Even though earthquake-prone Japan has seen numerous warnings that massive, devastating temblors could strike at any time, including in the Tokyo metropolitan area and in the Nankai Trough off the Pacific coast, data shows the nation’s youth don’t seem to have the same sense of preparing for a disaster that older generations do.

A poll by map publisher Zenrin Co. last summer showed that 32.9 percent of 1,897 respondents in their 20s and 40.7 percent of 2,420 people in their 30s recognized the importance of being prepared for natural disasters.

But with age this increased to 44.2 percent of pollees in their 40s, 51.1 percent in their 50s and 57.8 percent in their 60s.

One social entrepreneur is seeking to raise awareness of the need for disaster preparedness among young people by changing the way efforts to mitigate the effects of natural calamities are perceived.

Misaki Tanaka said of note was the lack of interest females showed toward preparing for a disaster, with many of the 100 women in their 20s and 30s she interviewed seemingly negative on the issue — an attitude she believes discourages them from taking precautions.

“They said disaster prevention efforts were not cool and cost too much. They were also not sure whether such measures will produce results,” Tanaka said.

“I myself had no interest in disaster prevention and didn’t prepare anything for possible disasters,” she added.

A sense of crisis drove the 26-year-old Nara native to establish Bosai Girl (Disaster Prevention Girl) in a bid to change the notion of disaster preparedness among young females.

“If we can change their attitude, it could result in spreading disaster prevention efforts,” Tanaka said.

Tanaka set up Bosai Girl with two friends in August 2013 while working for a nonprofit organization that provided reconstruction support in the Tohoku region, which was hit hard by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

Through Bosai Girl’s website, Tanaka started providing information such as about items needed in the event of a disaster, and useful apps. After a while, she decided to fully commit to the organization, with Bosai Girl now comprising 15 volunteers, or “bosai girls.”

Their work includes business promotions, fundraising, and information on community disaster prevention efforts.

One of the projects is creating new types of evacuations drills.

Tanaka said the conventional drills many Japanese participate in have contributed to the negative image among young people toward disaster preparedness.

“Many young people I have talked to said they didn’t enjoy or didn’t see the point of disaster drills at elementary schools or junior high schools,” Tanaka said. “I came to realize if we could transform the conventional disaster drills into something meaningful, it could change the notion of disaster prevention and change such drills nationwide.”

Tanaka noted that everything is prepared in advance in conventional drills, including the venue for the mock disasters and evacuation routes, and teachers and HR personnel are tasked with issuing instructions to students and employees.

But such drills aren’t necessarily realistic if a disaster struck at a location other than those schools or workplaces, Tanaka said.

In response, Bosai Girl has created “next-generation version evacuation drills,” where in one example participants can choose the safest evacuation route and find an evacuation site by themselves after leaving a designated starting place.

Tanaka said in this drill Bosai Girl staff don’t provide clues or maps, given nobody knows when and where they will be when disaster hits.

After the drill, participants and Bosai Girl staff discuss how it went and what can be improved.

Another drill involves Google’s location-based smartphone game Ingress, in which participants visit certain “portals,” notable evacuation spots designated by Bosai Girl in advance. “By introducing a game element to evacuation drills, we want people to enjoy them,” Tanaka said.

Bosai Girl conducted the drill using Ingress for workers at Recruit Holdings Co. in July and plans to hold one for the general public in Tokyo’s Shibuya district on Aug. 31.

The group has also received inquiries from companies and municipalities, and more recently launched a brand for disaster-preparedness goods.

“Around December 2013, we received an inquiry from ad agency Trademark Kochi, which asked us whether we can send out something on disaster prevention from Kochi Prefecture with them,” Tanaka said. If a huge earthquake occurred in the Nankai Trough, Kochi would probably be hit hard.

The collaboration with the firm resulted in launching the brand SABOI last March, which includes disaster goods such as a pair of pink pumps that can be folded, and a pouch with little items such as a mask, small flashlight, whistle, hair elastic and bobby pin.

“Conventional disaster kits didn’t include a hair elastic or bobby pin,” which can be of help for women in emergencies when they can’t wash their hair, Tanaka said.

Bosai Girl and Trademark Kochi have produced 1,000 items each, but they are almost sold out, Tanaka said.

Besides holding seminars, Bosai Girl has held unique events in an effort to attract young people who have little interest in disaster preparedness.

Bosai Machikon, a mixer held in July 2014, drew 30 young men and women, who learned about disaster preparedness through workshops while eating and drinking. “We wanted the participants not only to become couples but also to think about disaster prevention together,” Tanaka said.

The participants learned how to stop bleeding, utilizing such daily commodities as plastic wrap and newspapers, and where best to position furniture in a house.

Although Tanaka’s activities have expanded, things didn’t always go smoothly. After the 2011 earthquake hit, just before Tanaka joined Internet services company CyberAgent Inc. after graduating from Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, she pondered ways to help the disaster victims, discussing the issue constantly with her university friends.

Tanaka said she felt a gap between what she had actually done compared to her friends and how she wanted to help, as well as what she was doing at the company, which targeted mobile customers.

After some thought, Tanaka decided to focus on working at the firm in order to acquire basic business skills and knowledge that she believed would be necessary to help with the Tohoku reconstruction effort.

“I concluded I couldn’t be of help with reconstruction efforts in Tohoku since I didn’t have skills and physical strength at that time,” Tanaka said.

Tanaka put thoughts of Tohoku aside, worked hard and managed to achieve her goal, saying she learned the basics of business and how to communicate with others to pursue projects.

Around June 2012, she was offered a post by the nonprofit organization Tasukeai Japan to be in charge of reconstruction efforts in Fukushima Prefecture.

The organization, which is headed by one of Tanaka’s lecturers at the university, has engaged in putting local information from Tohoku online.

“The organization regards information as one of the lifelines,” Tanaka said, adding their mission was to convey the right information on what was happening in disaster-affected areas.

Tanaka left CyberAgent and joined Tasukeai Japan in August 2012. She was tasked with recruiting people in Fukushima Prefecture and training them as “information rangers” to upload videos or pictures.

“People have completely different opinions and backgrounds and sorting that out took the most amount of time,” Tanaka said.

Tanaka moved to the organization’s Tokyo office after handing over her duties to the staff in Fukushima, and turned her attention to promoting disaster prevention efforts in general.

She said that while working in Tokyo, she also had the opportunity to give lectures and hold workshops.

Before deciding to fully commit to Bosai Girl, Tanaka received emails from females who wanted to join the team. The number of “likes” on the group’s Facebook page have increased to about 860 in the five months since the organization opened the page in Aug. 2013.

Tanaka said her goal at Bosai Girl is to make disaster preparedness common. By the end of March 2017 she would like to increase the number of people nationwide who make contact with Bosai Girl to 160,000 — the same as the number of fire department staff in Japan. “We want them to take action for disaster prevention . . . be it ever so small,” Tanaka said. “It’s OK for them just to click ‘like’ on our Facebook page. People won’t click ‘like’ if they don’t have awareness of disaster preparedness.”

source: japantime

Standing in front of a door which is the only part of her former school left standing, this Nepali teenager clutches a dog-eared book recovered from the rubble. 

Three months after a devastating earthquake struck the Himalayan country, Pabitrya Paudyal, 13, is one of a million children who continue to live in areas at high risk of landslides and floods following two devastating earthquakes on April 25 and May 12.

The destroyed Chaturmala Higher Secondary School where she once went is in Muchowk, Gorkha, one of the districts most severely affected by the two disasters.

Four teachers died in the school, putting them among the almost 9,000 people who perished in the two natural disasters little more than two weeks apart. 

Inadequate shelter, school closures and a lack of safe water and sanitation are the three biggest concerns for Nepali children according to Unicef.   

 

+9

Family bond: Rita Shrestha bottle-feeds her two-year-old daughter, Elina al Krishna Shivakoti, in their family's earthquake-damaged restaurant in a bazar in Dolakha District, epicentre of the May 12 earthquake

In a series of haunting images released by the charity Saraswati Saru Magar, 15, stands beside her three-year-old nephew outside a temporary shelter in Sitalpati Village Development Committee in Sindhuli.

Saraswati, whose house was damaged during the earthquake, has been living in the temporary shelter built from the remains.

She says she really misses going to her school, despite it being about a two-hour walk each way, saying: 'I am afraid of the ongoing aftershocks and constantly feel the fear of death.'

In a further photo Dil Bahadur Darain holds his 13-year-old granddaughter Anjali Darain's hand outside their house in Salyantar Village Development Committee in Dhading, another badly hit area. Anjali lost her father, mother and younger brother to the quake in April 25.

And in a third Rita Shrestha bottle-feeds her two-year-old daughter, Elina al Krishna Shivakoti, in their family's earthquake-damaged restaurant in a bazar in Dolakha District, epicentre of the May 12 quake. 

As the rainy season takes hold, access to the most severely affected areas is becoming increasingly challenging, threatening these children's access to water, sanitation, education and health services and putting them at a higher risk of exploitation and abuse, including trafficking.

More than 10,000 children have been identified as acutely malnourished since the first earthquake. These include more than 1,000 children with severely acute malnutrition. 

 Keeping on: A young girl stands inside a temporary learning centre in Shree Chaturmala Higher Secondary School in Muchowk, Gorkha

 

Enjoying the sun: Two adolescent girls wash clothes near rubble from destroyed homes in the earthquake-affected town of Singati, near Charikot in Dolakha District

More 200 children remain without a parent or caregiver, and more than 600 have lost one or both of their parents to the quakes. More than 32,000 classrooms have been destroyed and nearly 900,000 houses have been damaged or destroyed.

Children interviewed by aid agencies for a major survey published Saturday expressed worry about the lack of privacy and space, with younger children fearing attacks by wild animals, and girls feeling vulnerable to sexual harassment.

'Living under the sky increases our exposure to abuse,' an adolescent girl from Sindhupalchowk, a district badly hit by the earthquakes, told an aid worker. 

At least 2.8million people, around 10 per cent of Nepal's population, need urgent help according to a UN report published earlier this month.

source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk

Islamabad—Speakers at a seminar on Friday linked the natural disasters with health challenges saying the government needed to double efforts to deal with challenges in the natural calamity-hit areas. Minister for National Health Services Regulations & Coordination (NHSRC) Saira Afzal Tarar, President Heartfile Pakistan Dr Sania Nishtar, Federal Secretary Seerat Asghar, President of The Rockefeller Foundation Dr Judith Rodin were among the speakers highlighting the health woes of people living in natural disaster-hit areas.

Speaking on the occasion, National Health Services Minister Saira Afzal Tarar said, “Our country is frequently challenged by natural disasters; hence we are fully cognizant of the need to accord this area priority.”

A report ‘Planetary Health Commission Report’ was also launched on the occasion. Health Minister said environmental challenges had been double edged for us in terms of policy responses. Monsoon flooding brings in its wake acute challenges of an emergency nature but on the other hand they are the slow and insidious water shortage issues, she gave an example.

We see evidence of both, day to day, she said. She said the government’s foremost concern was to ensure safety of the population there and get them on the road to recovery and rehabilitation soon.

A new report released today by The Rockefeller Foundation-Lancet Commission on Planetary Health, calls for immediate, global action to protect the health of human civilization and the natural systems on which it depends. The report, Safeguarding Human Health in the Anthropocene Epoch, provides the first ever comprehensive examination of evidence showing how the health and well-being of future generations is being jeopardised by the unprecedented degradation of the planet’s natural resources and ecological systems.

The report was written by a Commission of 15 leading academics and policymakers from institutions in 8 countries, including Dr. Sania Nishtar, President Heartfile Pakistan. It demonstrates how human activity and development have pushed to near breaking point the boundaries of the natural systems that support and sustain human civilizations.

“The Rockefeller Foundation-Lancet Planetary Health Commission has issued a dire warning: human action is undermining the resilience of the earth’s natural systems, and in so doing we are compromising our own resilience, along with our health and, frankly, our future,” said Dr Judith Rodin, President of The Rockefeller Foundation. “We are in a symbiotic relationship with our planet, and we must start to value that in very real ways.

sumber: http://pakobserver.net/

In April and May, two massive earthquakes in Nepal killed more than 8,400 people, injured 20,000 and reduced 300,000 houses to rubble. In March, Cyclone Pam destroyed homes, schools, infrastructure and livelihoods on the Pacific island of Vanuatu, affecting half the population, including 82,000 children. Both nations will take years to recover.

The number and severity of disasters is increasing (see 'Catastrophic rise'). Annual global economic losses from geophysical, hydro-meteorological and climatological events could almost double from their 2005 levels by 2030 to exceed US$300 billion if the past decade's trend continues. The figures may worsen as climate change, globalization, technological change, urbanization and political and economic instability put more people and assets at risk.

Improved disaster-risk management and resilience is essential for sustainable societies¹. But the science of natural hazards is too fragmented to influence policy effectively. Seismologists, for example, had long warned in specialist journals that Nepal's Kathmandu region was due a large earthquake. Local politicians did not strengthen construction codes, reinforce old buildings or inform the population about potential risks. Had such measures been implemented — as they have in Japan, California and Chile — the death toll would have been lower (see ‘Three lessons yet to be learned’). Similarly, structures in flood-prone areas can be elevated; those in cyclone zones wind-proofed; and the public educated about such possibilities.

Sadly, hazard mitigation is not a vote-winner. It pits long-range investments against short-term political cycles — even though it is cheaper to prevent losses than to rebuild after them^{2, 3}. Reinforcing the levees of New Orleans, Louisiana, against hurricane storm surges would have cost ten times less than rebuilding neighbourhoods after Hurricane Katrina. It is more politically expedient to respond afterwards when constituents are demanding assistance. Public awareness of the scale of disaster risks is hindered by the breadth and complexity of research, spanning the natural, social and health sciences, law, humanities and engineering.

In March, governments met under the auspices of the United Nations in Sendai, Japan, to negotiate an international agreement to reverse the rising trend of disaster losses. Unlike previous voluntary agreements, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 has set measureable targets. One goal is to lower average death rates and economic losses in 2020–30 relative to 2005–15 (by what percentage is not specified).

For the Sendai agreement to succeed, an open and comprehensive source of vetted information on disaster-risk reduction is needed. It would provide evidence for monitoring progress towards the goals. We call on the scientific community to set up an international assessment process to feed such information into disaster policy and practice.

Splintered approach

The community of disaster-risk researchers is small and splintered into disciplines that are focused on single natural hazards. Only recently have seismologists worked with geodesists to determine how changes in Earth's shape and gravity field apply loads to faults⁴. Disaster-medicine researchers rarely meet public-health professionals or read social-science journals⁵. Local or indigenous knowledge and the on-the-ground experiences of emergency managers and humanitarian agencies are often excluded.

Source: Munichre/Natcatservice

 

Governments need holistic solutions, not incremental proposals that solve one aspect but ignore wider ramifications. A move towards integrated disaster-risk research — bringing together disciplines to focus on particular problems and social needs — is filling this void⁶. But lack of a critical overview of what is known about disaster risk leaves politicians without guidance.

This is why early political efforts to reduce disaster losses foundered. The UN designated the 1990s as the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction, and in 1999 created the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) to coordinate national efforts. In the absence of a legally binding treaty with targets, and consequences for not achieving them, UNISDR has been largely limited to promoting risk awareness and facilitating institutional development.

In 2005, some 168 countries signed up to the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA), pledging to reduce disaster losses by 2015. Again, this did not occur. Of the ten costliest disasters between 1980 and 2014, those that happened after the agreement were more than four times as expensive as those in the decade before. Increased vulnerability and exposure account for some of the increase — but not all.

At least 35 nations, including Colombia, Brazil and India, now include disaster risk and reduction in their development strategies. Most do not. Many financial donors view disasters as interruptions in development, not as risks that need to be managed. Disaster-risk-assessment reports are too broad to guide municipalities and nations. For example, UNISDR's Global Assessment Reports or the World Economic Forum's Global Risks reports provide global and thematic overviews, often consider risks qualitatively rather than quantitatively, and neglect the collective impacts of personal choices such as whether to purchase insurance or relocate⁷.

The Sendai framework calls on governments to do four things: understand disaster risk; strengthen risk governance to manage risks across all sectors; invest in risk-reduction measures that promote resilience; and enhance disaster preparedness and responses so that nations “build back better” in their recovery. It tasks research networks with focusing on the root causes of disasters and probable emergent risks; supporting action by local communities and authorities; and engaging policy-makers.

Review mechanism

A coherent science-based assessment process for disaster-risk reduction should be created to provide sound knowledge to inform decision-making, and to assist governments worldwide in setting policies and goals and to identify research gaps. By taking an integrated approach, such an assessment would go beyond previous proposals for international panels on natural hazards and disasters⁸.

Disaster-risk reports should identify what is known and where there are gaps in our knowledge. They must summarize information relevant to the Sendai targets. And they should examine the root causes of vulnerabilities and exposure, the potential socio-economic impacts of natural hazards and the ways to reduce (if not prevent) human and economic losses. Finally, such an assessment should provide a mechanism for knowledge transfer from research to practice, ensuring that the science is useful, usable and used⁹.

A high-level, transdisciplinary body of international experts in disaster-risk reduction should be established by national governments and international organizations dealing with disaster risks, with input from various sectors and civil society. Such a body would have the reach and influence — from local communities, businesses and governments — to raise people's awareness. The same findings presented by an independent scientist or article would not.

The main practical difficulties will be in incorporating the field's diverse information and practices into an assessment, and demonstrating to policy-makers that it need not take a extreme event to cause catastrophic human consequences¹⁰. Government support for the process will be essential. Synergies must be found by combining and consolidating disaster-risk reduction efforts across UN institutions.

Disaster-risk management, climate change and sustainable development targets will need to be aligned. For example, there should be a coordinated assessment of the state of knowledge in disaster risk and its utility for supporting the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Knowledge transfer will make community-based resilience efforts possible. Illuminating findings, best practices and state-of-the-art modelling must become part of the evidence-based strategy for disaster-risk reduction.

source: http://www.nature.com