Preparedness of ULBs key to mitigate disasters

The National Institute of Disaster Management, in collaboration with All India Institute of Local Self Government, Foundation EMDA Southasia and Urban Update, has started a series of webinars and workshops to deliberate upon the ways and means to improve capacity of all stakeholders for effective disaster response, mitigation techniques and create awareness for efficiently managing disaster related risks.
Globally, the impacts of disaster have risen rapidly over decades affecting almost all sectors in all countries. 700 million people affected annually and losses of over $371 billion in 2011, it impacts individuals, especially the poor households. In India, the migrant labourers and people from the disadvantaged groups suffer the most. In this context, Urban Update organised a webinar on ‘Disaster Risks, Mitigation and Sustainable Communities’ in order to discuss how urban local bodies (ULBs) can ensure that in the event of a disaster, they are able to handle the situation more efficiently so as to reduce the negative impacts of the disaster. Mihir R Bhatt, Director, All India Disaster Mitigation Institute; Dr Birupaksha Dixit, Indian Coordinator Practical Action participated as speakers at the Webinar. The special address was given by Prof Vinod C Menon, Former Member, National Institute of Disaster Management (NIDM). The introductory remarks were given by Gagan Sinha, Secretary General, Foundation EMDA Southasia and Prof Santosh Kumar, Head of Governance and Inclusive Disaster Risk Reduction (G&IDRR), NIDM. The webinar was moderated by Abhishek Pandey, Editor, Urban Update.
Prof Santosh Kumar, in his special address, emphasized on the importance of talking on issues like how our local government can get together with the agencies who are working on disaster risk management, how that capacity flow should be from the national to the state and to the local government, and how public health issues and the disaster risk management can go down to the local level understanding. He talked about inverted pyramid approach where centre should not be thick and big in investment and planning. All the activities should happen at local level where risk exposure is high. He gave the example of Kerala where the disaster preparedness was well planned and hence the floods did not cause a lot of damage.
Prof Menon started by saying that all of us have seen the impacts of COVID-19 and the pronounced effects that a population explosion caused. He talked about the problems of the migrant workers who suffered greatly during the lockdown. “More than 150 million people in the world have been pushed into poverty and deprivation, into malnutrition, into hunger. Something we really need to understand is that in the 15 years between 2015 and 2030, we really don’t have the luxury of catching up with the lost development gains which we have tried to achieve in the Millennium Development Goals and also in the first five years of the sustainable development goals.” Prof Menon said that education also was greatly affected by the pandemic. There is need to address the issues related to poverty and lack of access to resources, and that is where resilient communities have to come up. Mentioning about a webinar with fronts from the United States, Italy and China, he said that “politics and economics have taken over the public health and issues of addressing social inequality. Politics and economics are driving us now.” He said that the challenge is how we empower communities, especially the vulnerable.
Gagan Sinha talked about the vision of EMDA Southasia and importance of partnership with other organisations for combating disasters like COVID-19 and work efficiently for better preparedness and prevention.
Mihir R Bhatt said that the discussion should go beyond disasters that are traditionally recognised. He went on to say that the ten-point agenda set by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has witnessed a setback due to the pandemic. He said that we cannot mitigate disasters if we can’t reimagine about what we are doing. Second important opportunity that is seen and is being worked on is that there is a big gap between the public, social and government initiatives and their operations. A huge gap is seen between the ideas and the implementations. He said that there is opportunity to accelerate and augment with focus on local government.
Dr Dixit, through his presentation, expressed his concern about damages that follow disasters. He explained the difference between urban disasters and natural disasters. Dr Dixit said that urban disasters are majorly man-made. The most vulnerable people in urban areas are people who do not own houses or those live in low-lying areas. Cities can be made safer by encouraging development policies that reduce vulnerabilities and talk about land use; risk and impact assessment; maintenance of infrastructure; and integration of services. City managers also have to be prepared to cope with emerging situations.
Dr Dixit stressed on the fact that in most of the cities, municipal bodies and ULBs are not aware of the issues mentioned above, and even if they are aware they do not know how to deal efficiently with them. For this, emergency management planning should be undertaken and the entire institutional structure needs to be strengthened. Public education, community based programmes and solutions are also required as community also needs to be educated and prepared to address the issues. Giving the examples of municipal practices of other countries including Philippines, where a portion of their municipal fund is used for preparedness procurement of relief and rescue equipment, he said that India should also have such practices which can prepare people to face the adverse and harsh climatic changes and conditions. He also said that India should also learn from Malaysia’s storm water drainage road tunnels to avoid the flooding of roads and houses every rainy season. He said that the government focuses on relief funding more than resilience building and this issue needs to be addressed. The government also should allow only 70 per cent of the land of the city to be used for building purposes.
While answering a question on how the sectorial loss could be minimized, with special reference to cyclone Fani that hit Odisha last year, Dr Dixit said that the government is working on many projects for minimising disaster effects. He suggested that states which are greatly impacted by disasters on a regular basis should start focusing on building resilience.

Mihir then answered a question as to why authorities are not doing what is necessary for preventing the damage caused to coastal cities every year by saying that focus should be on early warning system which would help the cities to prepare better for the disaster. On this note, Prof Kumar added that the Government of India and the Government of Nepal are considering building infrastructure like water flow systems, which would minimise the damage caused by Bihar’s rains.
Prof Menon then informed about the financing instruments that are available to enhance resilience of a city. He said that there is need of insuring our cities’ buildings and there is need of opening up the economy. He also said that we need to look at the good practices of other countries and learn from them and come up with innovative ideas. Commenting on the ecosystem approach, Dr Dixit said that it provides multiple benefits. If we successfully control degradation of our ecosystem, we can avoid a number of disasters as it will help the natural ecosystem
to prosper. Sinha concluded by saying that good planning of cities and towns is necessary and if something unfortunate is to happen, then a system is needed whereby the gap between the planning and implementation is minimised.
Pandey concluded the webinar by saying that now we have to reimagine our thought process and our policies and plans and implementation, strategies, and how we can reduce damages of disasters.