Did you ever hear about the expression 'Resilient cities'? Perhaps you did. This is the theme of the latest campaign by UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) started in 2010 and ongoing until 2015 and beyond. "Another one of those campaigns". Well, don’t be surprised if UNISDR will do it again. With their earlier campaign on ‘Safe schools and hospitals; UNISDR have managed to mobilize action on the ground in an unexpected way. The Resilient Cities campaign can easily become the biggest thing UNISDR has ever done. Cities are quickly becoming the scene for increasingly nasty disasters, and they are - don't be surprised - mostly human made, and the problem is not going away. 70 % of the world’s population will live in cities in 2030. The main causes of disasters are described more in detail in The World Disasters Report 2010 by IFRC¹: building in more and more risky places, not robust enough to withstand natural hazards, making humans increasingly vulnerable. Just picture yourself a coastal city with high influx of people settling in unplanned shanty towns. The storms and floods have always been there, we are just building our houses closer to them, without a real choice for many poor people. But solutions are not about technical fix, its more about good governance. Just compare the disaster after the Haiti earthquake in February 2010 with the similar magnitude of earthquake in Chile the same year. In Chile, for example, building codes saved lives. This illustrates the distressing finding that mortality risk from disasters is approximately 225 times greater in low-income countries compared to OECD countries².

So, not dealing with risk is a social and financial risk. Also ecosystems are negatively affected by disasters. But not dealing with risks properly can also be a political risk, which politicians are painfully aware of, as seen by the recent resignation of the Japanese Prime Minister after the Fukushima nuclear disaster. The resilient cities campaign is therefore driven by Mayors who want to make their cities safer and:  1) Know More 2) Invest Wisely 3) Build More Safely. There are about 800 cities already signed up as of August 2011 and the number is increasing like wildfire.

Photo from the discussion on August 26th with Margareta Wahlström and the SWH cluster group for Water and DRR

The Swedish House cluster group on Water and Disaster Risk Reduction met on the 26th August during the World Water Week with Margareta Wahlström, United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction to discuss areas where the cluster group could contribute to the work of UNISDR and in particular the Resilient Cities campaign. There was a very interesting discussion and with many ideas for future work. The group will in the next steps aim to involve the private sector and the financial / insurance sectors to discuss risk considerations in city growth. 

Reference:
1. International Federation for the Red Cross and the Red Crescent Societies
2. Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction 2011

Perhaps it is my childhood ‘Tales from the Moominvalley’ where the Moomin family copes with comets, floods or storms, which made me interested in the social aspects of disaster prevention. In Europe today flooding is becoming the most common natural disaster, caused mainly by increased population and values in exposed areas, an increase in the vulnerability of structures, goods and infrastructure,  and failure of flood protection systems and changes in environmental conditions. Many argue for better technical solutions, but here I wanted to also point to the important social solutions, or mechanisms and how we do it together. I agree with those who argue, that in terms of how we manage and organize our social systems, we are only where Physics science was in the 17th century. In a world more and more characterized by rapid change processes and complex problems, learning how to cope and adapt to new situations is crucial. This is to some extent self-organized, with collaborative problem solving across disciplines, cultures and hierarchies. However, the question is: Are we good at it? Can we do better?

photo by Åse Johannessen

Studies of organizations show that past learning inhibits new learning: Before organizations will try on new ideas, they must unlearn old ones by discovering their inadequacies and then discarding them. The new ideas are often also not coming from the top-down. Instead strategic innovation often emerge from the lower levels of an organization, which are in immediate contact with the customers, users, or target groups and able to pick up signals or ‘intelligence’ from changes in the environment.  What is crucial here, for these insights to be taken forward is that leaders, managers, decision- and policy makers are responsive to the recommendations coming from the grass roots, or practitioners in the field.

Between 8 and 13 May 2011, the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction is taking place in Geneva, Switzerland. It is a bi-annual event, managed by UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction where actors come together to share the latest experiences. I’m hoping that the leading agents of this world carry their responsibility beyond just rubbing shoulders and staying in power, and explore new ways to capture the innovative resourcefulness of the grass root level. Perhaps some of those Moomin strategies can be useful, at least for inspiration.

A practical application in WASH to mitigate disasters
The picture shows small-scale drainage system, adapted to peri-urban areas, in Urbanização suburb in Maputo, Mozambique. The system drains the massive amounts of water during the annual rain period, preventing people from wading in water for long periods of time. The local community also is cleaning the drains from solid waste so that the water can flow away freely. It came about through an effort from Medicines Sans Frontiers (MSF) responding to the almost annual cholera epidemics, realizing the need for more long term disaster risk reduction instead of responding to each disaster. A local community organization is now managing the activities with the support of WaterAid, which also includes provision of safe water, improved sanitation, waste collection and hygiene education  by a drama group.

by Åse Johannessen, Cluster group leader, Water and Disaster Risk Reduction