AGCI Session I: Natural Hazards and Global Change

Session Chairs: Louis Walter and E. L. Quarantelli - July 10 to 20, 1996

4. Politics

The Challenge

There are many ways in which individual organizations and coalitions can advance NDR goals.

The United States (and other nations) simply cannot afford the continued costs of unmitigated natural disasters and still hope to achieve its goals of debt reduction, adequate health care, full employment, and economic growth. For a number of reasons, natural extremes pose an enormous challenge to political institutions and politicians. Some of these reasons are:

Violence/scope

Worst-case scenarios for many nations can amount to a significant fraction of GNP. In the case of the Peoples Republic of China, for example, this fraction has been estimated to average several percent per year. Some nations periodically experience losses up to 25 percent of GNP in a single year. A repetition of the Great Kantoi earthquake of 1923 would today produce a $1.3 trillion loss. Events of such magnitude overwhelm the governmental planning process.

Localized in space and time

Though the causal linkages that trigger natural hazards often begin as subtle, almost unnoticeable disequilibria distributed over vast domains, and initially build slowly, they culminate in events of terrifyingly swift onset. Events of this type are inherently difficult for governments to handle. In their initial stages, or between events, their urgency is obscured by other issues competing for attention the economy, unemployment, education, health care, drug abuse, and so on. In their final, climax stages, natural extremes are highly localized. Where and when they hit, they completely disrupt all established order.

Require vertical integration of federal, international, state, local, private sector

By their nature, natural extremes challenge all levels of government and society, so that it is impossible to compartmentalize the needed response and mitigation activities into single organizations or a few entities. The problem of coordination and control quickly becomes overwhelming.

Some nations periodically experience losses up to 25 percent of GNP in a single year due to natural disasters.

When they do occur, the imperative is to rebuild as before.

In the immediate aftermath of natural disasters, the overwhelming societal imperative is to restore people to precisely the circumstances that prevailed before. Only in a minority of cases does the emotional and political atmosphere demonstrate the resolve and insight needed to break the so-called cycle of disasters.

Technology advance introduces new vulnerabilities faster than they can be anticipated.

With each new societal advance (urbanization, new methods of construction, new dependence on lifelines such as electrical power and communications systems), society creates vulnerabilities that defy a priori assessment of changed risk.

Mistaken societal paradigm

For millennia, societies have used as a figure of merit the extent to which they have succeeded in making nature irrelevant. Since nature always proves its relevancy, the ultimate effect of this paradigm has been to postpone disaster and to increase the scale and scope of disaster. Instead, nations and peoples need to affirm nature's relevance and attempt to build resiliency into society.

See Side Bar: Dennis Mileti: On the current U.S. natural hazards paradigm

FEMA photo.

The Opportunity

Growing awareness

The growing scope of the costs and impacts of disasters has succeeded in raising societal awareness of many new threats and has set into motion the chain of actions needed to address the challenges. For example, the insurance industry has begun to focus more attention on alerting the public to the problem. This increased public awareness builds the political climate and consensus needed to allow governments to act.

New technologies

While technologies have provided new risks, they have more than compensated by providing an arsenal of new tools for coping. Many technologies come to mind in structural design, warning and forecasting, etc. but nowhere is technology more critical than in the area of information. The computer and communications infrastructure now being put in place completely transforms the opportunities governments can draw upon to identify hazards and assess risk, to design new structures and new materials for structures, to educate the public, to warn of imminent danger, to respond to crises, and to provide relief and recovery in the aftermath of disasters.

Matches with other societal trends (partnerships, self-reliance)

New societal trends occasioned by the federal budget crisis in the United States are in keeping with the actions needed to reduce natural disasters. The requirements that individuals shoulder the risks attendant upon their actions, and that action should concentrate at the state and local levels when hazards hit, are consistent with good government policy.

While technologies have provided new risks, they have more than compensated by providing an arsenal of new tools for coping.

Recommendations

National

1. The citizens of the United States should "declare independence" from the needless loss of life and other costs resulting from natural disasters. The citizens should encourage the President, Congress, and state, local, and private sector leaders to serve the people by taking a leadership role in natural disaster reduction.

2. The President should "declare war" on natural disasters and reaffirm the nation's commitment to a national mitigation strategy (NMS). The President would highlight FEMA's NMS in order to mobilize the country's efforts and would use a suitable opportunity to make such a declaration. Such declarations can contribute significantly to expanding public understanding and involvement in an effort of national importance.

3. The President should establish a Council on Natural Disaster Reduction. In order to further the NMS goal of developing partnerships, such a Council would be made up of national leaders from business, labor, academia, civic organizations, and government. The President's Council on Sustainable Development (PCSD) might serve as an example.

4. Each Governor should establish a "council" that seeks to ensure that within each state, mitigation receives increased emphasis. Local, state and federal governments should work with industry, labor and the public to integrate natural disaster reduction with/into other objectives. FEMA should work with the National Governors Association to accomplish this. We endorse the recommended actions of the NMS Mitigation Action Plan for state and local governments:

· Develop strategic mitigation plans and identify funding sources to support them.

· Adopt and enforce all-hazards building codes.

· Adopt incentives and disincentives to encourage mitigation.

· Develop administrative structures to support implementation of mitigation programs and priorities.

· Incorporate mitigation of natural hazards into land use management plans and programs.

· Develop, support and conduct ongoing public information campaigns on natural hazard mitigation.

(The Mitigation Action Plan can be found on pp. 25-26 of the National Mitigation Strategy, FEMA, Washington, D. C., 1995.)

5. The CENR/SNDR should develop a national program of demonstration projects to evaluate current efforts to implement NDR, accelerating the adoption of research projects. The CENR/SNDR should merge its efforts to develop research priorities for NDR with the NMS research and applications elements. As conclusions from the Second Assessment of Research and Applications on Natural Hazards become available, they should be incorporated into this process. Priorities of the merged R&D effort should focus on providing needed linkages between basic research and current practice. Demonstration projects should be supported to allow the testing and integrating of new and current practice.

6. The CENR/SNDR should serve to convene the defense and civilian sectors of government to define and clarify their respective roles in natural disaster reduction.

The requirements that individuals shoulder the risks attendant upon their actions, and that action should concentrate at the state and local levels when hazards hit, are consistent with good government policy.

International

1. The CENR/SNDR and CISET, in collaboration with the President's Council on Natural Disasters should develop and articulate international policies with respect to natural disaster reduction. As the U. S. is party to the United Nations' International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR), it should take a more active leadership role. Furthermore, while the U. S. is also involved in a range of bi- and multi -lateral agreements, it is timely and useful to review and express the national agenda in international collaboration and assistance in NDR. Current policies often inhibit and restrict agencies from involvement in such matters to the disadvantage of U. S. interests.

2. The U. S. Department of State should take the initiative to encourage other nations to work together to converge their observing and information management strategies for global change and natural hazard monitoring. The IDNDR may also contribute a useful framework here.

The U. S. Department of State should take the initiative to encourage other nations to work together to converge their observing and information management strategies for global change and natural hazard monitoring.

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