“Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable. We are faced now with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late…We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: Too late.”
Martin Luther King Jr. ‘Where do we go from here: chaos or community’
(Cited in the UNDP Human Development Report 2007/2008)
As the international community celebrates International Day for Disaster Reduction (IDRR), three striking challenges can be posed for the climate and development communities.
The first challenge is how to transform the ‘global development budget’ so that it positively impacts the lives of the world’s poor as it takes disaster risk reduction into account. UNDP concludes that during the period 2000-2004, an average of 326 climate disasters were reported each year, with some 262 million people being affected annually, more than double the level in the first half of the 1980s. It has further suggested that development assistance to reduce the risks of disaster will deliver seven times higher returns than post-disaster relief. As noted by the UN Secretary-General, it is less expensive to invest in disaster risk reduction (DRR) than it is to continue to pay the price of post-disaster recovery. A good example of this approach is evident in the joint UN International Strategy on Disaster Reduction (UN/ISDR) and World Health Organization (WHO) Safe Hospitals Campaign, the focus of this year’s IDRR, which argues that disaster proofing new hospital/medical based infrastructure will only result in a four percent average cost increase.
The second challenge is outlined in a statement made last week by UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator John Holms, who stressed the importance of creating linkages and synergies between the DRR and climate adaptation agendas, but cautioned that convergence between DRR and adaptation was not yet a reality in terms of the current round of negotiations. Speaking at the same event, the Danish Ambassador to the UN also questioned whether climate negotiators where fully aware of the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA) and its relationship with adaptation under the UNFCCC. In the lead-up to the Second World Conference on Disaster Reduction (WCDR) in January 2005, the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties was reluctant to engage on or infer strong political support for, the inclusion of the climate and risk reduction agenda in the negotiations of the HFA.
Since then, however, political momentum has built up, notably with the devastating impacts of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami and 2005 Hurricane Katrina, which both drew considerable media attention. Parties to the UNFCCC have acknowledged the relevance of, and called for enhanced action on, disaster risk reduction in advancing adaptation in the Bali Action Plan and the Nairobi Work Programme on Impacts, Vulnerability and Adaptation to Climate Change. Similarly, during the 2008 Atlantic Hurricane season, which saw several destructive hurricanes make landfall in the Caribbean and US, the twenty-ninth session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, held in September 2008, supported the proposal by Norway and UN/ISDR for the development of a Special Report, to assess policies, measures, tools and practices for managing extreme events risk to advance effective adaptation.
The third challenge involves the coherence and timing of international action. While not overlooking the importance that will come from an outcome in Copenhagen that addresses DRR and the enhanced action that is so needed, it is more likely that those responsible for the ‘global development budget’ – the finance, aid and development ministries – will be the ones called upon to urgently make the much needed investment in global disaster prevention. In the context of a global disasters bill of upwards of US$80 billion, the world’s poor do not have the time to wait until December 2009 to reap the benefits of a transformative global development budget.
Tomorrow, 9 October 2008, UN member States will begin their next round of informal consultations on the outcome document for the Review Conference on Financing for Development, which will be held in Doha, Qatar, in November 2008. Most are cautious of overloading the Doha outcome, not only in light of the current global financial crisis, but also due to the fact that the last round of global development talks (Doha, Monterrey and Johannesburg) have delivered less than expected. However, the current working draft outcome document recognizes that the “increased costs from damage to the Earth’s environment and climate change” represent one of the key challenges facing the world community (paragraph 59).
In this respect, we are reminded of the words of the Chair of the Group of 77 and China, Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer of Antigua and Barbuda, when he said the “conference will provide a reality check on the implementation of commitments assumed in Monterrey by all parties and a platform to address the 60 odd year old global economic and financial architecture and governance arrangements and assess the progress towards the achievement of goals and commitments and identify constraints to further implementation. It is also charged to consider new and emerging issues which could adversely impact our development.” It remains to be seen, though, whether finance ministers will agree, in the context of the Monterey review, on the framework for a comprehensive global development budget in Doha, and allow climate and disasters experts to translate this framework of commitments into reality in Copenhagen.
Spencer, B. 2008. Statement to the thirty-second Meeting of the Foreign Ministers of the Group of 77 and China (26 September);