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Davos Conference: Finding way out or legalising carbon emission?

SYED SHAHNAWAZ ALI and M. MIZANUR RAHMAN
THE fourth International Disaster and Risk Conference (IDRC) opened at Davos on August 26. The experts on risk and disaster have joined here with the aim of promoting "integrative risk management in a changing world." The Global Risk Forum (GRF) has very strategically identified its objective for this conference, i.e. finding out "pathways to a resilient society.” Don't we find a gradual change in the standpoint which the international drivers in the field of Disaster Risk Reduction were concentrated on earlier?
With this agenda of the conference, the initiative of restraining the developed countries from uncontrolled carbon emission has been over-shadowed and now the international forum is looking for promoting a new agenda where it will concentrate more on affected countries, forgetting the earlier agenda.
Some very pessimistic critics argue that the international politics around climate change has been and is being controlled by some specific and limited agents; they are directing the discussions on it internationally. They are fixing the areas of discussion on which the developing and poor countries will concentrate, and in this game the invisible hand of world political economy favours the developed countries invisibly.
In this world of promise and allurement, it is not wise for the climate affected countries to experiment with the ever-emerging frameworks and models, other than taking some concrete and definite standpoint on which they should be rigid and confident. But of course, for this, we need to strengthen our strategy and knowledge source that are based on proper investigation and research. Apart from these, we need to capacitated (both institutionally and individually) on these issues and, at the same time, strong commitment and honesty towards the goal are mandatory.
Moreover, the time has come now to assess our past endeavours, objectives and achievements. In 2005, governments around the world committed to take actions to reduce disaster risk, and adopted a guideline to trim down vulnerabilities to natural hazards, called the Hyogo Framework for Action (Hyogo Framework). The clock has ticked so fast, and the international community has already started to discuss what the next disaster risk management framework should look like. The progress report on monitoring achievement of the goals set in the Hyogo Framework for Action submitted by 133 countries in year 2011 has shown improvement in several areas, which is just the tip of the iceberg. The cruel reality is that the vulnerability of communities in developing countries like Bangladesh continues to show increasing trend in terms of loss of life, property and development opportunities. It needs to be noted that a lot of local disasters and the losses are not properly recorded by most of the governments.
It is high time we started thinking beyond developing another framework which will divert international attention to another direction and will not improve the lives of the poor climate vulnerable people around the world. The Davos Conference is more interested in seeing that any new effort should not consider disaster risk reduction as a stand-alone issue. The world leaders also need to realise that in an era of limited resources we should not promote disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation separately.
All the new initiatives to be promoted by donors, institutions, non-governmental organisations, civil society and private sector should be a truly coordinated effort — only as joint venture with the governments and other mandated organisations to ensure impact and long term sustainability of the initiatives. Global statistics on disaster losses are only indicators and they do not properly account for the actual loss of property and development opportunities at the local level. Moreover, the loss of lives due to disasters remains out of sight in the reports.
Following up and monitoring of the earlier action points and accumulating and escalating trend of risks and disasters is another major challenge. Cities in Bangladesh and some other countries are signed up to the global safer cities campaign of UNISDR -- "My City is Getting Ready" -- but honestly this initiative in most cases is on paper only. It is a worthy first step to involve local government and increase the visibility, but the long journey to fulfill the commitment only starts here.
We continue to live in complete darkness as there is absolutely no effort to record baseline of the situation in any of the countries. Countries and development agencies are also busy with some other agenda and doing their interventions in an uncoordinated way in most cases. Unfortunately, individual branding or benefit at the cost of the problems and the solutions has become a priority of the disaster risk reduction stakeholders in order to specialise and to attract visibility and funds for the orgnisations in this era of competition. In certain instances this has not harmed most of us, but honestly the situation would be much improved if we could concentrate on our work.
When governments of the poor countries are getting tired of finding out the ways to access climate funds, some experts argue that the climate vulnerable countries should not be outward looking in fighting with the adverse impact of climate change, rather, they need to seek solutions from their own communities by being inward looking. The communities we work with do not lack when it comes to potential, experience and knowledge of disasters, and their active role in the whole design, planning and implementation needs to be clearly defined in the new instrument and related tools of disaster risk reduction. All the newly introduced solutions and measures should be needbased and perception of the stakeholder to use and manage it should be pre-examined.
Political interest, local capacity, social consciousness, existing coping mechanisms and indigenous knowledge of the government and communities are the factors that need to be properly analysed beforehand.
The achievements in the field of disaster risk management on ground, recorded through various evaluations and HFA monitoring progress, shows that a huge gap persists in the knowledge (science), policy (political commitment) and practice levels. We should not anymore remain entangled with the discussion around framework, concepts, and terminologies in these difficult and uncertain times. The situation is only going to get worse from here with the future unknown if we do not take immediate collaborative actions as disaster risk reduction community.
Arranging conferences, getting together and setting new commitments and agenda cannot continue forever. Now, the time has come to be specific in goals and definite in determination. As the fourth IDRC wants to promote resilient society, let us all focus on it and determine that all the attempts from local to global level will be to promote this, and let our governments and international agencies concentrate on it sincerely and take some concrete actions. This has to be now or never!
The writers are Programme Manager at Islamic Relief Bangladesh (E-mail: s_shahnawaz_ali@yahoo.com) and Development Researcher and a Programme Officer at Islamic Relief Worldwide
(E-mail: mithunmds07@gmail.com), respectively.