Relevance of the models to the community based disaster management approach
CBDM as a disaster management approach received attention during the mid-1990s predominantly from non-government organizations (NGOs) involved in humanitarian assistance activities. A substantive report published in 2003 by the United Nations Center for Regional Development called Sustainability in Grass-Roots Initiatives: Focus on Community Based Disaster Management, claimed that the major challenges of CBDM are: 1) sustainability of the efforts at the community level, and 2) incorporation of CBDM issues at the policy level. To be effective and to create a sustainable impact, the application of CBDM must go beyond the initiative of local communities, NGOs and a handful of local governments. As part of an advocacy for more responsive and effective governance, central and state level governments should look at integrating CBDM in their policy and implementing procedures (UNCRD, 2003, p.1). In other words, mainstreaming the good ideas that disaster managers already know are working is key. Revisiting the definition of CBDM - an approach that involves direct participation of the people most likely to be exposed to hazards, in planning decision making, and operational activities at all levels of disaster management responsibility - it is clear that the Cuban model exhibits the kind of local organization and 'buy-in' that community based disaster management is built upon. In this approach, the prime movers are the people residing in the locality, with the local organizations already in place doing double duty in terms of mobilizing the population for well-thought out and rehearsed emergency plans. The "culture of safety" that has developed is the result of the population's trust that the essential systems will work and that the resources will be there for them - emergency warning system, transport for evacuation, shelters, and medical care. The population works to reduce their own hazard risks, because they are aware of what those systems are and how to access them (Thompson, p. 27). Project Impact has some of the elements of the approach, but its raison d'tre was to save money, not lives. While such a characterization may sound harsh it is telling that, in its assessment, the DRC found "local initiatives were not as active in outreach to organizations representing vulnerable populations, such as elderly persons, low-income groups, and people with disabilities," although movement in that direction was evident in all of the pilot sites when the project was cancelled in 2001 (Wachtendorf, p. ii). Nevertheless, self-reports from participants listed the benefits from participating in the initiative to include: learning about resource leveraging, understanding risk and loss reduction, participating in educational activities, and learning how to foster partnerships with local business enterprises.
Issues around risk reduction
In this section, I try to highlight some of the issues surrounding, confounding, and impacting efforts to reduce risk from natural and other disasters. Many of these topics are worthy of extended attention and analysis on their own account, but the intention here is only to raise awareness of them.
Can the benefits of risk reduction (mitigation) be calculated? From: Meade, C. and Abbott. (2003). Assessing Federal Research and Development for Hazard Loss Reduction. Santa Monica: RAND.
Substantive assessments of national hazard loss R&D efforts are severely constrained by the lack of accurate loss data - the primary information that might be used to measure the effectiveness of such efforts (p. 35).
There is no coordinated federal R&D budget for hazard losses, and allocation decisions are highly decentralized, occurring within numerous agencies (p. 37).
Loss reduction is largely viewed as a question of human behavior - in particular, the willingness [or inability] of humans to take actions or to incur expenses to reduce their vulnerability to natural hazards (p. 40).
While weather forecasts have a well-documented economic value, when one considers the amount of funding R&D on forecasting receives compared with funding for R&D on weather-related losses, there is a noticeable imbalance (p. 46).
From: International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. (2002) World Disaster Report: Focus on Reducing Risk. Geneva: IFRC. (Quotes are from Chapter 1)
Risk reduction is seen as a separate sector, when it should be mainstreamed into development and humanitarian programming. As a result, risk reduction concerns are marginalized or forgotten.
Risk reduction is viewed as a technical problem with technical solutions. But the underlying factors that compel people to live in insecure conditions are rarely addressed.
Lack of resources: donors dedicate far fewer resources to risk reduction than to relief. The European Community’s Humanitarian Office (ECHO), for example, spent just 1.5 per cent of its aid budget on disaster preparedness last year.
Invisibility of risk reduction spending; development programmes may include mitigation, but it is rarely reported in donor accounts.
Community-based approaches to disaster mitigation lead to more accurate definition of problems and solutions, because they draw on local expertise in living with disasters. They can deploy low-cost, appropriate technologies effectively. They are more likely to be sustainable because they are “owned” by the community and build up local capacity.
The main weakness of community-based initiatives is their limited outreach. Scaling up to achieve greater impact needs the participation of government. Yet the state and its apparatus are often seen as part of the problem.
From: Twigg, John. (2002). Lessons from Disaster Preparedness. London: Benfield Greig Hazard Research Centre.
Conventional monitoring and evaluation of mitigation and preparedness methods are geared to understanding something that has taken place as the result of an intervention, but in successful risk reduction work the result is that something - the disaster - does not take place (p. 2)
It has often been observed that cost-benefit analyses are normally applied to structural mitigation measure, to which monetary values can be applied more easily. However, good mitigation and preparedness work should comprise a range of diverse activities: organizational, educational, structural, economic, etc. (p. 5).
Social impacts are based on more recent methods of vulnerability analysis, where economic impacts are based on well-established conventional cost-benefit analysis techniques (p.6).
Decisions about investment in disaster preparedness are essentially political ones. This is true whether they are made by governments, international aid agencies, or NGOs (p.8).
Relevance of the models to the community based disaster management approach
CBDM as a disaster management approach received attention during the mid-1990s predominantly from non-government organizations (NGOs) involved in humanitarian assistance activities. A substantive report published in 2003 by the United Nations Center for Regional Development called Sustainability in Grass-Roots Initiatives: Focus on Community Based Disaster Management, claimed that the major challenges of CBDM are: 1) sustainability of the efforts at the community level, and 2) incorporation of CBDM issues at the policy level. To be effective and to create a sustainable impact, the application of CBDM must go beyond the initiative of local communities, NGOs and a handful of local governments. As part of an advocacy for more responsive and effective governance, central and state level governments should look at integrating CBDM in their policy and implementing procedures (UNCRD, 2003, p.1). In other words, mainstreaming the good ideas that disaster managers already know are working is key.
Revisiting the definition of CBDM - an approach that involves direct participation of the people most likely to be exposed to hazards, in planning decision making, and operational activities at all levels of disaster management responsibility - it is clear that the Cuban model exhibits the kind of local organization and 'buy-in' that community based disaster management is built upon. In this approach, the prime movers are the people residing in the locality, with the local organizations already in place doing double duty in terms of mobilizing the population for well-thought out and rehearsed emergency plans. The "culture of safety" that has developed is the result of the population's trust that the essential systems will work and that the resources will be there for them - emergency warning system, transport for evacuation, shelters, and medical care. The population works to reduce their own hazard risks, because they are aware of what those systems are and how to access them (Thompson, p. 27).
Project Impact has some of the elements of the approach, but its raison d'tre was to save money, not lives. While such a characterization may sound harsh it is telling that, in its assessment, the DRC found "local initiatives were not as active in outreach to organizations representing vulnerable populations, such as elderly persons, low-income groups, and people with disabilities," although movement in that direction was evident in all of the pilot sites when the project was cancelled in 2001 (Wachtendorf, p. ii). Nevertheless, self-reports from participants listed the benefits from participating in the initiative to include: learning about resource leveraging, understanding risk and loss reduction, participating in educational activities, and learning how to foster partnerships with local business enterprises.
Issues around risk reduction
In this section, I try to highlight some of the issues surrounding, confounding, and impacting efforts to reduce risk from natural and other disasters. Many of these topics are worthy of extended attention and analysis on their own account, but the intention here is only to raise awareness of them.
Can the benefits of risk reduction (mitigation) be calculated?
From: Meade, C. and Abbott. (2003). Assessing Federal Research and Development for Hazard Loss Reduction. Santa Monica: RAND.
From: International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. (2002) World Disaster Report: Focus on Reducing Risk. Geneva: IFRC. (Quotes are from Chapter 1)
From: Twigg, John. (2002). Lessons from Disaster Preparedness. London: Benfield Greig Hazard Research Centre.
To continue, go to p. 4