Making disaster risk reduction inclusive

Climatic hazards that we saw in the last few years remind us of the fact that we are perhaps passing the most crucial decade in history of the world with both frequency and ferocity of disasters being the serious concerns. In the last ten years, globally more than 7,800 were recorded. They claimed more than 1.8 million lives, left more than 48.5 million people homeless and caused property losses to the tune of almost US $ 28 billion. Climate change and rapid urbanisation, especially in developing countries, are exposing more and more people to the climatic hazards. When the international climate politics is centred on cutting carbon emission and the climate fund management, poor and developing countries are putting more focus on climate change adaptation and disaster resilience.
But the way we spend money for emergency response, it is unlikely that effective climate change adaptation and resilience will be possible here. What we do here is we wait just to allow the communities to be vulnerable, disasters strike and then we move. We rush to them with emergency relief and so on. By this time the people die, communities are devastated. We jumpstart emergency response projects, but finally we swallow criticism. The concept of aid effectiveness is getting more and more importance these days, because evidences show that plenty of humanitarian aid is spent, but the intended results cannot be achieved. More specifically, we spend much on emergency response, but we put less emphasis on disaster preparedness which can give a better return.
There are several reasons why the humanitarian aid for emergency response has less return. The overhead expenditure of emergency response is always higher and in the event of massive destruction, procurement becomes difficult and highly expensive. Moreover, there are allegations that the emergency aid is inappropriate and poorly handled. Often the support of the humanitarian aid providers is not welcomed by the victims, as it fails to uphold human dignity and lacks appropriateness. Oliver-Smith (2011) quotes one beneficiary who was supported with the shelter in Yungay: "We are not animals to be put in stables. These houses violate the privacy of the home and the sanctity of the family". Here, the assistance actually failed to meet the demand of the victims. .
Importantly, some of the Asian countries like China, India and the Philippines are on the list of top 10 countries which have the highest number of deaths due to disasters. These countries have high population density and rich cultural heritage and strong social and mutual ties, which all are equally damaged with disasters.
According to a global estimate by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre and the Norwegian Refugee Council, disasters displaced on an average 27 million people each year between 2008 and 2013. It means every year there are 27 million stories of exclusion and isolation. But unfortunately the existing relief and rehabilitation mechanism can hardly address these issues.
Relief brings some solution to the crisis as a 'quick fix' but often it adversely impacts the communities in the long run. Oliver-Smith (1996) finds the post-disaster reconstruction and development after the Campania-Basilicata earthquake in 1980 as more destructive to the social, moral, economic and environmental fabric of the Sele valley than the damage done by the earthquake. During the typhoon Haiyan response, some of the humanitarian organisations gave relief in such a way that it interrupted the community behaviour and the unintended consequences of relief also destroyed the local economy and the market. This happens because, during designing the emergency relief and response projects, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) find it difficult to take the local socio-economic scenario into their consideration. And thus, relief, rehabilitation and development initiatives in a post-disaster period can actually bring back a little to individuals and to their communities, as far as social and psychological losses are concerned.
External interventions in the name of relief and development assistance do good to the people, but simultaneously, as Tarabusi argues, these actions impact negatively and unsuccessfully in different local contexts. These fail to uphold the local culture, values and tradition nor can the interventions compensate these things. He further adds that the oversimplified picture of development blinds us to the concrete problems, which cause some organisations and projects, despite good intentions and declarations, to falter.  All these drawbacks also prove how imperative it is to work for promoting local level adaptive measures, which will surely minimise vulnerability of the people. The more people increase their capability, the more they can minimise their vulnerability and thus increase resilience.
Now let us come to the point about how it is important to engage senior people in adaptation and resilience-promoting initiatives. These people have fought and survived a number of disasters in their life and thus gained immense practical experiences in this area. During this scribe's research on indigenous strategies of forecasting natural disasters in Gaibandha, he listed more than thirty of them narrated by the senior people. When there was no technological early warning system, these people survived by applying the local knowledge which they learnt from their forefathers.
The Help Age International (HAI) has established some Older People's Associations (OPAs) in different countries including Bangladesh. Through these OPAs, it is trying to involve senior people with disaster risk reduction activities. This initiative makes the disaster risk reduction inclusive and at the same time it promotes self-confidence of these senior people. According to the HAI, older people are the respected sources of knowledge in their communities, they can provide information on traditional coping mechanisms from their experiences, which is invaluable, when it comes to preparedness planning.  
Senior people can give valuable insights into how to reduce disaster risks in their communities. Incorporating the traditional local knowledge in the current initiatives for climate change adaptation and disaster resilience promotion can actually give communities convenient and cost-effective solutions in the wake of the increasing number of natural hazards.

The writer is a development researcher and post-graduate student of NOHA (Network Of Humanitarian Action) at Uppsala University, Sweden.
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