Regional cooperation on disaster risk reduction
South Asia is among the most disaster-prone regions mainly due to its geo-climatic characteristics. The hazards range from earthquakes and glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) in the northern Himalayas to landslides and floods in the plains, not to mention storms in the vicinities of Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea.
In the last three months, unusually heavy monsoon rains have killed over 1,000 people across India, Nepal and Bangladesh. The Indian state of Bihar, according to media reports, has had around 500 deaths. The United Nations puts the number directly affected by flooding and landslides to at least 41 million in Bangladesh, India, and Nepal. Largely affected are impoverished rural communities who have suffered not just significant damage to livestock and property but also often irreversible loss of life.
As per the 2017 report on the Asia-Pacific Disaster, the countries most prone to disasters are also ones with the least preparation and response capacity. Between the period 2000 and 2015, the low and lower-middle-income countries saw almost 15 times more disaster induced deaths than richer countries from the same region. While there is a robust relationship between income and institutional capabilities to deal with, for example, disasters, the deaths in South Asia present a complex picture. India, despite of much higher levels of institutional development—a fairly credible proxy is its extremely resourced federal government, among the richest in the world—accounted for almost half the deaths in the recent floods. This perhaps suggests that disaster preparedness and management go beyond the income level narrative.
The disaster induced losses are exacerbated further by the lack of preparedness in South Asian countries. To suggest what may be termed prepaparedness, the United States had a functional disaster response system to tackle Hurricane Harvey. However, if we take into account the US response to hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, it has, at best been lackluster despite of its institutional capabilities. Countries like Nepal, handicapped with poor technological and organizational capabiltiies, struggle for resources while India, despite of resources at hand, appears unprepared for such calamities. Crucially, the issue of disaster management, almost always transcends national boundaries and requires, among other things, transboundary information exchange and cooperation. In South Asia, many countries share land borders and river basins and thus natural hazards aren’t just a national issue but a regional one.
Disaster risk reduction, hence, has recently—and rightly—been among the leading issues in intra-regional dialogue and cooperation. The idea of establishing a rapid response mechanism to deal with natural disasters came up at the 15th South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit held in Colombo, 2008. The idea of developing disaster management mechanisms at the Colombo 2008 SAARC partly did drive the South Asian countries to formulate disaster prevention and mitigation policies at the national and regional levels.
Several cities in South Asia have been investing in early warning systems, reservoir management and storm-resistant housing, which has been a positive push. Furthermore, global frameworks and treaties have been put in place along the lines of the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA) 2005-2015. The current Sendai Framework, which was the first major agreement of the post-2015 development agenda, was adopted as its successor instrument in March 2015.
Instrumental in driving many South Asian countries to formulate Disaster Management related legislations and mechanism was the 2005 Indian Ocean tsunami. It was followed by the establishment of National Disaster Management Authorities (NDMAs) in several countries. At present, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka have NDMAs with the several Disaster Management related legislations. Bhutan has passed an updated Disaster Act in 2013. Nepal and Bangladesh follow laws dating back to 1982 and 1997 respectively. In the case of Maldives, it has a National Disaster Management Centre but lacks specific disaster management legislation.
While policies and legislation at the regional and national levels are crucial drivers of action, the implementation dynamic suggests a challenging picture. For example, the SAARC Disaster Management Centre (SDMC), was envisioned to serve the member nations by “providing policy advice and facilitating capacity building services including strategic learning, research, training, system development and exchange of information for effective disaster risk reduction and management.” However, the institution, it appears, suffers from lack of necessary vision and political backforce from its members.
In any case, regional programs on disaster risk reduction so far have had a limited scope. Disasters in the recent past, such as Nepal earthquake or the Uttarakhand Floods in India, are nevertheless stark reminders for an operational regional response for timely interventions.
On a positive note, SDMC has paved the way for the development of a Natural Disaster Rapid Response Mechanism (NDRRM) in each member state. NDRRM was ratified by India in 2012, but other member nations are yet to ratify the agreement. An agreement has been signed to establish a SAARC Food Bank to meet food shortages in the SAARC region, which mostly happens during the disasters. The bank, much like most SAARC inititiaves so far, is yet to be functional.
The need for SAARC nations to strengthen national as well as regional capabilities in disaster response are immediate. In this, Bangladesh, among the most vulnerable, has led the way in effectively implementing DRR policies and programmes over the last two decades. With its Comprehensive Disaster Management Programme in place, Bangladesh has made disaster risk reduction a part of its national fiscal policy. DRR also was part of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) and aimed at building resilience at the national-level. Bangladesh’s success in DRR can be measured by the visible and substantial reduction of lives lost to disasters. Thus, Bangladesh’s strategy in mainstreaming disaster considerations and integrating them in development planning can be a good model to emulate for other countries in SAARC or elsewhere.
DRR and associated policies are enshrined as goal 11 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Rapid economic and social transformation would, along with other growth and development interventions, require robust national disaster management mechanisms and more importantly regional DRR strategies. Credible documentation of multidimensional impacts of disasters, well researched proactive approaches rather than whimsical reactive quick fixes, functional reconstruction and rebuilding mechanisms and real time information exchanges on, for example, water levels in water bodies, appear to be some immediate initiatives. Though the institutional capabilities of countries in the region vary, recent instances suggest that not much could be achieved without regional cooperation.