Recently I was reading an interesting book called The
Vulnerability of Cities (Professor Mark Pelling, King’s College London) and would
like to share a number of interesting lessons learnt based on a few quotes from
Chapter 4 – Urban Governance and Disaster.
Sharing these quotes presents GfGD readers with the opportunity to:
1) Have a discussion based on these extracts
2) Consider examples and lessons learnt, to enhance
our capacity to provide information and knowledge
So, in a rather short entry here goes:
QUOTE 1 = “...The
World Bank’s Disaster Management Facility (here and here), established in 1998 to provide a mechanism for feeding disaster
prevention into development planning and to improve emergency response lending.
The World Bank recognises that rapid urbanisationgreatly increases disaster
risk and has sought to integrate disaster management within its urban
development project lending.” Extract
from p72
QUOTE 2 = “...one such
scheme, which has met with some success, was the Maharashtra Emergency
Earthquake Rehabilitation Programme, launched in response to the 1993
earthquake in the Indian State of Maharashtra, which damaged 230,000 houses in
rural and small urban settlements. The programme gained financial support from
the World Bank and has been managed by two national NGOs. It encouraged
community participation at the village level, with beneficiaries consulted
throughout the programme cycle, although the programme fell short of handing
over decision making responsibility to local groups. Whilst project managers
were initially sceptical of the community participation process, they later
came to recognise it as an effective tool for dealing with difficulties that
arose during implementation. It is reported that for grassroots actors,
involvement in the reconstruction process helped in overcoming the trauma. The
participatory process also opened many informal channels of communication between
the people and the government, improving adaptation potential.” Extract
from p73
I think this next quote is very helpful. It goes to show
what can be accomplished when numerous actors work together, and I’m sure could
also be scaled-up, or used in other areas of disaster: urban, rural or
geophysical in origin,
QUOTE 3 = “The media
can be usefully brought to increase popular awareness of risk and of promoting
preparedness. One particularly innovative use of the media comes from the
Pan-American Health Organisation (PAHO)’s work in Central America, and soap
operas as the most-listened-to programmes. PAHO has teamed up with NGOs to
broadcast an educational soap opera before and during the hurricane season.” Extract from p75
And lastly a rather poignant and hard-hitting truth,
QUOTE 4 = “...Disasters
are often linked to failures in the dissemination of information from expert or
non-expert sources that could have provided a space for mitigation, preparation
or evacuation...” Extract from p77
What are peoples
thought’s concerning these quotes? Are there any that you would like to add to,
disagree with, or agree with? It would be interesting to hear what you have to
say regarding this matter. Feel free to use this blog as a discussion forum
(the quotes above are all numbered to make referring to them easier).
