Dear All,
You are cordially invited to a DPMM special seminar on 'Disaster Management in the context of poverty and high vulnerability' which will be delivered by Dr. Georges Tadonki.
The program will be held as follows:
Date: Monday, 22 August 2011
Time: 16:00-17:00 hr.
Place: S-101 (SERD's Meeting room)
Faculty, staff and students of related fields of study are strongly encouraged to participate.
Abstract
Environmental sustainability and preparedness for disasters are key policy imperatives. Living with disasters implies a better scientific capacity to map and track risks, a governance paradigm shift from emergency relief to mitigation and building resilience. However, mitigation and sustainability efforts should be commensurate with relief capacity.
When assessing types of hazards and vulnerability, we may think of several orders of scientific knowledge each characterized by different degrees of certainty and reliability. Research on poverty and vulnerability has revealed interactions, which increase the risks for the most vulnerable. Globally, there is a correlation between poverty and vulnerability to natural disasters. However, it does not tell the whole story about the complexity of vulnerability to risks caused by natural and man-made hazards. It can be said that modern science has tremendously improved our knowledge of hazards and to some extent, of risks. However, the poorest countries are as vulnerable to massive events as the richer one with the established reputation of resilience such as Japan. Lessons learned from recent large scale sudden-onset disasters indicate that further research is needed to improve the linkages between existing knowledge and decision-making, particularly in development, as clearly disaster management is part of sound sustainable development efforts. However, to reach that goal, we must address the global inequities between poor and rich countries. For example, while it is understood that Africa will be the hardest hit by climate-change events, the continent is still lacking the scientific capacity to monitor and map hazards, to establish functional early-warning systems and to develop effective mitigation and adaptation policies.
Today, the world is predominantly urban and Asia has been repeatedly hit by massive events in the rural side as well as its major cities. The resulting cost of these disasters calls for a paradigm shift in Asia to redistribute activities and improve its adaptability to the challenges of climate change. As its economies are growing fast, Asia is faced with the challenge of effectively streamlining disaster risk management into development efforts. This requires more in-depth scientific understanding of hazards and risks, which Asia is now capable of, but also a greater consideration of available knowledge into economic development decision-making.
