Tsunami raises disaster awareness

More than 2,000 analysts, policy-makers, and political and community leaders are expected to attend the second World Conference on Disaster Reduction, opening tomorrow in Kobe, Japan, and running through Saturday. The meeting has attracted increased attention since the Dec. 26 earthquake in the Indian Ocean that generated a tsunami that killed more than 162,000 people, injured more than half a million, and displaced several millions in Sri Lanka, Indonesia, India, Thailand and other countries bordering the Indian Ocean.

Special correspondent John Zarocostas of The Washington Times in Geneva interviewed Jan Egeland, U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, about the conference, which had been planned before the disaster.

Question: How has the Dec. 26 disaster changed the outlook for this week’s meeting?

Answer: The Kobe Conference has gone from being a U.N. conference where we struggled to get sufficient attention to being propelled to the center of world attention. An early-warning system, preparedness and [disaster] prevention that will be discussed there will have global attention, because nobody wants to see [such a disaster] repeated.

Q: What’s your message to policy-makers who will be attending the conference?

A: The conference will be opened by the emperor of Japan. My message on behalf of the United Nations is that prevention is better than cure; that in a world of increasing natural disasters, we can prevent increasing loss of lives and material damage among people who are already poor and disadvantaged.

At Kobe, we will bring more than 2,000 practitioners to Japan from all disaster-prone countries in the world — from Haiti to the locust-prone West African countries — and we will then discuss preparedness and prevention in a time of more disasters.

Q: One of the objectives at Kobe is to adopt a plan of action. Can you tell us what the thrust of this action program will be?

A: We would need to have a 10-year action program whose whole purpose is to make local societies more resilient to natural hazards.

It’s mind-boggling to see how the same hurricane that cost 2,000 lives in Haiti and really destroyed the whole city of Gonaives caused no loss of lives in Cuba. This was because Cuba has a well-functioning early-warning system and evacuation system, and has cheap but sturdy housing construction, etc.

It’s mind-boggling to see how Iran is able, through its Red Crescent organization — a sister organization of the Red Cross — to mobilize hundreds of relief workers within hours in an earthquake-stricken area, whereas other disaster-prone regions have no local capacity and must wait for us to send relief brigades.

Q: Is there a need here for a paradigm shift, given that many donor countries focus aid on post-crisis relief and not enough on prevention?

A: Indeed, we are seeing that paradigm shift now.

From the United States to China, there is an understanding of the importance of prevention and preparedness rather than only with disaster response. There are many examples of good prevention activities — how tree-planting, dike-building, shelter construction have helped save thousands of lives and hundreds of millions of dollars.

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