Tsunamien i 2004 medførte talløse signaturer på en handlingsplan, som skulle gøre verden til et mere sikkert sted mod naturkatastrofer som oversvømmelser, jordskælv, vulkanudbrud, jordskred m.v. – men hvad er der sket sidenhen?
JOHANNESBURG, 17 May 2013 (IRIN): A month after the Indian Ocean tsunami struck in December 2004, affecting millions, 168 countries signed on to a 10-year plan to make the world safer from natural hazards (naturkatastrofer).
Yet the plan, the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA) 2005-2015, focused primarily on “what to do to prevent disasters, but not enough on how to implement it,” says Neil McFarlane, chief coordinator and head of all regional programmes at the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR).
Countries have since begun discussing what a follow-up action plan, the Hyogo Framework for Action 2 (HFA2), should look like.
The results of these talks, a sketch of the HFA2, will be presented at the Fourth Session of the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction, which began in Geneva on 19 May.
A draft will be finalized towards the end of 2014, for consideration and adoption at the World Conference on Disaster Reduction in Japan in 2015.
The HFA2 will need to take on a number of emerging risks and concerns. While the HFA has helped countries reduce the loss of human lives, the economic consequences of natural disasters have continued to rise.
For three consecutive years (i rap), natural hazards have cost the world more than 100 billion US dollar (ca. 545 milliarder DKR) a year, according to data from the Brussels-based Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) released in March 2013.
Additionally, disaster risks are changing:
The effects of the changing climate are expected to prompt (medføre) more intense and frequent extreme natural events, including floods, droughts and cyclones. Urban populations are growing, as is demand for food, ratcheting up pressure on resources like land and water.
Accountability (kunne drages til ansvar)
In tackling the HFA2, experts are discussing how to improve accountability.
“We have a framework with options to develop good disaster plans in the Hyogo, but how do we make governments, agencies… ensure it is implemented?” Tom Mitchell, head of the climate change programme at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), told IRIN.
Mitchell says one of the major weaknesses of the HFA is its failure to ensure that “well-crafted” disaster risk reduction (DRR) policies were actually implemented.
The agreement is voluntary, and there are no penalties for failing to put in place measures to protect citizens.
“Because it [HFA] is voluntary, we have to ask how… effective it can be,” remarked Frank Thomalla, senior research fellow with the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) in Asia.
New goals after 2015
Some question whether the world should consider a legal disaster-prevention treaty with a provision for penalties (sanktioner).
The new plan’s timing is significant for the global community; 2015 also marks the end of the Millennium Development Goals and possibly the implementation of new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are still under discussion.
A new agreement on addressing and adapting (tilpasning) to climate change is also likely to be put into place around that time. Aid agencies and think tanks are all calling on the global community to consider the synergies among these policy-shaping developments.
Many observers now question whether DRR policies should become a part of the legal climate deal, which might ensure their implementation.
Countries’ DRR activities are increasingly considered part of their climate change adaptation plans, and are being funded as such.
“No appetite for a legal treaty”
But there is no appetite for a legal treaty on DRR (disaster risk reduction), says UNISDR’s McFarlane.
Harjeet Singh, ActionAid’s international coordinator for DRR and climate change adaptation (CAA), says he is uncertain if a legal treaty “will bring about a dramatic change… After all, we have seen how [the UN’s] climate convention (UNFCCC) … failed to deliver in the last 20 years.”
Besides, the climate change deal will not consider geophysical events such as earthquakes and other triggers of potential disasters unrelated to climate, he added.
That fact, plus the range of social and economic factors contributing to disaster risk, calls into question the rationale for viewing DRR, CCA and development from a purely climatological perspective, SEI’s Thomalla told IRIN.
But the Cancun Adaptation Framework adopted by countries at the UNFCCC talks (FNs Klimapanel) in Mexico in 2010 urges countries to implement the HFA, so it does make it a part of a stronger commitment linked to climate change says UNISDR’s MacFarlane.
Taking measurements
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http://www.irinnews.org/Report/98058/The-making-of-the-Hyogo2-disaster-prevention-treaty
