Alle ved, at tørke rammer rundt om i verden før eller siden – men intet u-land har en tørkepolitik
JOHANNESBURG, 11 May 2011 (IRIN): Few countries have the right policies in place to manage the impact of droughts, which over the last century have claimed millions of lives, says the Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction 2011 (GAR 2011).
But this could be about to change.
Mannava Sivakumar, director of the Agricultural Meteorology Division at the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), who contributed to the chapter on droughts in the GAR 2011, wants countries to develop their own policies to tackle a climate event that remains poorly understood.
– A national drought policy will not only institutionalize the need for effective monitoring and setting up of early warning systems, it will empower a poor farmer affected by a drought to demand safety nets to protect him, said Sivakumar.
Australia was so far the only country that had put in place a national drought policy to reduce risk “by developing better awareness and understanding” of droughts and the underlying causes of vulnerability of the communities exposed to them.
Risk identification and early warning are the priority areas identified by the Hyogo Framework of Action, a 10-year global policy approved by countries in 2005 to reduce disaster risks.
Whenever a natural hazard event such as a drought occurs, governments and donors have followed the set format of impact assessments, response, recovery and reconstruction, with little attention to risk management to “reduce future impacts, and lessen the need for government intervention in the future”, Sivakumar pointed out.
– The ultimate goal [of a national drought policy] is to create more drought-resilient (tørke modstandsdygtige) societies, he said.
A drought policy would make it mandatory to provide safety nets such as insurance, and would sit well with developing countries’ climate change adaptation plans. Droughts are expected to become more intense and frequent as the impact of climate change unfolds.
Arid (tørke/udtørring) events have affected more lives than any other single physical hazard. The GAR 2011 highlighted a range of problems in dealing with droughts, the biggest being that they are poorly understood.
– You cannot say with a certainty when a drought begins or when it ends, said Sivakumar.
Læs videre på http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportID=92676
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