Monthly Archives: October 2023

International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction, 13 October 2023

Dimensions of the new disaster-proneness

Humanity is systematically taking apart the living systems that used to make the world relatively safe and predictable. And we have also wrapped the Earth in a blanket of GHG pollution that is trapping the sun’s heat here, mostly in the oceans that shape weather on land. This is a deadly combination, since wrecked ecosystems cannot protect us from storms, droughts and floods, and the hotter ocean is driving more storms, droughts and floods our way. Meanwhile, diseases are spreading in new conditions to new locations, and our crops are being harmed by chaotic and harsh weather. Dry heat-waves kill tens of thousands increasingly often, and moist heat-waves threaten far worse casualties. Fires consume forests and peatlands that have been degraded and dried out, often sweeping into built-up areas and choking us with smoke. The rising ocean pushes salt into our fields and aquifers, and billions live in cities close to the storm-bearing sea, densely packed in poor housing where pandemics can do most harm.

Disaster Risk Reduction Day: origins

The close links between ecosystem damage and disaster vulnerability took a while to be fully recognised. Rather, humanity’s efforts on disaster risk reduction (DRR) started mainly in response to the earthquakes that killed thousands in the 1980s. These struck El Asnam (Algeria, 1980), Irpinia (Italy, 1980), Golbaf (Iran, 1981), Dhamar (Yemen, 1982), Erzurum (Turkey, 1983), Mexico City (México, 1985), San Salvador (El Salvador, 1986), Napo Province (Ecuador, 1987), and Spitak (Soviet Armenia, 1988). Their cumulative effect was to make governments want to improve early warning, preparedness and response capacity. So in 1987, the UN General Assembly resolved to make the 1990s a decade for DRR. Two years later, it also agreed a Framework of Action and designated the second Wednesday in October (later changed to 13 October) as the International Day for DRR.

Yokohama

The 1980s were geologically quiet in Japan, relative to its history of major disasters back at least to the 1293 Kamakura earthquake and tsunami. But Japan was sensitive to the issue and in May 1994 it hosted the World Conference on Natural Disaster Reduction in the port city of Yokohama. This had been badly hit by the 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake, with over 140,000 fatalities. The conference produced the Yokohama Strategy, which covered all the main topics in DRR: risk assessment, civil preparedness, development planning, capacity building, early warning, inclusive participation, building design, environmental protection, and political leadership. Then in January 1995 an earthquake hit the city of Kobe in Hyōgo Prefecture, killing nearly 6,500 people.

ISDR and Hyōgo

In 2000, the UN adopted the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) to follow the 1990-1999 DRR Decade. Both the decade and the ISDR were influenced by the wave of international agreements on sustainable development and the global environment that had been forged in the 1990s. These included Agenda 21, the Millennium Development Goals and treaties on combating biodiversity loss, climate change and desertification. People were starting to see how environmental change, human drivers of disasters, and poverty and exclusion were all involved in the same complex global system. Revamping the Yokohama Strategy to take account of all this was the agenda for the second World Conference on Disaster Reduction in January 2005. This was again hosted by Japan, at Kobe in Hyōgo. The result was the Hyogo Framework, which sought to fix gaps in the coverage of issues of governance, specific risks and early warning, education and knowledge sharing, underlying risk factors (such as ecosystem health and climate change), and disaster preparedness.

Sendai

By March 2015 it was traditional that Japan would host the World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in a city with relevant experience. Sendai in Miyagi Prefecture was chosen, which was where nearly 20,000 people had died in the 2011 Great Sendai (or Tōhoku) Earthquake. The tsunami that followed also wrecked the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex, causing massive leakage of radioactive material. The conference adopted the Sendai Framework, which sought to strengthen the Hyōgo Framework in addressing underlying disaster risk factors, building disaster resilience at all levels, and mobilising investment. An important factor was that climate change was now seen as a key driver of disaster risk, so the new framework put its hope into the work of the UNFCCC and the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change. It sought to complement them by addressing disasters whether small or large, frequent or infrequent, sudden or slow, natural or man-made, and also by working on related environmental, technological and biological hazards and risks.

DRR Day themes

Each DRR Day has a theme to focus the hive-mind on an aspect of reducing disaster risk. That of DRR Day 2022 was early warning and early action for all. This was inspired by the Sendai Framework’s goal to roll out multi-hazard early warning systems (EWS) for many more areas and people. And early warning is important. Not only does 24 hours’ notice reduce the average cost of disasters by 30%, but EWS installed since the first DRR Day in 1990 have saved tens of thousands of people. Worldwide disaster deaths fell annually from 50,000 or more in the 1970s and 1980s to below 20,000 in the 2000s and 2010s, and halved again in 2020 and 2021. But as climate chaos builds alongside human numbers, the poor continue to fall through the cracks in protective arrangements. So DRR Day 2023 has as its theme fighting inequality for a resilient future. Here the focus is on another Sendai Framework concern: that poverty, inequality and discrimination are causes and consequences of growing disaster risk. The aim is promote greater investment in resilience-building among the poor and excluded, to reduce their exposure and vulnerability to harm.

Meanwhile, at the grass-roots

The way things are going, the UN estimates that soon there will be a major disaster somewhere every couple of days. Poor communities are often hurt most, because they tend to live in crowded, badly-built housing, or on land that is fragile, steep, flood-prone and at greater risk. Most disaster-related deaths occur in developing countries, and do most damage to their relatively fragile economies. In practical terms, emergency aid can take days to arrive, so it’s vital for people to be prepared. In practice, the most effective life-saving efforts are usually made by the people themselves, during and immediately after disasters, and both the UN and EU have programmes to help people prepare for and respond to disasters.

Making communities stronger: APELL and DIPECHO

The UN’s version is APELL, originally developed in response to the 1984 industrial disaster in Bhopal. It was later adapted to natural disasters, to build the capacity of local emergency services to cope before, during and after disasters, and to raise community awareness of risks and what they can do about them. The EU’s version is DIPECHO, launched in 1996 to help vulnerable communities in developing countries strengthen themselves. Its main goal is to ensure that disaster reduction measures are fused with wider national policies, for example on education, building codes and health.

Making communities stronger: anywhere and everywhere

In my book Surviving Climate Chaos, I describe how two small urban communities, in England and Scotland, each turned themselves from a scattering of strangers into a group that was capable of discussing risks and opportunities, acting collectively to protect and advance its own interests, and sharing information about its own capabilities. All it would take for either network to become a local climate change adaptation and disaster preparedness group would be to do some APELL or DIPECHO training. Communities that have increased their connectivity in this way, and have a record of who lives where, who does what, who needs what, and who can contribute what, are likely to cope much better than others during and immediately after disasters. And these simple arrangements work equally well anywhere and everywhere.

A long march in lengthening shadows

Our increasing disaster-proneness is driven and made harder to manage by a human failure to regulate our relationship with nature. Many people and organisations are at work to restore peace with nature and build a more viable future for life on Earth. Starting with the DRR Decade, Yokohama, ISDR, Hyogo and Sendai all helped the world to grow together, to learn and improve the baseline of good practice, and to raise expectations on leaders and of peoples. But the dynamic of climate change means that disasters will keep on coming. Increasing numbers of people will need to be helped, and enabled to help themselves and each other. A global commitment to reducing disaster risk is the least that caring governments can do, while efforts to solve root causes continue. That commitment is still there, people know it, and we are steadily getting better at it. But we cannot afford to forget that we are in a race against the climate and nature emergency, one that we must not lose and in which every community on Earth is an important actor.

Urban October, 2023

Urban October: origins

The early 1970s are when true modernity began. The post-war economic boom had created new conditions, civilian Earth surveillance and communication satellites were up and running, climate change and mass extinction were coming into view, and humanity was migrating to cities. Many key environment and development indicators and institutions tell their stories from then. In 1975 the new UN Environment Programme was tasked with midwifing an urban-specialised body which later became UN-Habitat. A decade afterwards, UN-Habitat was given World Habitat Day (WHD) at the start of October to mark its concerns. And a decade after that it was given World Cities Day (WCD) at the end of October to mark its progress. The month of urban focus in between became known as Urban October.

Urban October: purpose

The aim of Urban October is to encourage everyone to think about the viability and liveability of our towns and cities, and how they do or do not, or can, or should meet the needs of all their inhabitants, sustainably, inclusively, and without imposing harm on people elsewhere. Urban October also reminds us that we are all stakeholders in adapting our cities and towns to meet the needs of everyone, both now and in the future. And this calls for informed participation in decisions about cities’ needs, ecological footprints, vulnerabilities, and systems of governance.

We are becoming an urban species

More than half of all people now live in cities and towns – our new habitats – and this proportion may reach two-thirds by 2050 as small cities grow in developing countries. We gather in cities to benefit from their density of people, jobs and opportunities to interact with others. A result is that cities are potent and influential aggregations of infrastructure and industry, as well as human and financial capital. But with concentrated populations that depend on imported ecosystem products like food and clean water, and on past assumptions of environmental security, they are also increasingly vulnerable in a changing world.

Cities are on the front line of global heating

Many cities are already facing the effects of climate change, including heat-waves, water stress, flooding, storm damage, and new diseases, all on top of the health effects of urban lifestyles, poverty and poor nutrition. And the vast majority of urban areas are coastal, putting them at particular risk from rising sea levels and storms powered by the ever-greater heat content of the oceans. Ironically, cities also produce 70% or more of the world’s GHG emissions, especially from the transport, buildings, energy, and waste management sectors. But the future of the living world depends on quickly reducing the concentration of GHGs in the air. This calls for rapid net emission cuts by major emitters (like cities), accountability to vulnerable electorates (like city dwellers), and leadership supported by access to key sources of knowledge (like urban academia), capital (like urban businesses), and the levers of power (like urban elites).

Urban October: historical themes

Each World Habitat Day, and since 2015 Urban October as a whole, has a distinct focus on a certain aspect of urbanisation and its consequences and implications. The theme of the first WHD, in 1986 and hosted by Nairobi where UN-Habitat is based, was the right to shelter. UN-Habitat returned to this again in 1987 and 1990. Other themes have included planning our urban future (1997, 2001 and 2009), urban safety and liveability (1998 and 2010), women in urban governance (2000), water and sanitation (2003), and climate change (2011). Since 1989, alongside WHD, WCD and Urban October, UN-Habitat has maintained a Scroll of Honour for people, places and initiatives that have made outstanding contributions in areas such as housing, homelessness, post-conflict reconstruction, and improving the quality of urban life.

Urban October: recent themes

The 2022 theme was growing inequality and vulnerability driven by Covid, climate and conflict. The pandemic and multiple conflicts (in Ukraine, Ethiopia, Yemen, Haiti, Myanmar, and elsewhere) had reversed years of progress against poverty, with tens of millions blocked from advancement or thrown back into unemployment and destitution. And the 2023 theme is investment for resilient urban economies. Here the aim is to promote full recovery from the economic shocks of Covid and conflict by boosting economic activity and sharing experience on tackling inflation. Attention will likely soon return to climate change, following the many weather-related disasters recorded globally in 2022 and so far in 2023.

Cities comparing notes

The immeasurable adaptability of our species is increasingly shown through solutions to the special challenges of urban life and the special needs of cities themselves. Because all cities are built by only one species (us), they differ only superficially (in the great scheme of things) and have many major features in common. This allows city administrations to learn from each other, and their ability to do so is greatly enhanced by networks such as United Cities and Local Governments, C40 Cities, and the Global Covenant of Mayors.

Sustainable landscapes with cities in them

Every city needs healthy farm, catchment and wetland ecosystems nearby, for food and water supply, waste management, environmental security, education and recreation. So city administrations should care for upstream and downstream ecosystems, and the people who live in them, as key allies in meeting the needs of their cities. This often requires the careful and ecologically-informed negotiation of landscape-scale agreements between cities and their surrounding ecoregions. And cities are important habitats for many wild species. Rivers often run through them, offering beauty and biodiversity to city-dwellers, while parks and gardens can be constellations of connected ecosystems that sustain an immense diversity of wildlife. Urban ecology is a key part of our heritage and future, where peace with nature can be restored and maintained for the benefit of everyone and everything.

Self-sufficient cities?

As I explain in my book Surviving Climate Chaos, there is no such thing as an entirely self-sufficient city. But a city can be viable as an open system that draws on resources without harming the systems from which they come. This usually means paying a price for imported goods and services that is satisfactory to producers, and also sufficient to pay for the systems concerned to be managed sustainably. Balancing this equation requires skill and knowledge, but can also be made easier if a city minimises its demands for imports, for example:

by securing local food supplies from intensive organic horticulture on roof-tops and in private gardens, public parks and community allotments, and from neighbourhood and household hydroponic, aquaculture, microlivestock and invertebrate protein farms;
by promoting local water conservation through household and neighbourhood rain harvesting, water purification and water recycling;
by using local sources of biogas and fertiliser from household and neighbourhood waste and sewage fermentation, and obtaining and distributing energy through household and neighbourhood biomass, solar, wind and geothermal energy systems;
by harnessing personal energies and social behaviour, such as through local currencies for trading time spent in social care, labour commitments and local produce, or through self-organised local networks like residents’ associations; and
by re-designing city systems to be much more liveable, efficient and self-sustaining, though public transport, architecture, pedestrianisation, etc., and with the support of locally-accountable self-government with sufficient powers to make a difference.

Future cities?

In a 2085 scenario, my book on water describes a world in which “City administrations had learned to strike long-term deals with catchment dwellers to pay a fair price for catchment services, in return for their help in protecting upstream ecosystems. Cities had learned to collaborate with one another to liberate rivers from industrial canals and dams, so that they and their shadows, and migrating fish, could run free again. They had also learned to collaborate with land owners to encourage organic farming and low-impact use of ecosystems in the catchments. Their citizens, affected by the ideas of ‘water democracy’, quickly became adept at conserving municipal waters, and began insisting that public water companies (the private ones having been repossessed) fix all leaks in their supply systems. [And] they also began to demand that their urban environments become much more porous, with parks and gardens everywhere, all roads made of water-permeable materials, and a water trap on every roof.” Urban October is an opportunity to join those who are seeking outcomes like this.