The Risk of Splintering Disaster
For ten years a UN framework has provided guidance and incentive for countries
around the world to prevent damage and loss from natural hazards rather than
simply to respond to hazard events such as floods, earthquake and hurricanes, and
then to rebuild.
That UN framework is up for re-negotiation. Named originally for the Japanese
provincial home of Kobe, a city devastated by an earthquake in 1995 and then host
for the rolling-out of the first framework in 2005, the second Hyogo Framework of
Action (HFA2) should draw on the science and practice of risk reduction that has
accumulated over the past two decades.
The US position on drafts of HFA2 has been in line with the findings of hazards
research and disaster studies in many respects. This is to be applauded. However
according to a recent report1, the US position departs from the emerging global
consensus in two critical ways.
1.
2.
Linking disaster risk reduction (DRR) to climate change.
Linking DRR and inclusive, sustainable development.
CLIMATE
In HFA2 negotiations, most countries have been advocating inclusion of a strong
emphasis on climate change within the new framework. The US is among a small
minority that wants to keep climate change as a completely separate diplomatic
conversation. This position is totally out of alignment with the scientific consensus
on extreme climate events and natural hazards published in 2012.2 Climate change
will manifest itself in storms, floods, droughts and wildfires as well as secondary
hazards such as landslides and disease. These impacts will affect the world’s most
unprotected people who have least access to resources needed to protect
themselves and their livelihoods. It is vital that climate change be recognized and
integrated among the risk drivers, policy concerns, funding streams and monitoring
protocols that would allow the new Hyogo framework to address disaster risk
systematically. Despite Congressional reluctance, the Obama administration has
been a leader in climate change negotiation. Many US states and cities have reduced
their carbon footprints, as have federal facilities. It is thus ironic that the US
"Analysis of Government Positions on the Post-2015 Disaster Risk Reduction Framework" (E.
Kelleher & L. Pearson, 2014, report by the Global Network of Civil Society for Disaster Reduction
http://www.globalnetwork-dr.org/
1
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme
Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX) http://ipccwg2.gov/SREX/report/).
2
delegation at the HFA2 meetings has so far refused to acknowledge the vital linkage
between DRR and climate change.
DEVELOPMENT
Most scholars and practitioners today view disasters as evidence of development
deficit. Vulnerability to harm and loss is understood as driven in part by lack of
access to resources necessary for self-protection and poor access to public goods
necessary for social-protection. Most countries currently negotiating the final
wording of HFA2 have absorbed this scientific consensus into their policy
language. An even more ambitious view expressed in a forthcoming the UN report3
links disaster risk to careless, poorly conceived or exclusive development. This UN
report on disaster risk reduction calls on governments and the private sector to
ensure that investments do not create new disaster risk for affected local people
while enriching investors. By contrast, the US negotiators want no reference to
development in the HFA2. Indeed, they oppose all reference to alignment and
interconnection among the different post-2015 frameworks that provide guidance
on achieving a new set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs).
The US has been a leader in innovative and holistic approach to disaster risk since
FEMA shifted its approach from response and clean up to prevention after
Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and the great Mississippi and Missouri River floods in
1993. We hope the US delegation to the HFA2 negotiations will be true to that
legacy and allow reference to climate and development into the new UN framework.
Signed:
Ben Wisner
California State University at Long Beach (retired)
bwisner@igc.org
Robert W. Kates
Brown University (retired)
Anthony Oliver-Smith
University of Florida (retired)
Jesse Ribot
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign4
UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISRD) "Global Assessment of Disaster Risk Reduction
2015" (Geneva: UNISDR, 2015 in press, http://www.unisdr.org/we/inform/gar).
4 Affiliations only for purposes of identification. The endorsers write in their personal capacities on
the basis of their combined decades of experience.
3
Stephen Bender
Organization of American States (retired)
Joanne Linnerooth-Bayer
IIASA, Austria
Kristina J. Petersen
University of New Orleans
Frederick Krimgold
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Robert B. Olshansky
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Graham A. Tobin
University of South Florida
Anne Castleton
Independent Consultant
Joanne Nigg
University of Delaware
Craig E. Colten
Louisiana State University
Elaine Enarson
Independent scholar, Lyons, CO
Richard Krajeski
Lowlander Center, Louisiana