Averting disaster: 

Averting disaster: 

Recently, Category 5 hurricanes in the Caribbean and in the American mainland; record floods across Bangladesh, India, and Nepal; and drought emergencies in 20 countries in Africa have damaged these regions. These events reiterate the need to act on a changing climate.

Reasons for frequent floods and droughts across the globe:

• Rising temperature is increasing the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere, leading to more intense rainfall and flooding in some places, and drought in others.
• Rising and warming seas are contributing to the intensity of tropical storms worldwide.
• Global warming
• Marine pollution
• Local and regional circulations such as El-Nino and La-Nina

Step to tackle climate change:

• The Paris Agreement has set the world on a long path towards a low-carbon future.
• Reducing the carbon emissions and reduce disaster risk.
• International cooperation is very crucial to tackle climate change.
• Restoring the ecological balance between emissions and the natural absorptive capacity of the planet is the long-term goal.
• Long term reduction of emissions is the most important risk reduction tactic and there is need to deliver on that ambition.
• The November UN Climate Conference in Bonn provides an opportunity to not accelerate emission reductions but also boost the work of ensuring that the management of climate risk is integrated into disaster risk management as a whole.
• Poverty, rapid urbanization, poor land use, ecosystems decline and other risk factors will amplify the impacts of climate change.

Sendai Framework of Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR)

• SFDRR is an international Treaty that was approved by UN member states in March 2015 at the Third World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction held in Sendai, Japan.It is a voluntary and non-binding treaty which recognizes that the UN member State has the primary role to reduce disaster risk. It has a framework for 15-year i.e. 2015 to 2030.
• It calls for sharing the responsibility with other stakeholders including local government, the private sector, and other stakeholders.
• It is the successor of the Hyogo Framework for Action (2005–2015), which had been the most encompassing international accord on disaster risk reduction.
• It sets of common standards, a comprehensive framework with achievable targets, and a legally-based instrument for disaster risk reduction.
• It calls for adopting integrated and inclusive institutional measures for preventing vulnerability to disaster, increases preparedness for response and recovery and strengthens resilience.

Four specific priorities of Sendai Framework:

• Understanding disaster risk
• Strengthening disaster risk governance to manage disaster risk
• Investing in disaster risk reduction for resilience
•  Enhancing disaster preparedness for effective response and recovery, reconstruction and rehabilitation.

Indian perspective:

What are the reasons for flooding in India?

India is considered as the world’s most disaster-prone country on account of its unique geo-climate conditions. Reasons for flooding are given below.

1-   Man-made Reasons:

• Lacks of drainage upgrade works.
• The encroachment and filling in the floodplain on the waterways
• Obstruction by the encroachment and filling in the floodplain on the waterways
• Deposits of building materials and solid wastes with subsequent blockage of the system.
• Flow restrictions from under-capacity road crossing (bridge and culverts).
• Lack of planning and enforcement has resulted in a significant narrowing of the waterways and filling in of the floodplain by illegal developments.
• Encroachments of nalas, lakes and other water bodies
• Choking of streams and stormwater drains
• Constructions on the riverbed
• Weather pattern and topography leads to regular flooding like in Brahmaputra River.
• As the ice melts in the Himalayas, the water channels downstream swell. When the river enters Assam from Arunachal Pradesh, it experiences a steep fall in gradient, causing the water to hurtle down at a furious pace.
• During the monsoon, when the river is swollen with the precipitation from the Eastern Himalayas, its channels can’t take the huge volumes gushing down at high speed. Siltation and sedimentation in the channels compound the situation.
• Human hand in such floods as well. With increasing deforestation in the Eastern Himalayas, the run-off has increased, which means as the water rushes towards the plains, it carries along more sediment.
• The riverbed in the plains is full of sediment, impairing the Brahmaputra’s carrying capacity.

2-Physiological Reasons:

• About 60% of the flood damage in India occurs from river floods while 40 percent is due to heavy rainfall and cyclones
• Damage by Himalayan rivers accounts for 60% of the total damage in the country.
• A flood occurs when water overflows or inundates land that’s normally dry.
• Most common are when rivers or streams overflow their banks.
• Excessive rain, a ruptured dam or levee, rapid ice melting in the mountains, or even an unfortunately, placed beaver dam can overwhelm a river and send it spreading over the adjacent land, called a floodplain.
• Flooding is a natural phenomenon because of the rivers in the Northeast, mostly originating in the Eastern Himalayas, experience a sharp fall in gradient as they move from Arunachal Pradesh and Bhutan to reach Assam’s floodplain.
• Most of these rivers carry large amounts of sediments, which then get deposited on the floodplains, reducing the storage capacity of the river channels and resulting in inundation of the adjoining floodplains.
• Flooding is partly anthropogenic as the sediment load carried by the rivers is accentuated through “developmental interventions in the Eastern Himalayas that result in deforestation.
• The principal causes of vulnerability include rapid and uncontrolled urbanization, poverty, degradation of the environment resulting mismanagement of the resources, inefficient public policies.

Flood-prone areas in India:

• Areas which are subject to serious floods are mainly in the Plains of Northern India.
• It is estimated that over 90 percent of the total damage done to property and crops in India is done in the Plains of Northern India.
• Annual deposition of silt and sand raises the bed and thus reduces the capacity of the river to accommodate flood water.
• The Assam Valley is another fertile belt which is affected sometimes seriously by flood havocs.
• The Brahmaputra which drains this valley receives from its tributaries, the Dibang and the Luhit, a large amount of water heavily laden with silt.
• Floods are almost a regular feature in coastal lowlands of Odisha
• The deltas of the Godavari and the Krishna.
• Lower courses of the Narmada and the Tapi

What are the safety measures needed for the natural disaster?

• There is need to adopt a multidimensional endeavour involving diverse scientific, engineering and financial and social processes.
• The need to adopt a multi-disciplinary and multi-sectoral approach and incorporation of risk reduction in the developmental plans and strategies.
• Disaster management needs to occupy an important place in India’s policy framework as it is the poor and the underprivileged who are worst affected on account of calamities/disasters.
• Providing necessary support and assistance to State Governments by way of resource data, macro-management of emergency response, specialized emergency response teams, sharing of disaster-related database etc.
• Coordinating government’s policies for disaster reduction.
• Ensuring adequate preparedness at all levels.

Need for disaster risk management:

• Disaster affects the normal routine and it is not easy to come back to. The risk is reduced by various disaster management systems.
• Over the last two decades, more than 850000 people have died from disaster in Asia-Pacific.
• 7 of the top 10 countries in terms of the number of deaths due to disaster are in the Asia-Pacific.

What are the government steps?

• The government inaugurated the Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Management
• In order to respond effectively to floods, the Ministry of Home Affairs has initiated National Disaster Risk Management Programme in all the flood-prone states.
• After a disastrous impact of the tsunami in 2004, India realized the need for Disaster Management Response Team and enacted the Disaster Management Act, 2005.
• It establishes National Disaster Management Authorities function in coordination with other government departments like police, fire, finance, telecommunications etc.

Conclusion:

Disaster risk reduction has a pivotal role in supporting adaptation to climate change as well as sustainable development. Therefore, flood-prone regions of the country require a focused approach from both the Centre and state governments.