All talk no action, says regional expert

Samisoni Pareti

After the tsunami... the damage left behind. Photos: UNDP

The devastating April 2 tsunami that carved a path of destruction in western Solomon Islands tested the islands of the Pacific’s disaster risk reduction plan and found it wanting. Despite the catastrophic obliteration of lives and properties of the Boxing Day Tsunami in the Indian Ocean only 27 months ago and the Aitape Tsunami in 1998 that took 2000 lives in Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands was hopelessly unprepared and ill-equipped when giant waves smashed areas and villages that fateful morning.

Experts say the same would be true had the disaster struck any other islands of the Pacific.

Out of the 22 countries and territories in the region, only one—and it’s not the Solomon Islands—that has a national action plan on disaster risk management. But that plan by Vanuatu is yet to be operational.

In addition, none of the islands has installed a working tsunami early warning system nor has work started on establishing a Pacific Ocean early warning mechanism.

To be fair though, the region is not entirely complacent. Since Aitape and more so after the Boxing Day Tsunami, the Pacific has been busy pursuing disaster risk reduction and disaster management efforts.

In fact the same week those islands of the Western Solomons were declared a disaster zone, Pacific governments representatives were presenting their strategies for enhancing early warning systems at an international disaster management conference in Malaysia.

STRATEGY

That strategy was borne out of the Regional Framework for Action 2005 - 2015 paper on Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities to Disasters that islands leaders adopted at their annual Pacific Islands Forum summit in Papua New Guinea in 2005. The framework matches the concepts on regional security outlined in the Pacific Plan of the Pacific Islands Forum, of which all 16 independent countries of the region including Australia and New Zealand are members.

Picking up the pieces... tsunami left 6000 families homeless.

Indeed 10 days after the April 2 Tsunami, disaster management officials of the Pacific who are members of SOPAC, the Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission, convened in Fiji to review efforts to formulate national action plans (NAP) on disaster risk reduction and disaster management for all member countries.

Also in attendance were donor agencies and civil society groups that have joined SOPAC member countries to form the Pacific Partnership Network Initiative. Under construction as well is the Pacific Disaster Net, a disaster-risk management web-based database.

But are these all a matter of just talk and no action?

At least one disaster management expert in the Pacific certainly thinks so. Unwilling to be named, the expert said too much lip service is being paid by the governments in the Pacific and their regional organisations on the matter of disaster risk reduction and disaster management.

“Apart from the rhetoric after the Boxing Day Tsunami, other sources or pronouncements that need to be reviewed include the Pacific Plan,” said the expert.

“One should ask whether the Plan is truly risk sensitised.

Temporary shelters... provided for those affected by the tsumani.

“I’m not talking about slipping in meaningless phrases about disaster management and risk reduction in a plan without any implementation strategy.

“In addition, the Regional Framework for Action 2005-2015 was endorsed by the Forum in Madang (Papua New Guinea).

“One should ask SOPAC, apart from talk where is the implementation? 

“There are a lot of meetings but at this rate of implementation, just how long will all this take?

LIP SERVICE

“In the region, it is a known fact that all major capital investments are donor (EU, World Bank, Asian Development Bank, AusAID, NZAID, Japan, etc) funded. 

“It will be interesting to get a response on their strategies for addressing the risk in their development projects. 

“RAMSI, for instance, is “rebuilding” the Solomon Islands economy. But apart from the airy fairy governance issues, where is the meat in addressing the natural resources opportunities and what are the risks in developing or expanding these sectors?

“Many of these initiatives pay lip service to sustainable development not realising that disaster risk management is the flip side of the same coin. 

“There’s too much theory in sustainable development models and not enough experience and understanding of the real vulnerabilities and exposure to risk.

“In other words, you can’t manage what you don’t understand or can’t measure. The whole skills, experience and resources issue in the region is a can of worms.

“The lights are on but no one’s home. At the end of the day, whether it is in the kitchen or on the playing field, you know the only thing that counts is performance. 

Life goes on.

“Examine the performance, if indeed you have anything to assess, it should speak louder than words. Everything else are promises and talk from textbook experts.”

SOPAC’s director Cristelle Pratt could not respond in time for this edition. Straight after the Pacific Partnership Network Initiative meeting in Suva in mid-April, she had to leave for the Pacific Energy Ministers Meeting in the Cook Islands.

TANGIBLE RESULTS

But the convenor of the Suva conference, the community risk adviser at SOPAC—Mosese Sikivou—believes such meetings are producing tangible results.

Vanuatu will soon test-run its NAP for example and Marshall Islands will soon finish its own. At the Suva meeting, plans for the formulation of NAP (National Action Plans) for four more islands nations—Cook Islands, Papua New Guinea, Samoa and Solomon Islands—were approved. Fiji and Tonga would be the next lot.

The former Fijian permanent secretary responsible for disaster management said work on NAP should speed up when the European Union natural disaster facility of F$2 million comes on stream this year.

“When we are talking about the vulnerability of small islands states we have in the Pacific, certainly you have to talk about risk management more often, engage more meaningfully at national level and go down to local and community level.

“So that we can really develop some successful inroads right down to community level because ultimately this whole thing is about safety.

“It’s about protecting lives and properties.

“If you are only going to talk about it during the cyclone season, or after an event like the one in the Solomon Islands, it is not going to really mean anything.

“What you’ve got to do is to make sure that as much as possible, planning and budgeting at national level actually reflects concerns related to disaster risk management on a very practical level, that countries are very rigorous in their pursuit of things like building codes, rigorous in their pursuit of community safety.”

Sikivou said there is a fundamental difference between a disaster plan which all countries of the Pacific have to a NAP on disaster risk reduction and disaster management.

“Disaster plans as they are currently framed cover all phases of disaster management-prevention, preparedness, mitigation, response, recovery and rehabilitation.

“What the plans do is to set up a list of arrangement to say who is responsible for what when an alert is issued, what agency should provide assistance for this activity and so on and so forth.

“So the disaster plan is if you like a set of arrangements that countries can activate in relation to a particular phase of disaster.

“NAP, on the other hand, is a list of development priorities, which is different.

“What it identifies is a list of development priorities that a country can consider in the course of a disaster.

“For example, to improve community safety and communication during times of disaster, one of the initiatives that can surface under NAP is the development of a fully functional communication network.

WHY RUSH?

“Another issue that can come under that is the strengthening of building codes which if you like is really not within the domain or scope of coverage of your normal run of the mill disaster plan.”

But why the rush now to adopt NAPs, why wasn’t this done five or 10 years ago?

Sikivou admitted that disaster risk management was never high on any government’s priority list. The challenge he felt would be to mainstream the matter of disaster risk reduction and disaster management.

“May be if we continue with this work, it won’t be an issue like it has been. It’s not going to be just another plan.

“I remember in Fiji when we were talking about gender mainstreaming some nine years ago, some people particularly in government wondered why this was a big issue.

“But over time, it has been accepted that this is part and parcel of the way we should be doing business in the country.

“So because of our annual experiences with adverse weather and so forth, the need to mainstream disaster risk management at different levels within a country won’t be an issue.

“Some of the countries have faced up to it much earlier, particularly some of the smaller islands countries and they are dealing with it.

“I am aware that Kiribati is effectively looking at a tool for a comprehensive hazard risk management to help develop some priorities.

“That kind of revised focus is something ideally you would like to have from a number of countries.

“You know you talk about all the developments that are taking place down the coast, at the end of the day you have to make sure that in doing these things, you don’t put the community at further risk.

“Whether you are depleting water sources or whether you are helping to increase coastal erosion, marine habitats and all these kinds of things.

“All these contribute to community safety.”