

There are several barriers to communication and collaboration between academics and practitioners. The first is language. Many academics have a tendency to write in long, intricate sentences that present abstruse concepts by way of impenetrable jargon. There may be fields in which this is justified, but they do not include DRR and resilience. Granted, one cannot avoid much of the technical language of physical and construction sciences, but in the social sciences obfuscation is greatly overused. Complexity is particularly attractive to the neophyte. It conveys an aura of wizardry (hey presto! this is research!), and it is seen as endowing a work with legitimacy. Lovers of complexity would do well to read J.B. Priestley's essay "Making writing simple", in which he looked back wryly on his own youthful pretentiousness and in his maturity offered common sense and sagacity.

The second barrier is divergence of objectives. Not all scholarship needs to be immediately applicable to practical problems. Indeed, it is one of the great tragedies of modern research policy in DRR and resilience that the emphasis falls so heavily on applications that basic research is being given short shrift. However, it is often possible to fulfill theoretical and practical objectives at the same time, as the latter become a spin-off of the former. Thus, research for the sake of research may still result in practical applications, as well as storing up knowledge for use in future practice.

The third barrier is mutual incomprehension. Both sides need to make the effort to appreciate the perspective of the other without denigrating it. Synergy or symbiosis, or in other words, added value, can only be created if there is genuine input on both sides.

The fourth barrier is indeterminacy. Understandably, practitioners want answers. Academic culture induces us to hedge our statements with qualifiers. The response is often "Yes, I understand that, but is it going to happen or not?", and the academic replies, "Well it might do, under certain circumstances", which leaves the practitioner distinctly unenthused. The misperception that science has all the answers is widespread. We live in a world dominated by indeterminacy and unsolved problems. More than ever, the emphasis in science has shifted from providing the answers to constraining uncertainty as far as is possible with current knowledge and techniques. Neither side wants to admit that the answer could be "there is no answer", but that is often the case. For example, regarding earthquake prediction, we know the location of broad areas of seismicity. We know much about the recurrence intervals of events of certain sizes, and we can amass information on the effects of earthquakes by studying local vulnerability. However, broad-term magnitude-frequency predictions remain controversial as a result of the duality between probabilistic and deterministic methods, while short-term prediction may be an unattainable goal. In many areas, the way that the interaction of faults changes the stress field in the Earth's crust is complex enough roundly to defy exact prediction of when and where the next seismic event will occur, and what will be its magnitude. Paradoxically, human reactions may be more predictable than that, if we only learn to observe the signs.

The final barrier to collaboration lies in divergent imperatives. The politician, business manager or field operative is under pressure to produce results. In the academic world there may be intense pressure to publish or teach. Assessment can limit the opportunity to work on problems that are outside the parameters set by the assessors. Nowadays, research funding programmes often include a vaguely-defined criterion called 'impact'. However, in DRR and resilience, there is still a big gap between the academic research agenda and the fundamental needs of society. Great efforts have been made to close it, but institutional, employment and funding pressures continue to dictate the agenda independently of other issues.

One other issue is important. In the present day, much is made of trans-, inter- and multi-disciplinary work. There is a widespread understanding that the boundaries between disciplines need to be crossed, because practical problems have multiple facets and can be appreciated and analysed in different ways. A holistic approach to DRR and resilience is better than one that attempts to solve only part of the problem because it stems from the perspective of only one discipline. This is entirely justifiable, as problems associated with disasters tend to be complex, and more than 40 disciplines are professions are engaged in trying to solve them.

I advocate two criteria for strengthening this approach. The first is to abandon the concept of disciplines as far as is possible. Those, such as engineering, that involve liability cannot entirely be forsaken. However, it is axiomatic that the demands of the problem should determine the solution, not those of the discipline through which it is viewed. Half of the battle to reduce risks and disasters lies in appreciating the potential of disciplines and professions that are not one's own. Secondly, one should try to avoid the natural human tendency to assume that there is only one reality and each of us is a party to it. The best way to appreciate human motivations and objectives is to see problems in the light of different views of reality dictated by different life experiences, cultures, and forms of education and training. Broad-mindedness is the basis of collaboration, along with a willingness to accommodate new perspectives.

In the light of these considerations, several themes emerge for debate. The first is how to make research more useful. This obliges one to define 'useful' and to think about what academic research can contribute to the solution of urgent practical problems in our field. It may also require some consideration about what is not being done and should form part of the agenda. For instance, how should we appreciate the opportunities and limitations that go with working to reduce disasters in the light of any particular human culture?

The second issue is how to improve communication across the boundaries between disciplines and professions. In our academic or professional training, we are taught to reason in particular ways, yet the distinctive feature of disasters and crises is that they create an imperative need for answers to problems that may transcend the barriers. Despite all the talk of interdisciplinary work, there are still very strong pressures to identify with disciplines and professions, to protect their territory in the field of learning, and to conform to their norms. Yet, given the urgency of the need to protect the world's populations against disaster, loss of identity and loss of credibility may be the least  important of our worries.

Thirdly, we need to address how to improve teaching and training so that they better suit the needs of the trainees. Courses are beset by the problems of fragmentation among the disciplines that contribute to DRR and resilience. Do we fully appreciate the need to produce 'educated generalists', who understand the multi-faceted nature of disasters? Before launching our courses, did we conduct a needs assessment, and afterwards have we measured the effectiveness of the training or education provided? What should be the content of the core curriculum, and what are the best methods of putting it across?

Finally, it is imperative to find out how to avoid the isolation brought by monodisciplinary approaches. Are there antidotes to the pressures to conform in disciplinary circles? Can we press for better recognition of genuinely interdisciplinary work? Despite the rhetoric, there remain many more opportunities for interdisciplinary (or indeed non-disciplinary) work than examples of it in practice.

In conclusion, the debate needs adaptability, receptiveness and a desire to avoid the 'dialogue of the deaf'. Academics can help practitioners find answers to the problems that beset them, and to find their way around the maze of existing knowledge. That process cannot take place without mutual understanding and a genuine desire to adapt to the perspectives, exigencies and cultures of the other side in this debate.

Kathmandu

Kathmandu fire engine, 1930s style.

A few years ago I went to Kathmandu and had the opportunity to meet members of the national and local governments, as well as the international aid community. Kathmandu suffered the impact of a magnitude 7.4 earthquake in 1934. It did much damage, but what were then grassy fields are now densely populated tenements in a chaotic, rapidly spreading urban fabric. There are 1.6 million people in the Kathmandu valley. The calculated return period of the 1934 event was 70 years: a major earthquake was overdue. If such a disaster could not be coped with locally, aid would have difficulty in arriving at an airport that was too small, cramped and difficult of access (the presence of Anapurna means that aircraft have to corkscrew down to land). The logistics remind one of Port au Prince in Haiti.

I visited the city's emergency management department, which was run by five men who occupied a decrepit office in the city hall. Their equipment consisted of a second-hand laptop computer, a rusty motorbike and a megaphone. The fire and rescue service of Kathmandu had six engines. Three were museum pieces from the 1930s: the others were relatively modern appliances dating from the 1960s. The UN emergency management arrangements had been entrusted to a young man who had no relevant experience and consequently radiated nervousness. Government ministers whom I met clearly had their minds on other matters: while I was there, 67 people were injured in a riot. Meanwhile, pro- and anti-government forces bristling with armaments put up rival shows of strength in different parts of the city.

The international community and aid agencies have spent considerable sums on consultancy work to assess the vulnerability of Kathmandu to floods and earthquakes. GIS-based mapping has produced a detailed picture. This struck me as rather like contemplating the statue of Oxymandias in the desert ("Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!"). Much more simply, one could jump into a decrepit Suzuki 800 taxi and look out the windows as it crept through the traffic jams. The vulnerability was painfully obvious to the eye, but what was being done to reduce it?

I left Kathmandu with a pervasive sense of having encountered wrong priorities. It had consultants, committees, reports, conferences and NGOs. It needed neighbourhood search and rescue, emergency response training, massive increases in hospital capacity, and retrofitting of key buildings (and of cultural heritage).  Without these developments, the result would be a fatal and debilitating aid dependency. I know that since my visit some progress has been made. However, the news that has come out of Nepal in the first hours after the magnitude 7.8 earthquake of 25 April 2015 is disheartening, largely because of the crushing predictability of the predicament in which Nepal and Kathmandu find themselves.

Nepal is a low income country that ranks 157th in the UN's Human Development Index. It is now time for a debate on the extent to which disaster risk reduction should be a key development priority in such countries. Simple, cheap measures are needed in place of the complex ones imported by the humanitarian aid industry. The measures need to involve and be supported actively by the whole population.

****************************************
Evidently, there has been progress since my visit to Kathmandu. Dr Ben Wisner recently returned from a trip to Nepal. In the discussions following the earthquake he commented as follows:-

"I was impressed by the achievements of the Nepal Society for Earthquake Technology (NSET), ... other Nepali NGOs, INGOs, the Nepal Red Cross, and to some extent government—especially at the municipal level.  ... I am sure lives were saved because of these efforts to train on earthquake aware construction, enforcement of the building code in Patan (one of the historic cities that now compose the metro Kathmandu region), preparedness planning in the health sector, establishment of 68 green space safe areas, training in some of the cities in light search and rescue and pre-positioning of tools for this purpose."

Hence, there has been some positive change. The level and nature of the damage indicate that its scope is limited. Dr Wisner added that, although half of Nepal's 20,000 schools are situated in the Kathmandu Valley, only 260 of them have been given a seismic performance assessment and retrofitted. It is fortunate that the earthquake occurred out of school hours, but one cannot be sure that this will be the case in the next major earthquake.

Social and political tensions have persisted in Nepal into the present day, and they represent a distraction from the process of disaster risk reduction (DRR). The aftermath of the April 2015 catastrophe will doubtless be characterised by national unity in the face of crisis. However, as the risk of another major earthquake will remain high during the ensuing decades, it would be well to ensure that DRR remains a top priority in national development.

Research students beware

A former member of academic staff, now an Emeritus Professor, did his PhD on an aspect of physical processes in deserts. A company that specialises in aerial surveys paid for him to collect sand samples over a wide area of uninhabited land in North Africa. He brought the samples back to England and took them to his department. In the laboratory, he opened the packages of sand up to look at them and check that they were in the same condition as they were when he had so meticulously collected them. It was Friday afternoon and he went away for the weekend.

On Monday, he came back and the table on which he left his rows of bags full of sand was empty. It had evidently recently been cleaned. He panicked and rushed around looking for his samples. Those were days when fire suppression technology was very much more rudimentary than it is now. Eventually he found a cleaner who took him round to the back of the building and showed him a row of red-painted fire buckets full of multi-coloured sand. He broke down and wept.

Two friends of mine, who were married to each other and living together, did research for their theses in English Literature. One day, when they were close to the end of their studies, they decided to have a barbecue. They grilled the meat on the balcony of their apartment. Unfortunately, this happened in North America and they lived in a wooden building. It had been a long, hot summer and everything was bone dry, including the wood of the balcony. They failed to put the barbecue grill out properly after they had used it and the building caught fire. It was consumed by the flames in nine minutes flat. No one was injured but the building was a write-off. My friends had written their theses and had made electronic copies of the files and had printed out hard copies as well. Unfortunately, they were all in the same place, namely, in the house. The hard copies were reduced to ashes, the computers melted and the disks were consumed by fire. My friends never graduated.

Recently, I caught a snippet of the local radio news. It said: "Police divers were out in the river looking for his thesis..." It reminded me of how works of scholarship were more prone to disaster in the pre-digital age. For example, the distinguished South African geomorphologist Lester King found that his houseboy had taken his thesis down to the rubbish dump and burned it, thinking he was doing a favour in cleaning all those disorderly pieces of paper out of King's office. King was another luminary who never got his doctorate. And then there was T.E. Lawrence, who forgot to reclaim the manuscript of Seven Pillars of Wisdom from the luggage rack when he left a railway carriage at Reading station. It was never found and he had to rewrite the whole, rather substantial, book from scratch. Thank goodness he did.

The moral of these stories is care, protection, redundancy and keep things at more than one site.

The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction

Ishinomaki Mangattan Museum, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan

The 2015 World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction has ended with the publication of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, 2015-2030 (SFDRR). No doubt, to induce the representatives of so many diverse countries to agree on the structure and wording of this document was a Herculean task that involved the exercise of great patience and a conspicuous ability to compromise. Despite rumblings of discontent from those who did not get their way, the framework is a reasonable summary of what needs to be done to reduce the risk of disaster.

But we knew that already.

It is singular that the conference excited almost no attention from the international mass media, despite being the biggest of its kind, with the most far-reaching agenda, for years. A thorough examination of the BBC news website reveals no reference to it, despite coverage of the devastation wrought by Cyclone Pam in the South Pacific. Newsworthiness is a function of what competes for attention, and it is clear that the World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction is way down at the bottom of the agenda. Is that true of DRR in general?

On thing that the media might have commented on is that, by my estimation, travel to the World Conference by 6,500 delegates and their entourages put at least 10,000 tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere. This must be offset, to some extent, by the benefits of face-to-face collaboration, but it nevertheless calls into question the legitimacy of great meetings at which environmental problems are augmented as they are discussed.

So now we have a clear, modernised statement on what needs to be done to abate the risk and impact of catastrophe. However, the Sendai Framework does not tackle the 'dark' side of disasters, namely the forces in society and globalisation that tend to increase disaster risk. So important have these become that the protagonists of FORIN, the forensic disaster investigation methodology (IRDR 2011), have suggested that we should change our emphasis from disaster risk reduction to disaster risk creation (Lewis 2012). In a world that has suffered 45 years of continuous transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich, this is a vitally important point.

During the World Conference, Vanuatu suffered the ravages of Cyclone Pam, which induced its President to make an emotional appeal to the world community for aid and assistance. Vanuatu is a relatively poor small island state. Over the years it has made some effort to "get its act together" in terms of preparing for disasters (Gero et al. 2013). In this process, there are signs of misplaced emphasis: on tsunamis when cyclones are more common, on small events when large ones are potentially a bigger problem. There are also signs of progress that is at best limited and patchy regarding what needs to be done. Perhaps Vanuatu needed to adopt the "Cuban model" (Aguirre 2005)? Almost certainly, it needed to do more. There is something slightly obscene about a country being taken by surprise by a disaster during the World Conference.

The Sendai Framework reminds one of a student paper on disasters. In the absence of penetrating analysis, the student lists what "ought to be done": "governments should do this, governments should do that..." To be blunt, we all know what should be done. The issues, and in very many cases the solutions, are staring us in the face. The more pertinent question concerns why things are not being done. Shortage of funds is a weak excuse, as this is often a matter of priorities. More than ever before in human history it is also a matter of power structures. Power is based on resources—in modern terms, global finance. The use of financial resources to keep populations compliant, docile or otherwise under control has reached pandemic levels.

Adherence to a global protocol either signifies a government's intention to "get serious" and do something about a problem or it is a process of legitimation. Signing up to a worthy initiative, such as disaster risk reduction, can legitimise the kind of governments that deserve to have anything but international recognition and acclaim. Both abroad and at home, it makes them seem caring and sensitive to their populations' needs. Then comes the 'implementation gap.' The proposed solution to this is monitoring based on indicators and standards. Given the political problems that an inspection regime would encounter, much of this is self-assessment, which is notoriously unreliable, either through inability to see matters objectively or deliberate desire to create a false picture. For we academics involved in this field, cosmetic disaster risk reduction ought to be a sub-discipline.

Page 8 of the Sendai Declaration contains a reference to human rights. This counters sustained criticism that rights were left out of the earlier drafts of the document. However, the issue is mentioned so fleetingly that no one would gather that it is a fundamental underlying theme of disaster risk reduction (Shetty 2011). Human rights represent access, entitlement, protection, equity, fairness, morality, ethics, balance, and responsibility. If governments find that offensive or threatening, let them go to the devil.

Since the start of the recession, and the Arab Spring, the world has become a nastier place wracked by problems that seem ever less surmountable. Concerted action has failed in the Middle East and on the global financial markets. Under such conditions, why should it succeed in disaster risk reduction? We live in a world in which agreement masks disagreement, and in which our representatives increasingly do not represent our interests.

In criticising, it is easy to dismantle without constructing. With great celerity, Ben Wisner has provided a worthy critique of the targets and objectives of the Sendai Framework (Wisner 2015). Deconstruction is the easy part and a necessary preliminary, but I have long felt that we need a more honest approach that seriously and objectively confronts the world's problems in order to start solving them. Governments may be impervious to being shamed, but there are many cases in which it is worth trying.

Immense efforts have gone into creating a global framework and strategy for reducing disaster. Time will tell whether this initiative is productive or not, although it will be difficult to separate the results from what would have happened in the absence of such an instrument. At present, the real challenges have not been addressed: to understand exactly why decisions, strategies and power structures are increasing disaster risk and to do something to halt that process.

Plaudits to Allan Lavell for winning of the UN Sasakawa Prize for disaster reduction. He is our Noble Laureate in this field. For me, his award is the best outcome of the World Conference.

References

Aguirre, B.E. 2005. Cuba's disaster management model: should it be emulated? International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters 23(3): 55-72.

Gero, A., S. Fletcher, J. Thiessen et al. 2013. Understanding the Pacific’s adaptive capacity to emergencies in the context of climate change: Country Report – Vanuatu. Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology, Sydney, 30 pp.

IRDR 2011. Forensic Disaster Investigations: the FORIN Project. FORIN document no. 1. Integrated Research on Disaster Risk, Beijing, 29 pp.

Lewis, J. 2012. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly: disaster risk reduction (DRR) versus disaster risk creation (DRC). PLoS Currents 21 June 2012, 4: e4f8d4eaec6af8.

Shetty, S. 2011. Human Rights and Natural Disasters: Mitigating or Exacerbating the Damage? Global Policy doi: 10.1111/j.1758-5899.2011.00108.x

UNISDR 2015. Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030. A/CONF.224/CRP.1. United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, Geneva, 25 pp.

Wisner, B. 2015. Lies, damned lies, and statistics. Global Network of Civil Society Organisations for Disaster Reduction. http://www.globalnetwork-dr.org/news/events/wcdrr2015/item/1370-li

Why I am not a Charlie

In the aftermath of the shooting of the staff of Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine in Paris, we are all encouraged by popular sentiment to adopt the phrase "I am Charlie." Unfortunately, in traditional English usage, "I am a [right] Charlie" means "I have done something stupid or thoughtless." Hence, one translates "Je suis Charlie" at one's peril.

No reasonable-minded person could condone the terrible acts of violence perpetrated by Islamic fundamentalists in Paris, or elsewhere. My main reaction is sadness and sympathy for the victims and the bereaved. What  am concerned with here is the popular reaction to the Parisian atrocities, and this is something that worries me.

I was living in America on 11th September 2001, and the events in New York directly involved some of my students, who were part of the response, and left one of my colleagues mourning a brother who was on one of the aircraft that crashed into the World Trade Center. I witnessed an immediate change in the social climate of the United States. Overnight and at the following weekend, I struggled to reinvent myself as an expert on terrorism, or at least someone who could say something intelligent and authoritative about it.

The power of mass communication is extraordinary. When it succeeds in coalescing popular sentiment, the results are mind-boggling. When Diana, Princess of Wales, died on 31 August 1997, the writer Ian Jack described the response as "grief police". We all had to grieve—visibly—or face massive public opprobrium. In the aftermath of "nine-eleven", the prevailing slogan was "either you're with us or you're against us." Vigorously, public figures vied to out-patriot each other and out-condemn the vile acts of that fateful day. American patriotism has succeeded in creating a country of extraordinary diversity in which there is remarkably little dissent from the basic principles that launched the nation. This is an amazing achievement, but there are times when the patriotism is taken to ludicrous lengths. I have never been one for putting my hand on my digestive system every time the national anthem is played.

The net effect of "either you're with us or you're against us" was to stifle debate about the motivations behind the terrorist outrages. Publicly to question US foreign policy or actions abroad became physically dangerous, and graphic demonstrations of that danger occurred in my local area. Anyone who was not visibly orthodox ran the risk of becoming the target of militarised, gun-toting thugs who were acting "in the name of patriotism" to police the nation's thoughts and attitudes. At a local town meeting, a Mexican citizen stood up and said, with great courage, that he felt threatened by the American flag. It was a relatively mild admission, but foolhardy nonetheless. For those of us who had grave doubts about US foreign policy, and also some sense of the injustices of Middle Eastern history, it felt as if we were re-experiencing Germany in the 1930s.

Clearly, the hostage-takings and killings in Paris January 2015 have had a deep effect on the French nation's psyche. People feel justifiably outraged and vulnerable to further attacks. As a form of resistance, there has been a surge of support for the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. It follows a long tradition of political and social mockery. In the dramas of Athens in the fifth-century BC, satyrs, beings that combined elements of man and goat, mocked the heroic events of the past. The plays were lewd and subversive, and thus was born satire. I read English and Italian satirical magazines and I appreciate the ability of satire to illuminate problems in creative and refreshing ways. I rather think the insistent mocking of Mohammed is now in rather bad taste. I also suspect that there are many instances in which modern satire applies double standards : for example, it is rare to see Jews mocked to the extent that Muslims are.

The effect of the Charlie Hebdo affair on Italy is surprising—or perhaps not. Judging by the nightly round of chat shows and televised debates, the country has been shocked almost to the same extent as France has been. Suddenly, Italy seems to have woken up to the realisation that we are all at risk of terrorist outrages, and the main reaction seems to be smarrimento—bewilderment. "Experts" on international affairs and counter terrorism have been dragged in front of the cameras, and have generally acquitted themselves atrociously. Women in hejab have been strategically placed in studio audiences, microphones have been thrust in the faces of inarticulate Muslim street traders in the big Italian cities; the right-wing Northern League has worked night and day to blame it all on immigration (something that required the ingenious application of tortuous logic). Not infrequently, television debates have degenerated into shouting matches, in which the "winner" is the person who manages to bluster loudest and ignore all the other participants.

Charlie Hebdo has intensified the dialogue of the deaf. Events such as this seem to deal a death-blow to the ability to listen to other people's points of view, consider them seriously and reason in a measured way. Many commentators have striven to increase the level of public angst, to make television viewers feel unsafe. Well they might: there is money to be made in the security industry and the way to make it is to ensure that everyone feels unsafe. In supporting Charlie Hebdo, we are supposed to be defending liberal, democratic values of free speech. In this respect, it is a well-known fact that free speech has its limits before it becomes slander and libel. Moreover, free speech is often inconvenient. Marco Travaglio, a highly respectable Italian journalist, went in front of the cameras and, in the Chomskian tradition of giving people chapter and verse, reeled off a long, copious history of occasions on which the Italian Government has censored RAI (the state television channels), often on the grounds that a programme which attempted to probe some wrong-doing was "in bad taste". Travaglio clearly does not suffer from quite the level of selective memory that is so prevalent among others who speak to the television cameras.

The conclusion from all the hubris is that we live in a world of forced consensus. Ordinary citizens, public officials or elected representatives are quite capable of becoming aggressive, to greater or lesser degrees, when faced with apostates who fail to accept what the public regard as a kosher attitude (forgive my archness in mixing religious metaphors!).

I find it unnerving to live in a place in which the debate on terrorism is so immature. It is true that the phenomenon is hard to explain: in a very respectable introduction to terrorism, issued by no less a publisher than Oxford University Press, the learned author seems to struggle to explain why terrorism exists. The fact is that we, the vast majority of people,  who find it utterly abhorrent (and counter-productive, which it most definitely is), do not have the cultural referents to imagine ourselves as terrorists and hence cannot empathise with those who are. A mature debate would see terrorism as a very serious problem, but one that should not be allowed to overshadow other serious threats, including 'natural' disasters and climate change. A mature debate would pay much attention to the roots of conflict in the Middle East, and the role of European countries in fomenting it. Instead we in Europe live in a land of historical amnesia, but the peoples of the Middle East have much longer memories, and that helps explain why they are so often scathing about our pronouncements on terrorism and free speech.

Medice, cura te ipsum

On 23rd November 1980 a magnitude 6.8 earthquake occurred in southern Italy. It caused 3,006 deaths and 8,841 injuries and damaged 400,000 houses in 630 municipalities. I was one of the survivors left homeless by this event. Almost exactly 34 years later, on 22rd November 2014, I was in Japan when a magnitude 6.8 earthquake occurred near where I was staying. It destroyed 37 houses and injured 57 people. Some 22 people were trapped under the rubble of collapsed buildings, but all of them were rescued alive. The physical parameters of the two events were remarkably similar, but the states of vulnerability were very different.

I spent December 2014 in central Italy. In mid-month, an earthquake swarm began. At 10:36 a.m. one day, my house rocked and swayed in a rippling motion that was the most precise earth tremor I have ever felt. Well it might have been: the epicentre was almost exactly 10 km away, on a bend in the road that connects two villages, both of which are in the same municipality as my house. This magnitude 4.1 event briefly cut electricity supplies, and it certainly caused a great deal of fear and alarm locally. Schools and offices were immediately closed and many people took to the streets.

This may well have been the first occasion in a millennium in which the area of Tuscany that contains my home was affected by a locally generated earthquake swarm, albeit not one of very high power. We experienced up to 100 earthquakes a day. Although low power events are not in themselves particularly dangerous, they remind one that a swarm could contain at least on event of significantly higher magnitude, as has been the case in many earthquake sequences in peninsular Italy; for example, at L'Aquila in 1703 and 2009, and Ferrara in 1570-4. This causes a very uncomfortable feeling of being exposed to danger. After 34 years the old, familiar sensation of acute sensitivity to vibrations suddenly returned.

My first act was to consult the catalogue of past earthquakes. The map of seismicity is based on the record of previous events, which is, of course, more and more vague the further one goes back in time. On expert suggested to me that to construct a realistic picture of the magnitudes and frequencies one might need a catalogue of 50,000 past events, and this assumes that there is no significant temporal trend in the data. Hence, the record is incomplete and the map is a hypothesis. It suggests that I live in a broad area of medium seismicity, with a local "trough" of lower hazard in the immediate area of the town in which I live.

One item of concern is that the tower of a local church, built in AD 880, leans fairly precipitously (over an occupied house) as a result of an earthquake in 1895. The epicentre for this was 25 km away. As areas of much higher seismicity exist in the Mugello, Garfagnana and Casentino, parts of the Apennine mountains, this begs the question as to what effect seismicity of distant origin would have on local structures such as my house. My home, incidentally, was built in 1909 in unreinforced masonry. It has been strengthened (at my expense), but to make it fully anti-seismic would cost something like 30 per cent of the value of the whole building, a fairly enormous sum.

The catalogue includes a magnitude 5.6 event with epicentre so close that I can walk out of my front door, cross the adjacent park, and look down on it in the valley nearby. This may be the millennial event in the area and details of its effects are sketchy, as it occurred in 1812, before the advent of systematic records of earthquakes. From what is known I deduce, as a rule of thumb, that the risk of significant earthquake damage to my house is about 0.4 per cent per lifetime. The risk of catastrophic damage is too low to be estimated.

I have a family disaster plan, and the local civil protection service has a plan that designates muster areas and prescribes organised assistance in the event of a serious earthquake. In December 2014 information leaflets were widely distributed. Whether this is sufficient is difficult to assess. As a scholar of disasters, I am aware of the need to set a good example, and disseminate information that is comprehensible and valid to those local people who ask me about the situation. However, there are few very useful guidelines about how to prepare for earthquakes in areas of relatively low risk, in which the benefits of expensive or restrictive measures are highly debatable. One can, at least, monitor the progress of seismic events and try to determine whether there is anything in the pattern that would stimulate one to be more active in preparedness. As I write, the swarm continues intermittently with events whose magnitude is lower than 2.5, most of which are imperceptible. May this be the worst we have to deal with!

HFA2 - Does it Matter?

A decade ago, Dr Alan Kirschenbaum published a book (Kirschenbaum 2004a), in which he put forward the audacious hypothesis that the relationship between, on the one hand, the number and impact of disasters, and, on the other, the founding and promotion of disaster risk reduction* organisations is the opposite of what we usually believe. He argued that the increase in disasters is largely illusory and the result of the need for the organisations to justify their own existence by aggrandising the problem.  He also published a paper that provided a theoretical basis for this hypothesis (Kirschenbaum 2004b). It is not exactly that the organisations cause the disasters, but they make them seem more serious than they are. More than ten years later, I am writing this in the aftermath of shootings and hostage-takings in France, which have been discussed in the mass media as if they are the first sign of the end of civilisation as we know it. The fact is that mass murder by shooting is a common problem in some countries, particularly in the Americas. In the ensuing debate, it is very evident that commentators see the events in France as an opportunity to frighten the general public and advance the position of people who are involved in counter-terrorism. In writing this, I am not endeavouring to minimise the risks associated with modern terrorism, but I am concerned about the attitudes to terrorism prevention, many of which are clearly self-serving and perhaps of dubious effectiveness.

Similar problems exist with other forms of disaster: natural, technological and social. Few attempts have been made to evaluate the effectiveness of counter-terrorism measures (Alexander 2011), and even fewer of these have been impartial and independent. In disaster risk reduction generally, the tendency is not to evaluate the effectiveness of organisations, to do so under the starting assumption that the organisations are necessary, or employ self-evaluation. This the OECD's assessment of Italian Civil Protection was conducted largely through self-evaluation (OECD 2010). The results of this are predictably laudatory. Of course, they may be right, but in evaluating, not merely performance, but also the basic need for organisations, much depends on the degree of objectivity and, crucially, the criteria set for evaluation. It is easy to fall into the trap of allowing the latter to be self-fulfilling.

Disaster risk reduction keeps people in employment, including the undersigned. I often wonder about my own effectiveness, but recently I have had doubts about the value of the Hyogo Framework for Action renewal process (UNISDR 2005, et seq.).

Let there be no doubt that the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, set up after the Decade for Disaster Reduction (1990-2000), is a vital organisation that does some essential and irreplaceable work, particularly in encouraging initiatives and disseminating information. The Hyogo Framework for Action, 2005-2015 was launched in Kobe, in the Japanese Prefecture of Hyogo, in the wake of the 1995 earthquake, which at the time was the world's most expensive disaster. The Framework enunciated the general principles on which disaster risk was to be reduced for the next decade. It is now up for renewal (UNISDR 2013).

The preparations for the March 2015 UNISDR world conference on disaster risk reduction have gathered pace like a runaway train on an incline. Organisations from small to large, provincial to international, have been publishing their views on the process. Never in this field has there been such a desire to state the obvious (or at least the well-known) and repeat the message. It may well be that the whole process is unnecessary. Governments that are striving to reduce the risk of disaster would do it anyway: those that are not pulling their weight are unlikely to be influenced. The economics of disaster, and its effect on power structures, provide the imperative to reduce disaster. In considering this, it is as well to remember that national governments are increasingly marginalised by the forces of globalisation in production, migration, trade and the labour market. Where governments can have an effect, participatory governance (i.e popular involvement in democracy) and the rule of law are the determinants of whether the problems of civil society can be tackled effectively (Fukuyama 2014).

There is a "sex of the angels" feeling to the debate about what wording to include in HFA2. Unfortunately, the experience of other treaties, declarations and international programmes (ozone layer, CFCs, climate change, human rights, etc.) is not encouraging. Governments may or may not sign up, may or may not make promises and set targets, and may or may not make an effort to achieve them.

An alternative view is that the impetus comes neither from the national nor the international levels, but from local sources. Surveys suggest that there has been little influence of the global and national processes on local initiatives (GNCSODR 2009, 2011). Fundamentally, it may be that the debate, conducted in international conference centres and national cabinet offices, is detached from the reality on the ground.

Those readers who strongly support the HFA2 process may suggest that I have been unduly negative, indeed cynical, in this assessment. Time will tell whether an international framework for disaster risk reduction is helpful or not, or at least it will tell if we make the effort to find out. Certain developments are inevitable, others are unpredictable. Perhaps I have misunderstood HFA2, but it is not a legally binding treaty, it is a framework. To take a rather puritanical view, the effort that is going into negotiating the wording, the carbon emissions that are produced by international meetings, the struggle to produce a document, might better be spent reducing disaster risk at the local scale. One need not believe Kirschenbaum, but his analysis should stimulate us to think freshly about what is needed and what is worthwhile.

*In 2004 the field was not called 'disaster risk reduction', but there are always dilemmas as to what appellation to use. This is another problem that, fundamentally, does not matter!

References

ACT Alliance 2014. Sustaining Lives and Livelihoods in the Face of Disasters: Act Alliance Key Asks [sic] on the Post-2015 Framework on Disaster Risk Reduction. ACT Alliance, Geneva, 8 pp.

Alexander, D.E. 2011. Sense and sensibility about terrorism. Journal of Integrated Disaster Risk Management 1(1): 1-12.

Fukuyama, F. 2014. Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalisation of Democracy. Profile Books, London, 464 pp.

GNCSODR 2009. "Clouds But Little Rain..." Views from the Frontline. A local perspective of progress towards implementation of the Hyogo Framework for Action. Global Network of Civil Society Organisations for Disaster Reduction, Twickenham, UK, 64 pp.

GNCSODR 2011. "If We Do Not Join Hands..." Views from the Frontline. Local reports of progress on implementing the Hyogo Framework for Action, with strategic recommendations for more effective implementation. Global Network of Civil Society Organisations for Disaster Reduction, Twickenham, UK, 51 pp.

Kirschenbaum, A. 2004a. Chaos, Organization, and Disaster Management. Marcel Dekker, New York, 328 pp.

Kirschenbaum, A. 2004b. Measuring the effectiveness of disaster management organizations. International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters 22(1): 75-102.

OECD 2010. Italy: Review of the Italian National Civil Protection System. OECD reviews of Risk Management Policies Vol. 4. Environment and Sustainable Development. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Paris, 173 pp.

UNISDR 2005. Hyogo Framework for Action, 2005-2015. Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities to Disasters. United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, Geneva, 22 pp.

UNISDR 2013. Towards the Post]2015 Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction: Tackling Future Risks, Economic Losses and Exposure. United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, Geneva, 21 pp.