MANILA, Philippines - The year 2015 proved to be a historic one for countries prone to natural disasters like the Philippines.

Three international agreements related to disasters were crafted this year, a development that Philippine officials believe reflected the growing awareness about the need for more resilient communities and economies.

The Sendai Framework, which recognizes the role of the state and other stakeholders in reducing disaster risk, was adopted last March. The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Disaster Risk Reduction Framework, meanwhile, was approved in Iloilo City in September.

A long-awaited climate agreement was also adopted in Paris in December, but not without protests by some groups who believe that poor countries were shortchanged during the negotiations.

“The year 2015 was a year of both challenges and opportunities,” National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) executive director Alexander Pama told The STAR in an interview.

“It was a year of challenges as we have seen and experienced the effects of strong typhoons… It was also a year of opportunity because respected groups like the UNISDR (United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction) and other counties said we are doing what is right,” he added.

Pama claimed that the Philippines, a country visited by about 20 typhoons every year, played a key role in the adoption of all three agreements.

With regard to the Sendai Framework, a 15-year non-binding agreement that aims to substantially reduce disaster-related deaths and losses, Pama said the Philippines pushed for gender sensitivity and the participation of migrant workers.

He said the country also lobbied for the inclusion of pre-disaster risk assessment, a concept now embodied in paragraph 23 of the agreement.

“We contributed important aspects to the Sendai Framework, particularly in pre-disaster risk assessment and understanding disasters,” Pama said.

“It was a very significant milestone in terms of disaster risk reduction and we played a very significant role in the passage of that framework,” he said.

The framework has seven global targets: to substantially reduce global disaster mortality, reduce the number of affected people globally, reduce direct disaster economic loss, substantially reduce disaster damage to critical infrastructure and disruption of basic services, substantially enhance international cooperation to developing countries through adequate and sustainable support, substantially increase the availability of and access to early warning systems and disaster risk information and assessments all by 2030, and substantially increase the number of countries with national and local disaster risk reduction strategies by 2020. 

To achieve these goals, countries need to undertake four priorities of action, namely to understand disaster risk, strengthen disaster risk governance, invest in disaster risk reduction and enhance disaster preparedness for effective response and rehabilitation.

Non-binding

The APEC Disaster Risk Reduction Framework, meanwhile, was described by Pama as a document “practically authored by the Philippines.”

“For the first time in the history of APEC, it now has disaster risk reduction framework,” Pama said.

The document, however, is also non-binding and there have been doubts as to whether it could really promote international cooperation on disaster response. Pama, however, believes that the adoption of the framework is in itself an important development.

“It may not be binding but we now have a basis and framework for the conduct of activities related to emergency preparedness,” he said.

Pama stressed that the “new normal” – a term used to describe unpredictable and increasing frequency and magnitude of disasters – requires stronger cooperation among APEC member-economies.

The framework, the first document on disaster preparedness adopted by APEC since the economic bloc was formed in 1989, emphasizes the importance of prevention and mitigation, preparedness and response, recovery and rehabilitation.

It also acknowledges the role of the private sector in promoting disaster resilience and sustainable development. APEC member-economies have also agreed to craft an action plan to implement, monitor and evaluate activities related to the framework. 

Controversial climate deal

The 21st Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) drew mixed reviews. While delegates were able to prove wrong the doomsayers who predicted that nothing significant would come out of the event, some critics are not satisfied with the outcome, which has been criticized as vague on key issues including climate finance.

Under the agreement, countries will work to hold global warming “well below” two degrees Celsius and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

The Philippines and other vulnerable countries pushed for the lowering of the UNFCCC’s temperature goal to 1.5 degrees Celsius from 2 degrees, saying this would ensure their survival. 

Parties will also stop the increase in greenhouse gas emissions, which has been linked to global warming. The agreement, however, is silent on countries that failed to meet their emission reduction goals.

Some groups also claimed that the agreement did not have enough provisions on climate financing for countries vulnerable to climate change.

Rodne Galicha, Philippine manager of The Climate Reality Project, said while the agreement may become “a spark of hope to save the planet,” it did not have much to say about loss and damage mechanisms.

“Ambitious it may seem, there is still a great imbalance – no clear finance mechanism for loss and damage. This agreement is useless if countries are unable to ratify and implement – the challenge lies on governments and their people,” Galicha said in a recent statement. 

“Historical responsibility, liability and compensation are not addressed, hence, most vulnerable countries which experienced massive losses and damage may be at the crossroads,” he added.

International humanitarian group Oxfam, meanwhile, said the deal is “a landmark step” but “has not done enough to ensure that a three degrees Celsius world will be avoided or secure sufficient climate funding for vulnerable communities.

“The Paris climate deal has brought the world’s powers together but has shortchanged the poorest and most vulnerable people as they struggle with the burgeoning reality of rising sea-levels, floods and drought Oxfam warned today,” Oxfam said in a statement.

The group said the ambitious speeches from world leaders opening the summit were not sustained until the end of the talks.

“This deal offers a frayed lifeline to the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people. Only the vague promise of a new future climate funding target has been made, while the deal does not force countries to cut emissions fast enough to forestall a climate change catastrophe. This will only ramp up adaptation costs further in the future,” Oxfam executive director Helen Szoke said.

“Governments across the world have now come together in the global fight against climate change but must play catch up. We will be holding them to account with the millions of people who marched in cities all around the world so that dangerous warming is averted and the world’s poorest and most vulnerable communities get the support that they need,” she added.

Oxfam said there is nothing in the agreement that guarantees that current commitments of countries will improve before they come into force, making it hard to reach the two degrees Celsius goal and almost impossible to avoid warming of more than 1.5 degrees Celsius that developing countries, including the Philippines, believe is necessary for their survival. 

Pama, however, believes that all the climate concerns cannot be resolved by a single agreement.

“We cannot expect to come up with a perfect document in a span of two weeks. The fact that there is already a document, that there is an agreement in principle in most of the areas, that is already a major movement,” Pama said.

“It is understandable that some countries will push for their respective interests. Some will say it’s for the survival of some countries, others will say hey, if you ban the use of oil, it will also affect our survival,” he added.

“I won’t complain about the agreement but it could have been better.”

Impact of typhoons

While the government claimed to have several achievements in disaster management, the number of casualties and amount of damage caused by typhoons that hit the country this year remained high.

A total of 116 people died while 35 others went missing in 13 typhoons that visited the country this year. The typhoons also left 133 persons injured, data from the NDRRMC showed.

The typhoons also affected 4.2 million persons or more than 976,000 families and damaged P18.24 billion worth of properties.

source: http://www.philstar.com

The Sendai Framework on Disaster Risk Reduction was agreed on in March and points the way toward resilience

United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon listed this month's Paris climate agreement as a major achievement of the organization's 70th year, a "pivotal year" in his words Dec. 16, as he also cited the Sendai Framework on Disaster Risk Reduction, which was agreed on in March and points the way toward resilience.

"The Paris Agreement on climate change is a sign of hope in troubled times. It is a triumph for multilateralism that shows the United Nations delivering results the world desperately needs," Ban said during his year-end news conference. "The Paris Agreement surpassed expectations. World leaders recognized that we could and must do better than settling for the lowest common denominator. So they reached higher. The Paris Agreement gives us 'Plan A' for the planet – A for ambition." He said after nine years of pushing hard for the agreement, he will "press world leaders to translate promise into practice" by implementing it.

The Sendai Framework on Disaster Risk Reduction and other agreements reached during 2015 "have set the stage for a future that leaves no one behind," Ban said, as he also cited "epic flows" of refugees and said during 2016, "the world needs to aim for a new global compact on human mobility."

The Sendai Framework resulted from stakeholder consultations begun in March 2012 and inter-governmental negotiations held from July 2014 to March 2015. It sets seven global targets:

• Substantially reduce global disaster mortality by 2030, aiming to lower the average per 100,000 global mortality rate in the decade 2020-2030 from that of 2005-2015.
• Substantially reduce the number of affected people globally by 2030.
• Reduce direct disaster economic loss in relation to global gross domestic product by 2030.
• Substantially reduce disaster damage to critical infrastructure and disruption of basic services, including health and educational facilities, and increasing their resilience by 2030.
• Substantially increase the number of countries with national and local disaster risk reduction strategies by 2020.
• Substantially enhance international cooperation to developing countries through adequate, sustainable support to complement their national actions for implementation of the framework by 2030.
• Substantially increase the availability of and access to multi-hazard early warning systems and disaster risk information/assessments by 2030.

“With resilience, our goal is for communities to no longer rely exclusively on organizations to help them.”

With these words,  Carlyne McKenzie, Resilience Project Coordinator for the Bahamas Red Cross, explained the purpose of the 9^th Caribbean Conference on Comprehensive Disaster Management, hosted by the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) jointly with Bahamas’ National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) between the 30^th of November and the 4^th of December of 2015, in Bahamas.

This conference gathered participants from several organizations and agencies, both national and regional, for five days of presentations, discussions and exchanges regarding the state of disaster management and community resilience in the Caribbean .

Delegates from organizations such as EU Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection (ECHO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR), The Nature Conservancy (TNC), the University of West Indies (UWI), the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), the Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology (CiMH), the St. Vincent and the Grenadines Red Cross, the Grenada Red Cross, the Suriname Red Cross, the Bahamas Red Cross, the American Red Cross, the Canadian Red Cross and The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), among others, convened in plenary sessions and work groups to address issues such as climate change, sustainable development, monitoring and evaluation practices, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), strengthening preparedness and response, communications technologies,  knowledge management and community resilience.

“We gained knowledge with our participation in this conference, it feels really good.  We want to broaden our horizons when it comes to disaster preparedness in ways that we can modify with what we’re doing here in the Bahamas.  To expand our experience with the experience of other countries, of other organizations, it gives us added insight into how to be better prepared” stated Daryll Armbrister. Social Media Officer for the Bahamas Red Cross.

One event that generated a considerable amount of activity among the conference delegates was the Knowledge Marketplace, a new feature to the CDM Conference where current disaster risk management initiatives and tools were “sold” to delegates through quick five minute presentations.  The delegates were given paper money, and would then express their interest in the tool by “buying” it, with the three most bought tools receiving awards later in the day.

IFRC/CDEMA, with the support of the Suriname Red Cross, presented a Strategic Targeting Methodology (STM), a tool designed for organizations to improve their process in selecting communities for their programs and projects through carefully designed criteria that reduce external influences and focus on the communities by their needs and vulnerabilities.  The STM was the most “bought” tool of the conference, winning the CDM Conference prize.

The second most bought tool belonged to the American Red Cross, in support of the Bahamas Red Cross through their Resilience in The Americas (RITA) program, with their multi-hazard smartphone app, which features information on natural hazards, basic first aid procedures, emergency messaging including location, as well as emergency lights and sound.  You can find more information on this app by visiting: http://www.redcross.org/mobile-apps/emergency-app

Another session where the Red Cross movement was well represented was the Youth Conference, where a panel comprised of a 16-18 year old representative from each CDEMA participating state discussed CDM in relation to Caribbean youth.  The representative from Dominica, Phael Lander, is a youth volunteer for the Red Cross of Dominica, who witnessed the value of Psychosocial Support (PSP) in disaster recovery when his home country was gravely affected by Tropical Storm Erika in August 2015.

“The youth of the Caribbean need education, training and resources.  If these three things are provided to us, I foresee the world to be a much safer place.”

Lander, along with his fellow youth panellists, engaged in lively exchanges on community action, youth involvement in risk management, the possibility of including comprehensive disaster management in high school curriculum throughout the Caribbean, careers in Disaster Risk Management and the use of multimedia to engage younger generations in preparedness and risk management.

- See more at: http://www.ifrc.org/en/news-and-media/news-stories/americas/bahamas/the-future-of-disaster-management-in-the-caribbean/#sthash.BnJV6mQm.dpuf

Completely unprepared for disasters: the hospitals in Chennai — private as well as government — were particularly vulnerable, improvising solutions as the situation developed. At least 13 primary health centres in Kancheepuram and Tiruvallur districts were affected. The Tambaram Taluk Hospital in Chromepet ran outpatient (OPD) services from a wedding hall for two days after evacuating many of its inpatients to other hospitals.

Water had entered the ground floor of the ESIC Hospital in K.K. Nagar too.

Patients were shifted to a higher floor. But the worst affected was MIOT International, where 18 patients on ventilator support died on December 2 and 3, as per the Health Secretary’s press release. Within days, police registered a case under section 174 of the Criminal Procedure Code (Cr.PC) against the hospital. The post-mortem reports are likely to be submitted this week.

The floods in Chennai bring to the fore the need for stricter implementation of hospital safety standards. The last time this topic was debated was after what has come to be known as the ‘AMRI fire tragedy.’ In December 2011, around 3 a.m. a fire broke out in the basement of the seven-storey hospital in Kolkata — Advanced Medical Research Institute (AMRI) Hospitals. By morning, 90 patients had choked to death.

A few months before the AMRI tragedy, Kavita Narayan, a disaster management expert trained by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), along with some of the best minds in the country — structural engineers, doctors and specialists in hospital design — had written a policy document that laid out in great detail what was expected of medical and non-medical staff in case of any disaster.

Every single one of the 111 pages of Hospital Standards Safety Committee had answers that could have saved lives. The document had exhaustive instructions to doctors, nurses, and management about how to plan and evacuate in case of emergency. It even laid out how and where to store which equipment; how to avoid flooding in critical units; the norms of fire safety, etc. The document has been gathering dust since December 2013, when it was submitted to the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA).

In an ideal situation, the response begins soon as water levels start rising or, as in the case of AMRI, the fire was spreading.

In Tamil Nadu, the private sector currently caters to roughly 60 per cent outpatient services, and 40 per cent of in-patient services, as per the State Health Department. The Clinical Establishments (Registration and Regulation) Act, 2010 — enacted by the Central Government — which prescribes minimum standards to be followed has not been notified by Tamil Nadu because they already have a State Act. As of now, the Central Act is notified only in four States — Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Sikkim and all union territories except Delhi.

While the State has an Act in place to regulate private players, expecting any norms and standardised care from private hospitals is like building castles in the air.

Here is why: for nearly 18 years, the Tamil Nadu government has been sitting on The Tamil Nadu Private Clinical Establishments (Regulation) Act, 1997. The Act came into force in April 1997, the rules for it are yet to be notified.

The State government has three options: either adopt the Central Act, or enact its own or, lastly, make changes on the existing Act governing clinical establishments. Tamil Nadu has done none of this.

“We actually got the idea for the Central Act from Tamil Nadu. We were hoping it will pressure the State government to implement the existing law, if the Centre also passes it. Tamil Nadu passed the Act in the Assembly. Since then, it has been in animated suspension. We kept pushing for it but the lobby of private hospital owners is so strong that no progress has been made for nearly two decades.” said Sunil Nandraj, who was an adviser to the government as the Clinical Establishments Act was drafted.

Health Secretary J. Radhakrishnan said: “We are in the final stages of framing the rules for the Act. Several meetings have already been held with all stakeholders, and the rules will be notified shortly.”

With even minimal standards lacking, enforcing disaster preparedness is a far cry in India, Ms. Narayan said. “The draft hospital safety document has very specific rules — to the extent of specifying exact locations of storing emergency equipments. We do not follow any of this because India currently does not have a policy for this,” she said.

As the weather returns to normalcy in Chennai, the citizens should ask the question whether medical culture as well as governance in this country is willing to accept the virtues of regulation in the interest of patient safety.

Otherwise, this is the grim reality of Indian hospitals: they harm as much as they heal.

source: thehindu.com