E-Dialogue- 13.0 | Disasters and Cities: Mitigation and Resilience Urban planning and disaster management
The thirteenth edition of the E-Dialogues series was based on the topic “Disasters and Cities: Mitigation and Resilience”. Through the Webinar, Urban Update tried to understand the urban preparedness, available resources, gaps in capacity building, and knowledge sharing among governments. All tiers of governments in different countries are taking measures to lessen the impacts of natural disasters and avoid man-made disasters altogether. As part of the Webinar, Urban Update invited
Dr Animesh Kumar, Deputy Head (Asia Pacific), United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR); Dr Prabodh Dhar Chakrabarti, Lead International Consultant, UNDP, UNESCAP&World Bank; Dr Birupakshya Dixit, India Coordinator, Practical Action & Mihir R Bhatt, Director, All India Disaster Mitigation Institute. The session was moderated by Kumar Dhananjay, Consulting Editor, Urban Update.
Dhananjay introduced the topic and said that every city in India and for that matter across the world is facing the question today that how to make themselves more resilient and mitigate the suffering in the face of a disaster. The point is, there are things that science can predict but what it can’t predict are natural hazards that have increasingly imposed risks to human life and the wellbeing of communities. Therefore, it becomes imperative that for disaster risk management and climate change globally, urban planning is a major factor that needs to be reconsidered. He questioned the preparedness of Indian cities, how resilient they are, to mitigate the effects in case of a disaster. The first to speak was Dr Animesh, who began by saying that in most countries as we move forward, we know already that a greater number of people now live in the urban areas in the world than in the rural areas and this figure will only increase to two-third by 2050. He added that it is known that unplanned urbanization, the growth, and spurt of infrastructure in the cities puts the inhabitant of these cities at very high risk of mortality and economic losses. He talked about the increasing frequency of floods among other disasters and of urban floods and that cyclones are becoming increasingly tropical. Dr Animesh, pointed out to the rising levels of air pollution and said that pollution is itself becoming an issue in most of the urban parts of the country and due to COVID-19 there is some positive news actually. The emission of carbon dioxide has declined by around 10 per cent from 2019 to 2020. He concluded by saying that this is a slight opportunity that we need to harness and see to it that the air pollution elements can be tackled as much
as possible.
The next speaker, Dr Chakrabarti, pointed out the exposure factor, which he said had two dimensions, exposure of the population and exposure of the economy. Cities, as we know, have a very highly dense population, particularly in the developing countries. He gave the example of Dharavi slum area in Mumbai and said that about two lakh seventy thousand people living in one square kilometre area so that means when there will be a disaster then too many people will be exposed to it. Then he talked about the economic factor and said because the cities as we know are producing almost
75 per cent of the wealth of the countries. So if there is a disaster in the cities, the level of damages would be enormous. One important way how this can be mitigated is that we have to make sure that our economy and people are protected. These are very serious challenges when one talks about exposure; it is the vulnerable people and the vulnerable assets in the urban areas that are getting exposed. He took the example of Chennai Airport which went unoperational for seven days during the flood situation. So, the infrastructure in the city is highly vulnerable and not resilient. He mentioned his study on measuring the risks and resilience of the states of India, which includes cities as well. He concluded with results of the study and said that we have done quite a lot in disaster preparedness, but a lot more work still needs to done in the field of disaster prevention and
disaster mitigation.
Dr Dixit, who was invited next, pointed out the issues of floods increasing in the cities, and cities in most part of India and even globally can be seen struggling with this flooding. Mostly the cities are vulnerable due to many factors like rapid growth and inadequate planning, then the population density in most of the cities and the unplanned growth of the city along with the population are presenting more challenges. Then we see why city residents are more vulnerable because they have more dependency on infrastructure and service provider. He gave the example of his city, Bhubaneswar that had no issue of flooding or waterlogging, he said that but this is man-made actually. Because now the outskirts of the city has been encroached, the rivers have been encroached and the water bodies and wetlands have been encroached and there is no proper drainage. This is making the urban poor, the low-income group people in the city the most vulnerable because their density is higher; their settlements are informal which are located in environmentally vulnerable areas. In his opinion, governments at all levels are giving very less attention towards city flooding and waterlogging. He concluded by saying that this can be controlled if proper steps are taken. Bhatt while talking about what happens to the victims of these disasters in the longer term and how much time the recovery takes, said that he thinks that we leave after a maximum year and a half. That is when the real recovery starts and that is when the real struggle for both, the citizens, as well as the city, and the authorities starts. One area where there is a lot of struggle is that most of our understanding of our cities is very limited to the cities as they are and as they were in the past.
But cities are changing very rapidly. So there is dynamic and quantum change in the cities which we haven’t grasped. The second major change that we see is that we look at disasters in terms of the hazards that we know but there are new hazards which are coming up such as COVID-19 pandemic, heatwaves, and pollution. So, these are the areas where the impact unfolds much slower. He summed up by saying that urban resilience is very much based on what we think is going to get you back to the previous situation of the city but this is not what is required; rather requirement is of a transformation.