The United Nations International Strategy for Disaster
Reduction was born out of the International Decade for Natural Disaster
Reduction, 1990-2000. On 1 May 2019 it was renamed the UN Office for Disaster
Risk Reduction. UNDRR remains a relatively small unit of the United Nations, but it has a
truly world-wide reach. DRR is thus now truly mainstreamed at the global level.
UNDRR has a recurrent initiative for assessing the
state of disaster preparedness around the world, and this results in a
document, the Global Assessment Report
(GAR), which is issued biennially to coincide with the UN's Global Platform on
DRR. The 2019 report is accompanied by an executive summary called GAR Distilled. The GAR proper consists
of 15 chapters in four sections: introductory, the Sendai Framework (SFDRR),
its implementation (and interaction with sustainable development), and managing
risk nationally and locally. The document is decanted from many different
studies, some of which have been commissioned specially for it. These may be
published separately in an academic journal. An example of this for the 2013
GAR can be found in Di Mauro (2014). This edition of the GAR is the first to
report on the implementation of the Sendai Framework for DRR.
The 2019 GAR starts with a quotation from UN Secretary
General António Guterres, who observes that in the modern world global
challenges are more and more integrated and the responses are more and more
fragmented. This is a powerful argument for joining forces and using a common
agreed policy at the world-wide scale.
The GAR uses the 'pressure-and-release' model of
Wisner et al, (2004) in an adapted form, consisting of: context. stressors,
thresholds (nowadays known as 'tipping points' and impacts (which it terms
'systemic failure'). One great lesson that the modern world teaches us is that
changes that we thought were gradual can be suddenly overwhelming. Perhaps we
are unaware when the 'tipping points' are passed, and that is a dangerous
situation to be in.
The GAR urges that international agreements (the
Sendai Framework, the Sustainable Development Agenda, the Paris Agreement on
Climate Change and the New Urban Agenda) be viewed collectively through the
lens of systemic risk. It is clear
that the world is still struggling to achieve the transition from a focus on
responding to disaster impacts to one on reducing the risks associated with
future impacts. The verdict on major risk is a resounding "sooner than
expected", which, of course, reduces the time available to prepare.
Initiatives need to coalesce around "risk informed sustainable
development".
I have argued elsewhere (Alexander 2017) that the
number of times the word 'should' is
used in an official document is an inverse indicator of its utility. The road
to the nether regions is paved with things we should do (but for one reason or
another have not done), and so a high 'should ratio' (the number of
"shoulds" per page) is a proxy indicator for an ineffective
instrument. The 'should ratios' of the GAR and GAR Distilled are 0.26 and 0.32,
both below the alarm-signal threshold of 0.40. However, parts of the GAR
bristle with "shoulds". Moreover, there are only two mentions of
'rights' and none of 'human rights'. The latter are very important to disaster
risk reduction because they constrain or determine what can be done in the way
of preparedness, action and reaction. UNISDR had a tendency to shy away from
human rights issues, perhaps because it needed to remain engaged with countries
that have a poor record in this respect.
The section of the GAR on 'challenges' is welcome, as
the challenges are indeed legion. However, the two short paragraphs devoted to
political challenges are extremely weak. It could be argued that political
decision making is the greatest barrier of all to successful disaster risk
reduction. We live in a world in which Terry Cannon's 'cure to damage ratio' is
paramount. Globally, about a thousand times as much is spent on hydrocarbon
exploration and extraction than on the mitigation of the climate change that
results from burning fossil fuels (Mechler et al. 2019). Unofficial voices have
suggested that the 'cure to damage ratio' for natural hazards is 1:43. In any case,
there is no doubt that much more is spent on making the problem worse than on
solving it. What is needed is a brutally honest assessment of why this is the
case.
Notably, the GAR has finally come around to the view
that we all bear the burden of reducing disaster risk. In putting individuals
at the centre of a diagram of actions we see people either crushed between the
rock of hazards and the hard place of risk-informed sustainable development or
as protagonists in combatting the former with the latter. The GAR notes that
"we all live in communities". No doubt we do, but the DRR community
needs to do more to define what a community is, how it functions and whether it
is really the right vehicle for solving our problems.
One of the most intransigent problems with the
predecessor of the Sendai Framework, Hyogo Framework for Action, 2005-2015, was
its resolute reliance on a 'top-down' approach. Studies showed that the HFA had
had little impact at the local level (GNCSODR 2015). The Sendai Framework and all
the United Nations impedimenta that goes with it tend to perpetuate this issue,
despite the launch in 2010 of the UN Safe Cities programme (about 1% of towns
and cities have signed up for it). Consequently, the greatest present-day
challenge is to achieve change from the local level against rigid power
structures and massive vested interests at the national and globalised levels.
For the sake of survival, it must be done. The GAR helps, and no one would deny
that a coordinated world-wide approach is needed, but there is a growing
feeling that progress will never be rapid enough until there is a fundamental
reorientation.
Further Reading
The full and
abbreviated Global Assessment Report 2019 can both be freely downloaded from
https://gar.unisdr.org.
Alexander, D.E. 2017. The 'should ratio'. Disaster
Planning and Emergency Management, 18 July 2017.
http://emergency-planning.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-should-ratio.html
Di Mauro, M. (ed.) 2014. Global probabilistic
assessment of risk from natural hazards for the Global Assessment Report 2013
(GAR13). International Journal for
Disaster Risk Reduction 10(B): 403-502.
GNCSODR 2015. Views
From the Frontline: Beyond 2015. Recommendations for a Post-2015 Disaster Risk
Reduction Framework to Strengthen the Resilience of Communities to All Hazards.
Global Network of Civil Society Organisations for Disaster Reduction,
Teddington, UK, 12 pp.
Mechler, R., L.M. Bouwer, T. Schinko, S. Surminski and
J-A. Linnerooth-Bayer (eds) 2019. Loss
and Damagefrom Climate Change: Concepts, Methods and Policy Options.
Springer Open, Cham, Switzerland, 557 pp.
UNISDR 2005. Hyogo
Framework for Action 2005-2015: Building the Resilience of Nations and
Communities. United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction,
Geneva, 22 pp.
UNISDR 2015. Sendai
Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030. United Nations
International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, Geneva, 25 pp.
UNDRR 2019a. Global
Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction, 2019. United Nations Office
for Disaster Risk Reduction, Geneva, 472 pp.
UNDRR 2019b. GAR
Distilled. United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, Geneva, 26
pp.
Wisner,
B., P. Blaikie, T. Cannon and I. Davis and 2004. At Risk: Natural Hazards, People's Vulnerability and Disasters (2nd
edition). Routledge, London, 496 pp.
