PRESS CONFERENCE ON 2001 WORLD DISASTERS REPORT

PRESS CONFERENCE ON 2001 WORLD DISASTERS REPORT

This year's World Disasters Report demonstrates that disasters are shaping development instead of being a blip on the development curve, Peter Walker, the report's founding editor, told correspondents this morning at a Headquarters press conference by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).

Sponsored by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the press conference was opened by the Department's Under-Secretary-General, Kenzo Oshima.  In addition to Peter Walker, who is also the IFRC Head of Regional Development for Southeast Asia, IFRC President Astrid Heiberg took part in the launch of the report, as did IFRC Secretary-General Didier Cherpitel.  The theme of this year's report is "Focus on recovery".

In opening remarks, Under-Secretary-General Oshima pointed to the staggering costs of disasters and OCHA’s help to people in dealing with them.  He emphasized the devastating effect of disasters on sustainable development, and said the report presented a good view of shortcomings in some poorly designed aid efforts.  It also gave a perspective on reducing disasters through better planning.

IFRC President Heiberg said this year's report was devoted to raising questions about rebuilding approaches and targeting of aid.  It aimed to make donors aware of the links between relief, rehabilitation and development.  As shown in the report, those links indicated that disaster relief efforts must focus on building disaster preparedness and reducing risks in the future.  That called for considering community needs and targeting resources to "avoid rebuilding the risks and instead, to rebuild lives."

Addressing specific aspects of the report, Dr. Walker said the report this year conveyed three key messages.  Those concerned the escalating rate of disasters, the clearer link between economics and the effects of disasters, and finally, the unclear question of whether risks or lives were being rebuilt in disaster-relief efforts.

For example, he said, there were 750 major disasters globally in the year 2000.  When those due to weather were examined and compared with previous data, disasters had doubled since mid-century, with some 250 million people affected.  Further, the numbers of those affected were not evenly distributed across disaster-prone areas worldwide because the direct link between disasters and victims had been ignored in past relief efforts.  When bridges were destroyed in poor areas, for example, relief efforts had aimed to quickly rebuild the same bridges with the same vulnerabilities.

That was the disaster-relief approach in all kinds of traditionally disaster-prone areas, he continued, and gave examples from the report.  One was a Venezuelan site subject to periodic mudslides; another was a Vietnamese town subject to monsoon disasters.  The latter had occurred every five years in the past.  Now the disastrous storms were hitting every three years, before people had recovered from the previous one.  The result was a vicious downward spiral.

The IFRC solution was to direct relief efforts so as to safeguard homes and protect investments, Dr. Walker said.  The houses rebuilt in Viet Nam, for example, were elevated with firm upper walls that would survive a monsoon attack and protect stored grains even if the house foundations were destroyed.  In another example of a community-based developmental approach to disaster relief, the IFRC had helped a community in India build a cyclone shelter that was used as a community centre during calm times.

The long-range solution was straightforward, Dr. Walker said.  The traditional way of helping communities struck by disaster was to give them funding on an emergency basis and with no conditions attached, or else to give them development funds with contingencies that people caught in an emergency could not meet.  The only alternative was the new one being pursued by IFRC -- that of combining the above two approaches with an eye towards both rebuilding and protecting existing assets.  Often, IFRC helped communities develop alternative forms of income, so that if farmland was destroyed and unprofitable for a period, the community could still survive temporarily on its tourist or manufacturing industry.

The cost of ignoring that approach was indicated by other data in the report, Dr. Walker concluded.  Just as in the case of other development aid, money for disaster relief was increasingly being channeled away from the least developed countries (LDCs) and towards those more affluent.  "It's as if the poor aren't worth investing in," he said.  Yet if the world did not invest, the present figure of 10 million affected by disasters worldwide would only keep going up.

In response to a question, Dr. Walker said the report gave indications of the complex situation in Tajikistan.  There, a severe drought was creating havoc with a community in which the economy had predisposed the community to shortages in the past.  In that situation, disaster management required changes in land tenure, the cotton trade and trafficking from neighbours such as Afghanistan.

A correspondent asked if it would be difficult to change the IFRC image from the traditional one of responding to emergencies into a new one more developmental in character.  Dr. Walker said the question was based on a misperception.  The high-profile disaster relief portion of IFRC's work accounted for only two per cent of its expenditures.  Ninety-eight percent of IFRC money went into social welfare activities.

Dr. Heiberg added that two years ago, IFRC had revamped its strategic planning to the year 2010 in view of feedback from national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies.  The core IFRC activities were now aimed at promoting the preservation of human dignity; delivering disaster relief and assistance in rebuilding; and providing basic health care.  The latter category embraced a full range of scales for national societies.  In Somalia, they provided all the basic health care, while in affluent societies they visited the elderly.  However,

Dr. Heiberg pointed out, it was difficult getting the public eye on visits to the elderly.

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