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Between 1947 and 1980, the average loss of life per event amounted to 32 in
North America and 224 in Europe, while the gures reached 633 in Central
America and the Caribbean, 657 in South America, and 2412 in Asia (Hewitt,
1997, p. 61). Currently, 96% of natural-disaster-related deaths occur in develop-
ing countries (Natural Hazards Observer, 2000a, p. 3). Other estimates reveal that
the number killed in disasters is three to four times higher in developing
countries than in the developed ones. The striking difference, however, is in the
number of affected survivors, which is estimated to be some 40 times higher in
developing countries (Department of Humanitarian Affairs (DHA), 1993, p. 27).
Based on different sources, Berke provides further evidence and illustrative
examples:
tutional incapacity, which force people to expose themselves to risks in the rst
place.
Access to land for the poor could be achieved through various channels in
which government can intervene directly and indirectly. In this regard, Angel et
al. (1983), McAuslan (1985) and Ansari & Von Einseidel (1998) explore urban
land policies and practices and suggest some important policy reforms to
facilitate access for housing the poor in general. In the case of disasters no single
approach can be proposed, but there is a combination of possibilities, which
should be considered in accordance with the types of hazards, costs and benets,
land market and socioeconomic conditions that characterize each situation.
Therefore, it is suggested that these possibilities should focus on the following:
· directing development of human settlements into vacant public land by
providing incentives which could be in the form of: initiating sites and
services and core housing schemes; expanding infrastructure and residential
zoning; improving public transport and development of new employment
opportunities; improving access to nancial sources; securing the right to land;
and adopting suitable tax systems;
· increasing the supply of urban land for housing the poor by the private sector
through joint ventures between private and public sectors, e.g. land readjust-
ment, land trading or guided land development. Many incentives could be
provided to the private sector to encourage the development of vacant land,
through tax exemption, infrastructure development, nancial incentives, im-
proving zoning and regulations, improving land transactions, and by
imposing higher land taxes on undeveloped property;
· improving access to existing public housing schemes through the reduction of
unfair allocation practices such as showing favouritism, and speeding up
application procedures. Moreover, this should be associated with the re-
examination of the physical conditions of settlements in order to improve
density through increasing built-up areas or encouraging subdivision. It
should also be associated with examining the people’s socioeconomic condi-
tions and possibilities for their improvement;
· facilitating access to housing for the middle-income groups who usually
compete with low-income groups for low-cost dwellings. This could be done
by encouraging the formation of housing associations, providing adequate
nancial institutions for loans and credit, improving rent laws in a way which
encourages landlords to make more housing available for rent, and by
increasing the built-up areas of low density urban locations;
· identifying hazardous sites and converting them into either parks or produc-
tive urban farms; in both cases people’s participation is essential for the
success of these initiatives. Another alternative is to provide incentives for
commercial groups to develop these sites at acceptable levels of risk. This
means that mitigation measures could be taken into account at an early stage
in the development of sites, risk-resistant construction methods could be
incorporated into the building processes, and adequate eviction and emer-
gency plans could be made from the outset.
Risks can be reduced not only by limiting the encroachment of residential areas
onto hazardous sites, but also by reducing the fragility of existing vulnerable
settlements. This approach requires the legitimization and improvement of
existing informal settlements and slum areas. Serageldin, in his edited book The
Architecture of Empowerment (1997), presents various successful case studies from
Peru, Brazil, Jordan, Pakistan, India and Indonesia. These cases provide valuable
Natural Disaster, Mitigation and Sustainability 165
lessons for upgrading and improving informal settlements and slum areas.
Empowering the poor is imperative in promoting community organizations and
cooperative actions for implementing incremental infrastructure and housing
projects, for reinforcing social harmony and sense of community and for
improving living, environmental and economic situations. Conditionally, sensi-
tive participatory and negotiation processes, adequate access to land, resources
and technical support, and the use of appropriate technology and local materials
are essential ingredients. Strengthening settlements’ conditions would improve
road networks and provide open areas for public use, which in turn would
improve escape routes and emergency procedures in the case of disaster. For
example, a study in Caquetá, a vulnerable area of Lima, identies illegal
encroachment of itinerants, which blocks access roads and emergency routes. It
also outlines an action plan for re reduction in the informal commercial centres
by preparing evacuation maps, and the organization of brigades and the
handling of re extinguishers, stretchers and rst-aid facilities (Leandro &
Miranda, 2000).
The various approaches, which include the sustainable use of land resources
and the reduction of exposure to hazards, require the political will to intervene
and to invest in land with the goal of long-term sustainable benets. To achieve
this, nancial resources can be generated directly and indirectly by the following:
· directing public funds away from building houses towards land development;
· collecting taxes on undeveloped sites and implementing betterment taxes on
land which take into account types of usage, benets gained and impacts on
the environment;
· mobilizing local resources to be used for housing development and for
managing and maintaining their settlement environments;
· encouraging national and international relief and emergency organizations to
invest a portion of their resources in mitigation measures instead of the
present complete focus on relief aid and emergency activities.
There are also indirect resources, which could be conserved by improving
housing conditions for the poor and reducing their vulnerability to natural
disasters, and by improving the general environmental quality of the city. These
changes in approaches to mitigation would save large amounts of resources
presently spent on remedial ad hoc measures. In fact, adequate housing has
important benets not only for the individuals and their families, but also for the
society as a whole. Shelter and development are mutually supportive and
interdependent. Moreover, there are indirect benets to be gained from inte-
grating the ‘marginal’, poor people into the general economy of the city and
from reducing their exploitation and negative impact on the environment.
Regularizing informal settlements encourages people to improve their housing
conditions, facilitates the provision of urban services and helps to mobilize
communities to contribute to the management of their settlements (Durand-
Lasserve, 1999). Also, building homes using labour-intensive methods, and local
materials and technologies, redistributes income to poorer households and
increases benets to the local economy (United Nations Centre for Human
Settlements/International Labour Organization, 1995; Tipple, 1999; Nordberg,
2000).
These shifts of approaches and the implied extra investments have certain
essential requirements upon which their success or failure depends. They should
therefore address key issues such as the land market and management, admin-
166 S. El-Masri & G. Tipple
· a clear understanding of the land market, including forces which affect supply
and demand, land use and zoning, planning and regulations, land tenure and
registration, as well as the main actors and beneciaries;
· a comprehensive set of data—graphic and non-graphic—on the urban land
which shows: zoning and land use, quality and quantity of land, geological
and ecological conditions, topography and hazardous areas, land tenure and
registration, and building regulations and standards;
· appropriate land-use policies to address three basic inter-linked objectives,
environmental quality, management of natural resources and adequate hous-
ing for the poor, in order to facilitate constructive land-development
processes;
· a participatory planning practice involving consultations with the people
concerned which would increase the chances of mobilizing the community, its
cooperation and its responsibility for the maintenance and improvement of the
settlements in the long term;
· incremental improvements in infrastructure which would require a progress-
ive type of nancial backing, effective land registration, rationalization of
management and employment of appropriate technologies. All these would
lead to reduced costs and increased coverage. Cost recovery could be achieved
through the collection of taxes from private landlords on the improvement of
their properties, as well as by imposing a basic tax on beneciaries of the
scheme on the basis of the improved land registration and tenure;
· enhancement of the administrative sector dealing with urban land by im-
provement of the collection of data about the city, coordination between the
different departments involved, and re-evaluation of building codes, regula-
tions and standards;
· development of a deeper understanding of the interaction between human
and natural systems and their environmental and socioeconomic dimensions
not only in hazardous areas, but also in surrounding areas through the shared
ecosystem and socioeconomic networks.
Type of
natural disaster Technical considerations (building materials and construction methods)
workers have remained poor. The Co-operative Society turned this situation
around by means of capacity building of the workers to manage their own
production, and negotiated with the authorities and the credit institutions to
Natural Disaster, Mitigation and Sustainability 169
facilitate the workers to organize their own enterprises. Most importantly, it also
introduced standards for bricks and promoted energy-efcient, environmentally
appropriate production processes, making the local brick industry commercially
viable. Fifty per cent of wood used for brick burning has been substituted and
this gure is expected to increase to 75%. These practices have led to improve-
ments in incomes, resulting in access to education, health and better living
conditions. This demonstrates very clearly that if appropriate approaches are
adopted, it is possible to help communities to improve their own circumstances
(see the web site www.bestpractices.org).
The adaptation of appropriate technology is a vital measure in sustaining
construction activities for the mitigation of natural disasters. Such a technology
is low in capital investments, and simple in technique and management. Also,
it relies on inputs that are locally available, affordable, divisible, and easily
generated and developed in order to maximize the use of available resources
and skills and to improve on existing deciencies and practices. All these
contribute to sound habitat conditions and good environmental quality. The
effective application of appropriate technology can be promoted through the
provision of technical support and incentives for innovation, and the application
of appropriate building regulations and standards. Such an approach would
enable effective production and assemblage of elements, recycling of building
materials, improvement of traditional, local techniques and the strengthening of
the structural conditions of the dwelling. It would also require the development
of appropriate contracting negotiations and applications, site management and
development, labour organizations and procedures, and building regulations
and codes (Nordberg, 2000). Generally speaking, sustainable construction indus-
try activities require a comprehensive knowledge of the following:
· the mechanical properties of low-cost construction materials, including
specications and their behaviour in hazardous conditions;
· the existing building industries in terms of skills available, technologies used,
costs and production methods, problems and deciencies;
· the available natural resources and their possible uses in the production of
building materials;
· the grass-root approaches to building construction, the development of train-
ing and building teams, and the incorporation of maintenance and repair
programmes;
· the incremental process of site and infrastructure development, and house
design and construction phases;
· the impacts of building materials on socioeconomic development, human
health and ecosystems;
· the grass-root approaches and communal activities needed to pool efforts to
construct individual houses or neighbourhood communal facilities;
· the relationships between the economic conditions of the household, the cost
of dwelling construction and the pattern of construction activities.
Local Authorities
Local authorities have a crucial role in improving the conditions of human
settlements in order to mitigate the effects of natural disaster. They have direct
contacts with people and they are responsible for the application of general
policies decided by central governments, and for the implementation of infra-
structure and development projects. In addition, these authorities compete for
national resources and can, to a certain extent, re-shape the general policies
decided at the central government level. These institutions possess the power
that is crucial for turning policies into actions for the mitigation of natural
disasters within the framework of sustainable urban settlements. Local policies,
planning and regulations can be effective tools in guiding the interaction
between the human-use system and the natural-events system, in promoting
grass-root approaches and community development, and in providing legisla-
tive support in term of regulations and standards, as well as facilitating access
to resources. In fact, inadequately dened roles between local and national levels
can have serious implications.
… the 1997–98 El-Niño experience in Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador shows
how the civil defence organisations were rapidly pushed on the side by
the new temporary governmental organisations charged to deal with
the catastrophe. The results were confusion, duplication at the institu-
tional level, and a serious loss of morale and credibility in each
country’s civil defence structure. (Natural Hazards Observer, 2000b)
Local authorities should promote education, public awareness and training at
the community level, by focusing on incremental infrastructure upgrading and
improved building construction, production of building materials and construc-
tion methods, improvement of traditional techniques, development of
group-oriented activities, and dissemination of information and knowledge.
These activities should be based on a clear understanding of people’s social and
cultural conditions in order to capitalize on the existing social coping mecha-
nisms, and to maximize the use of resources. This requires a broadening of the
Natural Disaster, Mitigation and Sustainability 171
Provincial Level
The maximization of efforts to combat natural disaster should link local and
provincial levels by establishing channels for cooperation between the different
local authorities. Much of the local knowledge and experience, staff training and
legislative innovations could be shared between and developed by the different
local authorities. Moreover, the available resources needed for the development
of human settlements in different localities could be mobilized on a regional
level according to a comprehensive resource management plan. In fact, the
impacts of natural disasters are not conned to the damaged areas; they have
serious and immediate implications at a provincial level. These implications
include the draining of regional resources for relief and emergency measures,
people’s displacement to other areas and the increased demand for housing in
safer surrounding areas, and disruption of regional socioeconomic conditions as
a result of the crisis in a certain locality. This is what Smith (1992, pp. 29–30)
refers to as a “disaster impact pyramid”, spreading from the immediate hazard
zone to reach the world, or what Hewitt (1997, pp. 40–54) calls the
“geographicalness of disaster”, recognizing the wider and intangible effects.
The enhancement of coordination and integration through provincial multi-
disciplinary committees is benecial in two ways. First, cooperation ensures the
saving of resources and the reduction of duplication of efforts, as well as
encouraging planning within sustainable regional development parameters.
Moreover, most local data and information need to be viewed within the frame
of the regional level in order to assess the source, scale and characteristics of
geological and hydrological hazards. Also, warning, emergency and relief sys-
tems could be developed at the regional level through improved
communications and dissemination of information. Second, sub-national com-
mittees could play the important intermediate role needed to interpret national
policies and programmes to local authorities and to aggregate and articulate
local and sub-national issues at national level.
National Level
The state bears the primary responsibility for protecting its people, and the built
and natural environments, from the destruction caused by natural disaster. It
172 S. El-Masri & G. Tipple
has a major role in providing the right conditions for enhancing the performance
of regional and local authorities. One of the most common problems in develop-
ing countries is the centralized systems, which make it impossible for the
decision makers to be closer to communities because of spatial and socio-
economic distance. Moreover, centralization of power has a spatial dimension in
focusing development and resources in the capital, often at the expense of
development in other areas. Therefore comprehensive decentralization of de-
cision making to sub-national and local levels would widely enhance local
initiatives, maximize the use of resources, respond to the real needs of the
people, and build appropriate systems for dening responsibilities and account-
ability in the administrative system. However, this is not a simple task, as
socioeconomic planning and participation of civil society are still new, but could
be overcome by building consensus and capacity at different levels. This
coincides with the objectives of the City Development Strategies aiming at
addressing socioeconomic planning and spatial developing to reduce poverty
(Barcelo, 2000).
Planning for the mitigation of natural disasters is an open-ended process. It
should be integrated within the general planning process of human settlements
in order to ensure continuity between mitigation and sustainable human settle-
ments. It should also be seen as a part of the national decentralization process.
Therefore, the state should be expected to: enhance technical assistance for
regional and local institutions; provide training for technicians, professionals
and administrators; distribute resources fairly; and develop plans which respond
to the real problems of housing associated with poverty and rapid urbanization.
The state should also create enabling policies, which deal with regulatory
mechanisms, administrative readjustments, economic incentives, and the dis-
semination of knowledge and information campaigns. Such measures at the
national level would enable the state to adequately respond to issues identied
locally, and to comprehensively plan for national strategies for the mitigation of
natural disasters within the framework of sustainable human settlements. Fur-
thermore, the state should perform its role in guiding outside interventions,
including resources, technology transfer and cooperation at the international
level.
International Level
The inter-linkages between nations through economic, political and humani-
tarian concerns, and the shared ecosystems, make natural disasters a matter of
international interest. In fact, the global importance of the mitigation of natural
disasters was clearly manifested in the declaration of the 1990s as the Inter-
national Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR), forging links between
the political, scientic and technological communities. Initiatives such as
RADIUS (Risk Assessment Tools for Diagnosis of Urban Areas Against Seismic
Disasters) for urban seismic assessment and the El-Niño inter-agency preventive
approach aimed at reducing the loss of life, property damage and social and
economic disruption caused by natural disasters (Natural Hazards Observer, 1998).
The gravity of the matter and the necessity of international cooperation encour-
aged the UN to establish a successor body named the International Agency for
Disaster Reduction (ISDR) to carry on the decade’s work (Natural Hazards
Observer, 2000c). Its mission is to inuence the decision-making process and to
Natural Disaster, Mitigation and Sustainability 173
Conclusion
Horric images of recent disasters, such as Turkey’s earthquake of August 1999,
the Venezuela oods and landslides of December 1999, India’s earthquake of
February 2001, and the Mozambique and Malawi oods of March 2001, demon-
strate the importance of shifting from post-disaster emergency actions to
pre-disaster mitigation. This shift aims to meet more than one goal, by operating
within the existing socioeconomic, cultural, technical and organizational pro-
cesses which inuence human settlement growth. Therefore, mitigation of
natural disaster within the context of urban sustainability requires changes and
adjustments in the ways human settlements are shaped, planned and managed.
Resources, technologies and organizational processes should be inextricably
linked to the quality of the environment and to meeting the people’s needs. In
this way, mitigation approaches can combat the real causes of vulnerability, and
prevent and counteract the unnecessary creation of ecological and socioeconomic
problems. This approach would have productive and lasting results, which
would lead to continuity between mitigation and sustainable development of
human settlements. It would require comprehensive land policies to facilitate
174 S. El-Masri & G. Tipple
access to land for housing the poor, appropriate house design, building industry
activities that strengthen physical conditions and increase self-reliance and
participation of the community, and institutional reform at different levels to
increase cooperation, awareness and effectiveness. There is no doubt that these
recommendations would have positive impacts on the vulnerability of human
settlements, poverty and uncontrolled urbanization, and ensure that efforts and
resources were equitably distributed and had lasting consequences for future
generations, while the environmental quality needed for the continuity of life
itself would be protected.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Dr Ranjith Dayaratne for his most useful comments
on the drafts of this paper.
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