By Yoshita Bhardwaj, Deepanshi Singh and Sapana Maurya
Disaster risk reduction is a concept and practice to reduce the damage done by disasters, reduce the risks of it and also manage the causal factors of disasters, including: lessening subjection to hazards, vulnerability of people and property, proper management of land and the environment, and improved preparedness for adverse events. The International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction is celebrated every year on 13th October to promote a global culture of disaster risk- awareness and reduction.
Objectives
The objectives of the Disaster risk reduction are:
• To give knowledge to local administrations, national governments, and regional bodies so that it helps them to make risk management more effective;
• Provide information to practitioners and policy-makers about drivers of risk and their influence in the generation of risks within determined geographical areas;
• To define specific actions that will help to improve risk management at local, national and regional levels;
• To generate baseline data for measuring the progress of how underlying risk drivers are handled over time.
via Public Health Notes
There are mainly four components of DRR. They are:
1. Mitigation
2. Preparation
3. Response
4. Recovery
via CMDR CoE
Mitigation:
Mitigation refers to the action that is to be taken before the occurrence of an event. It is a phase to reduce the overall risk and impacts.
It includes the steps like:
• Susceptibility assessment
• Risk assessment
• Mitigation involves promoting a multisector approach in disaster risk management and integration of DRR in all the development activities.
• Also, include maintenance of public infrastructure.
Preparedness:
Preparedness is an action that takes place before a disaster occurs. In these, actions like vulnerability management plans, emergency preparedness plans, evacuation plans etc., are prepared.
It includes actions like:
• Preparation of calamity relief plan
• Conduction of awareness and education programs for the common public
• Sharing of the risk portfolio with the related partners and the institutions
• Development of early warning system
Response:
The response refers to the activities done after the disaster has occurred. The main concern at this is to save human lives.
It includes activities like:
• Examination
• Emergency
• Providing food, shelter, medical services, etc.
• Provide medical bits of help.
• Coordination action between the local and international actions
• National and international support
• Proper mobilization of aids and grants provided
Recovery:
Recovery is a post-disaster action that includes activities like:
• Generate an emergency relief fund
• Rehabilitate the victims
• Reconstruction of the damaged properties and other arrangements.
• Psychological advising
WHY IS DISASTER RISK REDUCTION (DRR) IMPORTANT?
Here are some videos that can answer the above question.
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DRR is very important as it protects the people & communities who are more vulnerable to disasters & natural hazards. No country is immune to disasters. The prime motto of DRR is to reduce damage caused by natural hazards like floods, drought, earthquakes, cyclones etc. Natural hazards hit hardest to those people who have done the least to cause these changes- the poorest and most vulnerable ones. Through DRR, we can reduce the size of disaster, its impact and its strength with which it hits the people of vulnerable nations. It is often said that “an ounce of prevention can be worth a pound of cure”.
EVERY $1 SPENT TO FORTIFY INFRASTRUCTURES AGAINST DISASTER CAN SAVE $4 IN RECONSTRUCTION. (SOURCE: UNDRR)
There is also an organization dedicated to DRR i.e. United Nations Office For Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) that brings governments, partners and communities together to reduce disaster risk and losses to ensure a safer & more sustainable future. According to UNDRR, the world has been stuck in a vicious cycle of disaster > response > dependency > repeat. They work with a belief that risk can be reduced & disasters are not meant to devastate lives and livelihoods.
STRATEGIES FOR DISASTER RISK REDUCTION
International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction is celebrated every year on 13 October. Theme for this year is “ International cooperation for developing countries to reduce their disaster risk and disaster losses.” A developing country like India needs better international cooperation to reduce their disaster risk and more ways that use digital solutions to improve preparedness.
Disaster management is how we deal with human, material, economic or environmental impacts of a said disaster, it is the process of how we “prepare for, respond to and learn from the effects of major failures”. Though often caused by nature, disasters can be human-made. The combination of hazards, vulnerability and inability to reduce the potential negative consequences of risks result in disasters. Disaster management is strategic planning and procedure that is administered and employed to protect critical infrastructures (“also known as “critical assets”) from severe damages when natural or human- made calamities and catastrophic events occur. Disaster management plans are multi-layered and are aimed to address issues such as floods, hurricanes, fires and even mass failures of utilities or rapid spread of disease. Disaster plan is likely to address such important matters as relinquishing people from an impacted region, arranging temporary housing, food and medical care. Every year, an average 25 million people flee sudden onset disasters.
Risk identification
Risk reduction- Hazard and risk information may be used to inform a broad range of activities to reduce risks, from improving building codes and designing risk reduction measures( such as flood and storm surge protection), to carrying out macro-level assessments of the risks to different to different types of buildings( for prioritizing investment in reconstruction & retrofitting, for example)
Preparedness- An understanding of the geographical area affected, along with the intensity and frequency of different hazard events, is critical for planning evacuation routes, creating shelters, and running preparedness drills.
Financial protection- Disaster risk analysis was born out of the financial and insurance sector’s need to quantify the risk of comparatively rare high-impact natural hazard events. Micro-insurance and household earthquake insurance are few examples of it.
Resilient reconstruction- Risk assessment can play a vital role in impact modeling before an event strikes ( in the days leading up to a cyclone, for example),or it can provide initial and rapid estimates of human, physical, and economic loss in an event’s immediate aftermath. Moreover, risk information for resilient reconstruction should be ready before an event takes place, since after the event there is no time to collect the information required to inform the resilient design and land- use plans..
In 2018, 108 million people required humanitarian help across the world due to storms, droughts, floods etc. WHO says that by 2030, an additional 250,000 deaths per year will take place due to several health issues like malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea and heat stress because of rapid changing of cascading climate events. Nowadays, digital solutions are used widely to connect vulnerable nations to worldwide available information and solutions to prevent and reduce the risk of natural hazards & disasters.
How is environmental protection related to disaster risk management?
Natural disasters and the environment are inextricably intertwined. Degradation of the environment has an impact on natural processes, changes humanity's resource base, and increases vulnerability. It increases the severity of natural disasters, reduces overall resilience, and puts established coping mechanisms to the test. Furthermore, efficient and cost-effective risk-reduction strategies may be missed.... Despite the fact that the relationships between catastrophe mitigation and environmental management are well understood, there has been little research and policy activity on the subject. Environmental tools for disaster mitigation are a concept that has yet to be generally adopted by practitioners.
Environmental considerations must be emphasized throughout the whole disaster management cycle of prevention, readiness, assessment, mitigation, and response, as well as included in relief, rehabilitation, reconstruction, and development planning. This will also necessitate the development of capacities to carry out short and medium-term catastrophe management actions based on long-term environmental considerations with varying degrees of success.
via UNDRR
Hence, Environment and DRR go hand in hand and are together called Eco-DRR that focuses on prevention and reduction through ecological methods. Can be called a traditional history of ours, as it was practiced in the times of Vedas too, but humans forgot their lives in the age of advancement. Hence, an Eco - DRR has to be the new trend to catalog nature’s library before we burn it down.
The goal is to preserve ecosystems and ecosystem services, as well as to use them as buffer zones against dangerous natural occurrences, and to provide humans and local communities with services like food and water. Eco-DRR is linked to Ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA), which is a method of adapting to climate change. They all entail the management of ecosystems and their services in order to lessen human communities' vulnerability to the effects of climate change and not playing with the true mother nature.
BIBLIOGRAPHY -
Beautifully written!!