Interview with Salvano Briceno, Director, Secretariat of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UN/ISDR)

How do you assess the international community's commitment to efforts that reduce the risks from natural disasters and improve chances for recovery?

For some time there has been specialized attention given to the study of natural hazards and their consequences on societies.  Until the past decade or so, though, this was typically pursued by academics, in isolated governmental agencies, or in specialized government departments such as civil protection.   Until recently, these issues only drew wider public and official attention at the time of a crisis, and most often only following great loss and destruction from a disaster. The international community now is becoming more engaged and prepared to invest in protective and recovery measures, but significant requirements remain to imbed such thinking into creating a sustainable “culture of prevention” in which resilience becomes accepted throughout a society and across generations.

During the past 10-15 years the international community's commitment to efforts to reduce the risks and vulnerability to natural hazards has shown considerable evolution and growing official interest.   There has been a conscious international promotion of the subject through such initiatives as the UN International Decade on Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR) and the launching of the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR).  There have also been major world conferences on the subject in 1994 and 2005, and international conventions dealing with such hazards as desertification and climate change. It is, however, the increasing number of victims, extraordinary rising costs, and the socio-economic consequences of more recent disasters that have now especially focused policy makers attention on the subject.

This is most notably seen in the adoption of the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015 by 168 Governments at the UN World Conference on Disaster Reduction in January 2005. This was motivated in part by a wide recognition that, in most countries, there has been a considerable lag in applying and institutionalizing the extensive technical knowledge stored within specialist institutions.

In the past 18 months, a corner may have been turned in recognizing the need for governments, professional disciplines, private commercial interests, and local communities prone to natural hazards to become more proactive in identifying, assessing, and reducing disaster risks. This has clearly been stimulated greatly by the far-reaching effects of the Indian Ocean tsunami, the Atlantic and Caribbean hurricane seasons of 2004-2005 (exemplified by the effects of Hurricane Katrina), the Kashmir earthquake, and most recently the series of disasters in Indonesia and typhoons in Asia.

These iconic events have also shone a global political spotlight on the need for much better planned, coordinated, and professionally coherent recovery strategies after a disaster, which proceed long after the initial news reports of the crisis have faded. Recovery that contributes to reducing risk has long been neglected, caught between the delayed circumstances of relief and interrupted or inconsistent measures of development. Like preparedness measures, effective response capabilities and recovery include risk reduction.There is now emerging a more informed and sustained commitment to the necessity of committing multiple resources to disaster risk reduction as an ongoing task of society before a disaster occurs. In many respects, we are at a decisive beginning of seriousness, and that must be both encouraged and sustained.

What are the three key actions required (by the global community and/or individual nations) to ensure that the toll from inevitable natural disasters is mitigated?

• First and foremost, each person needs to be risk aware, i.e. understand natural hazards and the vulnerabilities at their homes, school, work place, and community.  Therefore, educational systems must incorporate disaster risk reduction as an essential topic in their curricula, teacher's training and community activities.

• We must create and sustain public and political awareness strategies and related institutional capacity strengthening that can make disaster reduction an accepted public value and a policy priority.  Recognizing that most communities are exposed to some form of natural and related risks, which change over time as respective conditions and vulnerabilities change, we must embodying that knowledge throughout the local cultures.

• We need to invest in consolidated, or complementary, multi-disciplinary commitments and allocation of resources in government and throughout civil society that are dedicated to risk identification, assessment, and management practices that become an inherent part of daily life and work.

To what extent are disaster reduction measures a matter of funding and how much are they a matter of awareness raising and longer-range planning?

Resource commitments, whether human, material, or financial are need to promote the issue and raise awareness among educators, media, and policy-makers. These investments will be productive in reducing disaster risks only to the extent that there is prior understanding, political and civic leadership, systematic direction, and monitored evaluation of progressive accomplishment through planning – projected over a longer-termed period of not less than 10 years.