Georgina Newman: Poor countries need help to prevent disaster deaths

COMMENT

Flick on any news channel and you will see catastrophic images of nature venting its fury. It could be children clinging desperately to rooftops for survival from floods, or frantic fathers clawing at the rubble to find family members after an earthquake.

Last year alone there were 380 registered catastrophes and 60,000 people lost their lives. The Boxing Day earthquake in the Iranian city of Bam accounted for three-quarters of these.

Alarmingly, these figures will increase unless we get real about planning for acts of God.

Over the past week tropical storms have lashed the coastline of Florida and battered the Caribbean. Haiti bore the brunt of the devastation, which left 1650 people dead and 1280 still missing in swollen rivers or entombed in mud.

Florida and the Caribbean are both highly vulnerable to hurricanes. Florida has the second-highest storm surges in the world and the threat to life is exacerbated by the fact that 80 per cent of the state's population lives in coastal areas. But although Florida has been pounded by four hurricanes in two months only 120 people have died.

The death toll is trifling in comparison to Haiti's losses and you don't have to be a meteorologist to figure out why - the United States is one of the richest countries in the world and Haiti one of the poorest. The US can afford high-tech early-warning systems and storm-proof housing; Haiti cannot.

Large numbers of people live in disaster-prone regions such as low-lying and coastal areas or small island states.

The United Nations calculates that 96 per cent of deaths from natural disasters happen in poor countries. They lack the infrastructure and institutional capacity to cope with crises. But, most importantly, they lack economic resources to prepare for disasters.

According to insurance giant Munich Reinsurance, the cost of dealing with the aftermath of natural disasters far outweighs the cost of prevention. And that cost has doubled every decade, from $NZ75.7 billion in the 1960s to nearly $606 billion in the 1990s.

Poor countries are also particularly vulnerable to disasters because their economies tend to be heavily reliant on agriculture. Hurricane Ivan has completely wiped out Trinidad's main export, nutmeg, and the cost of reconstruction has been put at more than $4.5 billion - four times Trinidad's annual economic output.

Yet, as aid agencies know, you don't need sophisticated software to temper the consequences of tempests. Millions of lives and livelihoods can be saved by simple means, such as building cyclone shelters, enforcing building codes and installing early-warning systems for communities.

Aid has already been distributed to thousands of destitute Haitian families. Sadly, one of the most urgently needed items is body bags for the disposal of bloated corpses still being plucked from the mud and water.

The agony need not have been so catastrophic if more had been done to prepare for these regular occurrences. Haiti is still reeling from the aftermath of flash floods in May that left another 2000 people dead. It is lurching from disaster to disaster and teetering on the brink of ruin.

One of the reasons for the severity of devastation is Haiti's dependence on charcoal for fuel.

This has led to widespread deforestation, which has made the mountainous country extremely vulnerable to mudslides.

Astoundingly the UN reported that tropical storm Jeanne killed only 11 people in the neighbouring Dominican Republic, despite the rain being stronger.

The sharp contrast is attributed to people using gas instead of charcoal, and effective early-warning systems.

It is obvious that the best way to spare lives is to prevent or limit the effects of the emergency in the first place. Every dollar spent on disaster mitigation will prevent the loss of $7 when disaster strikes.

As the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, has said: "More effective disaster prevention would save not only tens of millions of dollars but tens of thousands of lives. The benefits seen would be the disasters that did not happen."

Aid agencies have long known prevention is better than cure. World Vision funds community-level projects that help to minimise damage in disaster-prone regions.

Training centres have been established around the world to teach communities disaster management techniques, such as how to build safe, strong, cheap housing, and to teach them emergency drills.

Poor countries need to act in the lull before the storm, otherwise aid agencies are simply papering over the cracks. Emergencies do not have to leave a trail of helpless victims dependent on the magnanimity of benevolent states or aid agencies.

In Haiti, World Vision has spearheaded tree-planting programmes and composting training to improve soil erosion. It is not headline-grabbing but it costs a lot less than emergency aid - especially to those people who pay with their lives.

* Georgina Newman is an advocate for World Vision.