Securing lifelines for disaster
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In Vietnam, there is a recognition that forests not only harbor biodiversity and provide environmental services, but can also protect people and property from natural disasters. The country's investment of $ 1.1 million, supported by the World Bank, in mangrove replanting and other measures saved communities an estimated $7.3 million a year in sea dyke maintenance. Later, in 2000, when Typhoon Wukong struck, the project area remained relatively unharmed while neighboring provinces suffered significant loss of life and property.
While poor construction is a major reason why so many lives are lost in developing countries when disasters strike, experiences in Colombia and Turkey with earthquake-resistant building codes, enforcement of construction standards and oversight of material procurement practices are likely to pay off significantly, which is what the Chile quake so dramatically illustrated. And everywhere, better land-use planning is proving to be essential to ensuring that people are not putting up their homes in harm's way.
Some 50 developing countries face recurrent earthquakes, mudslides, floods, hurricanes and droughts, yet many of them do not seem to recognize that they will recur. International agencies do not acknowledge these risks as a systematic threat to their assistance, and almost half of the countries borrowing from the World Bank for disaster response, did not mention disaster prevention/reduction in their development plans.
This must change. If we are ready to invest sizable funds to establish mechanisms to avert financial crises, we need to do the same with the escalating hazards of nature. In a few months the world's attention will no longer be fixed on natural disasters (until the next big one, that is). Once the tragedy drops off newspapers' front pages, international donors, like the countries, find it hard to stay engaged with prevention efforts.
This sad reality is yet another reason to focus on the more easily achievable goal: when rebuilding, always ensure that facilities vital to crisis response are linked to networks that will not fail them. So when the earth shakes or the waters rise, critical networks will be disaster-resilient - and victims do not need to look at each other in desperation to survive.
Vinod Thomas is the director-general of and Ronald S. Parker a senior consultant for the World Bank's Independent Evaluation Group.
