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Page 1: Sharing experiences and lessons learned in disaster risk ...cmsdata.iucn.org/downloads/regional_workshop_summary_of_lessons... · Sharing experiences and lessons learned in disaster

Sharing experiences and lessons learned in disaster risk management: Synthesis of lessons learned and recommendations for the way forward.

Ecosystems and Livelihoods Group Asia, IUCN

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Sharing experiences and lessons learned in disaster risk management: Synthesis of lessons learned and recommendations for the way forward.

Regional workshop held in Habarana, Sri Lanka, April 27th – 29th, 2009.

Ecosystems and Livelihoods Group Asia, IUCN

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Background: The Indian Ocean tsunami of December 26, 2004 was one of the most horrific tragedies of recent human history. The details of the tsunami’s immediate impacts in coastal countries of Asia and Africa were shocking: 186,983,000 people died and 42,883 were reported missing. There was a massive displacement of populations, as well as extensive damage to infrastructure and coastal natural resources. In India, 235,377 homes were reported to have been damaged or destroyed; in Indonesia, 141,000; in Sri Lanka 103,836; in the Maldives, 8,074; in Thailand, 4,806; in the Seychelles, 500 and in Somalia 1,400; and. In the province of Aceh, Indonesia alone, 600,000 people lost their livelihoods (http://www.un.org/ News/Press/ docs/ 2005/hab196.doc.htm; http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake). In addition to this enormous toll on human lives and livelihoods, the tsunami also damaged ecosystems that provided vital protection to coastal communities. Terrestrial coastal ecosystems and wetlands, as well as key marine ecosystems - such as coral reefs and sea-grass beds - suffered seriously from the tsunami. The loss of these ecosystems resulted in the loss of ecosystem services and thereby reduced the options of people to rebuild their livelihoods. During the reconstruction and rehabilitation after the tsunami, IUCN has been involved actively in ensuring that environmental considerations - essential for the long-term well being of communities and ecosystems – were incorporated reconstruction and rehabilitation activities. The Autonomous Organisation for National Parks (Organismo Autónomo Parques Nacionales - OAPN) of the Ministry of Environment of Spain has provided key support in these efforts of IUCN through the provision of three grants to IUCN’s post-tsunami work beginning in September 2006 and continuing till December 2008. During the initial phase of the project (Restoration of Mangroves in Sri Lanka and Thailand), activities focused on demonstrating and piloting on-the ground approaches to mangrove restoration and conservation in Sri Lanka and Thailand. The second Consolidation Phase supported ecosystem restoration and conservation in tsunami-affected coastal areas as a mechanism to strengthen sustainable coastal zone management policy and to reduce the vulnerability of coastal populations in Sri Lanka and Thailand. The final Reinforcement and Extension Phase provided additional resources for building capacity and developing a local resource pool amongst the various stakeholders who had been involved in ecosystem restoration in post-tsunami rehabilitation and reconstruction and expanded the project activities to select areas in Maldives and Indonesia - two other countries affected severely by the tsunami. One activity listed during the Consolidation Phase was the convening of a regional dialogue to take stock and share experiences and lessons learned of the implications of natural disasters on coastal ecosystems and protected landscapes, and best practice actions undertaken to address this. The specific activities listed included:

A review of key actions of agencies involved in coastal ecosystem restoration and conservation in tsunami affected countries;

Preparation of best practices and lessons learned documentation for sharing;

Regional conference on experiences, lessons learned and best practices on coastal ecosystem restoration and conservation in a post-disaster context; and

Preparation of follow-up actions on continued information sharing and regional dialogue. The key outputs were the a) documentation of best practices and lessons learned; b) preparation of conference proceedings; and c) maintenance of a portal for information sharing.

For maximum input, this dialogue was held at the very end of the project, in April 2009. This paper presents a summary of the regional dialogue and fulfils the second output (b) listed above.

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Introduction: The workshop on ‘Sharing experiences and lessons learned in disaster risk management and exploring how environmental safeguards can be incorporated into disaster risk reduction’ was held at The Cinnamon Lodge, Habarana, Sri Lanka from April 27th to 29th 2009. It brought together 16 senior and mid level managers from a range of institutions in the Asian region: from development-focused organisations such as CARE to disaster risk reduction specialists such as the Asian Disaster Preparedness Centre (ADPC) and Disaster Management Centres of the Maldives and Sri Lanka; from ecosystem restoration specialists from Indonesia to a flood management expert from Bangladesh. The workshop provided a timely opportunity for individuals involved in regional disaster risk reduction, livelihood rehabilitation and ecosystem restoration efforts to share information and discuss issues with representatives from other regions. This summary provides a synopsis of the workshop proceedings. The workshop report (http://cmsdata.iucn.org/downloads/regional_dialogue_april_2009_workshop_report.pdf) contains more details and links to the presentations. Lessons learned after the tsunami: The first two sessions focused on lessons learned after the tsunami. As part of the inputs to this dialogue, the Ecosystems and Livelihoods Group Asia had commissioned four papers from Indonesia, Maldives, Sri Lanka and Thailand, which reviewed and analysed the successes and failures of the restoration and conservation work carried out by these selected agencies after the tsunami of December 2004. Three of these papers (viz Maldives, Indonesia and Sri Lanka) were presented at the dialogue. Two presentations followed that focused on lessons learned in the housing sector in Indonesia and the fisheries sector in Sri Lanka. A final presentation listed institutional lessons learned at CARE. Many of these lessons from the tsunami were about the magnitude of the event, the difficulties in coordination but fundamentally, lessons were about underlying vulnerabilities of institutions, governance and communications problems. Several examples were heard of how poor planning and governance hindered long-term recovery processes. For example, there was a case study from the Maldives where waste management problems are still unresolved; other studies noted how ‘briefcase’ donors merely wanted to spend money and not to invest in long-term livelihoods development, leading to significant social problems, jealousy and dependency by the population. It also contributed to the coordination problems of the governmental agencies and NGOs. There were issues of territoriality and even for those NGOs with strong long-term development projects, the pressure to deliver quick, short-term results the transition from relief to recovery was very difficult. Communications between relief professionals and development planners was not easy and environmental concerns were overlooked in the urgency to save lives. By looking at the commonly quoted equation for risk, the nexus between disaster risk authorities, environmental managers and development agencies can be situated: R = V X H where R=Risk, V=Vulnerability and H=Hazard In order to reduce risk, reduction of vulnerability and increase of social and ecological resilience is essential. Vulnerability has, traditionally, been the sector of the development arena; hazard, dealt with by the disaster management and humanitarian sector; while ecological aspects cross-cut them both. There are both temporal and external factors that differ in institutional responses to vulnerability - usually the institutional domain of development agencies that act with a long-term perspective. Hazards are usually the domain of disaster authorities and humanitarian agencies – other than some long-term mitigation projects, this factor is usually dealt with using a short timeframe in the aftermath of a disaster. Environmental management is also long term and is cross-cutting in vulnerability, by providing people resources, but also in reducing hazard impacts by providing protective services.

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Vulnerability can be considered the result of external factors which can be difficult to change, such as the lack of access to land, inequalities due to political structures, whereas resilience, or coping capacity can be considered endogenous - the internal capacity to rebound from a shock and more easily changed through capacity-building. This is why there is a shifting, moving away from a focus on vulnerability to capacity-building, or resilience. The main themes from the tsunami lessons learned presentations were:

1. Governance: Many of the short-comings in coordination - lack of good practices to transition from relief to recovery, inappropriate spending on fishing boats and mangrove restoration in the post-tsunami context - boil down to poor governance. One of the major difficulties is the discontinuity between long-term versus short-term planning or changing from the short-term needs of relief to the longer-term scope of development, as well s policies which may be lacking in scope, implementation and enforcement. The group discussed the inappropriate decision-making that occurs based on political decisions, poor leadership and short-term thinking that are often donor-driven.

2. Communications: There was a lack of listening and trust and a greater need for building relationships, ownership, open attitudes. Disaster diplomacy refers to the opportunities that exist after a disaster to open dialogue with conflicting parties – this was achieved successfully in Indonesia but not in Sri Lanka. The only mangrove restoration and green belt projects that seem to have succeeded were those which included the community in implementation and ownership. Home gardens were the most successful as these really implied the communities and people had a direct stake in them.

3. Institutions: This is, in many ways, a subset of governance. Presentations highlighted the issues of institutional mandates, which have not sufficiently bridged collaboration with others. Several examples were given of cases where legal frameworks, such as building codes and zoning with risk assessments were not implemented or enforced. Participants pointed to the need for capacity building: improved practices, procedures and enforcement.

4. Transformative opportunities: A common theme was the need to foster transformative opportunities by bridging the institutional barriers, through secondments, collaborative processes, and the need to change attitudes and behaviours.

After breakout sessions, the participants concluded that disaster risk reduction was about livelihoods, vulnerability and human well-being, not about the hazard itself. Sustainable environmental management and ecosystem services are central elements to increasing the resilience of communities and ecosystems. Policies, institutions and communities need to be strengthened to integrate sustainable environmental management in disaster prevention and response. Creation of knowledge and sharing of knowledge about what went wrong and what went right is critical to finding solutions, capacity-building and improving our capacities to deal with future disasters. The second day’s presentations expanded the ambit of the workshop to include other hazards such as earthquakes, landslides and floods. Experiences were shared from the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan, landslides in Nepal, hydro-metrological events in Central America and floods in Bangladesh. In Pakistan, absence of benchmarks and common assessment tools hampered recovery. It was noted that multidisciplinary teams with knowledge of local context, joint assessments and sharing of operating procedures are needed. Linking livelihoods to ecosystems, and the acceptance that

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hazards are not restricted within borders and therefore merit intergovernmental cooperation and collaboration were highlighted as ways forward. In the Nepalese example, the need to include hazards as part of development strategies and the need to recognise different communities’ differing perceptions of risk were highlighted. In the presentation about Central America, it was noted disaster management is a complex area that is multidimensional and not monolithical. A change in paradigm – a shift from disaster management to disaster risk reduction - was needed. This requires operational changes including tools, establishment of baseline, institutional strengthening, political support and strategic involvement of different sectors such as agriculture, tourism, finance and energy. Increasing dialogues and co-building of disaster risk reduction, ecosystem management and sustainable development - as a matter of governance - is critical. The presentation about floods in Bangladesh traced the evolution of Bangladesh’s approach to disaster management. Initially, an integrated management plan was developed leading to a Flood Action Plan. The latter proposed mostly structural measures. Currently, a National Water Policy and National Water Management Plan exists where a shift from flood control to flood management has been effected and non-structural as well as structural measures integrated into the plan. The effect of climate variability and the potential of sea-level rise have also been taken into account in these plans.

Tools for DRR

A summary of available tools was discussed and are presented below. (A detailed description of available tools can be downloaded at http://cmsdata.iucn.org/downloads/summary_of_main_tools_related_to_disaster_risk_reduction.pdf

1. Vulnerability and capacity analyses 2. Sustainable Livelihoods approach 3. Risk analysis including Community based disaster risk management (CBDRM) 4. Environmental assessments 5. Cost/benefit analysis and DRR 6. Integrating Climate Change Adaptation, DRR and Vulnerability 7. Integrating an ecosystem-based approach to disaster risk management.

The Way Forward IUCN’s Ecosystems and Livelihoods Group, under the aegis of OAPN funding, presented a simple foundation as a tool for integrating environmental safeguards into disaster risk management. Three volumes of a field manual for the same have been prepared based on this foundation. They can be downloaded at http://www.iucn.org/about/work/initiatives/about_work_global_ini_mangr/oapn/current_project_activities/ The framework of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) links clearly ecosystem well-being to human well-being as shown below.

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It was stressed that without ecosystems, humans can not live. In short, in order to achieve human well-being, it is essential that we also have ecosystem well-being. The results of the MA showed that there were five major drivers of biodiversity loss and change in ecosystem services:

Over-exploitation,

Habitat change,

Climate change,

Invasive Alien Species and

Pollution. Using the framework of the MA and the threats identified, ELG presented the following simple foundation.

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At every stage of the disaster management cycle, the above foundation should be used to design steps and ask questions. ELG’s approach emphasised that policy decisions and actions taken during prevention and mitigation have enormous and far reaching impacts on all stages of post disaster management. All decisions and actions taken after a disaster will be justified based on information gathered and actions taken during the pre-disaster phases of prevention and mitigation. Therefore, the success of post disaster management depends entirely on pre-disaster management. This approach stressed how critically important it was, therefore, to plan and implement actions to reduce the impacts of natural disasters during pre-disaster phases to minimise impacts after a disaster. The end result should be that environmental safeguards are incorporated into every stage of the disaster management cycle, as well as into general development. After another breakout session, the participants suggested the following recommendations as workable means for the way forward.

• To develop mechanisms for influencing public and/or private investment decisions to integrate ecosystem and DRR aspects:

– With targeted communication products; – Putting forward the economic argument for ecosystems and DRR on a case-by-case

basis; – Increasing policy and public advocacy; – Enhancing institutional capacity building

• To mainstream ecosystem management, climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction into development plans/policy at national and local levels:

– Integrating ecosystem aspects into the disaster risk profile preparation process (insurance sector);

– Expanding partnerships and strategic alliances: developing a stakeholder map targeted at national ministerial level, mid-level authorities. IUCN Mangroves for the Future platform and process can be used to build on in certain countries;

– Integrating ecosystem aspects into the DRR database Desinvetar and the disaster resource network database

– Using the climate change adaptation window to highlight the importance of DRR. • To improve information sharing in order to build knowledge management in DRR (review and

improve existing information): – tailoring communication messages to different audiences;

- policy briefs/operational guidelines on links between Hyogo Framework of Action/National Adaptation Programmes of Action/Environmental management (multilateral environmental agreements), etc.

- organising national and regional workshops on how to achieve HFA priority 4 (reducing the underlying risk factors) and incorporating DRR into Environmental Impact Assessment and Strategic Impact Assessments.

• To carry out advocacy so that disaster management agencies are granted credible, relevant legal authority to coordinate and enforce DRR policy which is monitored and authentic:

- carrying out policy advocacy for required legislation in Sri Lanka, Maldives and Pakistan: lobbying, creating awareness, policy dialogue processes, roundtables, targeted communication products including media;

• To revise and improve assessment tools: - Developing resilience assessment tools that leads towards adaptive management; - Integrating ecosystem aspects into Community-wide Vulnerability and Capacity

Assessment (CVCA), CRISTAL and Hazard, Capacity, Vulnerability Assessment (HCVA). This must include compilation of ling of slow-moving variables, resilience indicators and thresholds.

All participants accepted the need for collaboration and partnership building in order to ensure that safeguards are integrated into long term development. A recurrent feeling throughout the workshop was the need for a pre-disaster focus and a shift to risk reduction rather than management after a disaster.