Survival strategies against catastrophe and disaster
The future is now
International humanitarian organisations are in urgent need of reform.
They have to improve their capacity to advance strategic thought and
planning, even if in so doing they risk having to challenge directly
those who at present fund their work.
Le Monde diplomatique
November 2004
By Agnès Callamard and Randolf Kent
“The greatest long-term threat”, suggests the political scientist Anatol
Lieven, “is one that our media hardly ever discuss, since it is too
long-term and insufficiently fashionable: the growing shortage of water,
due to a combination of over-population, inefficient use and
conservation, and the effect of global warming on the Himalayan
glaciers. If present trends continue, it is virtually certain that in 50
years’ time, much of Pakistan will be as dry as the Sahara – but a
Sahara with a population of hundreds of millions of human beings. The
same will be true of northern India” (1).
The melting of Himalayan glaciers, probably irreversibly, is due to
climate changes that directly result from human activities over the past
century. Only during this brief period in the 10,000-year history of
modern human beings have they actually become a major factor in
determining the course of nature. They have become “planetary
engineers”, says Professor Albert Harrison of the University of
California: “We have already transformed our own planet. We have changed
Earth’s landscape through enormous pit mines and through agriculture; we
have rerouted waterways through systems of dams, locks and canals; and
we have released tons of hydrocarbons and other chemicals into the
atmosphere, creating global warming and cutting holes into the ozone
layer” (2).
Human beings are now nature’s greatest hazard. Disasters and emergencies
are not peripheral events but reflections of the ways that we live our
normal lives, structure our societies and allocate our resources. Trends
in “natural disasters” underscore this. Deforestation and destruction of
wetlands, migration from unproductive rural areas to cities that cannot
afford to provide support infrastructures or livelihoods, and relative
governmental indifference to global warming all relate to the fact that
losses from natural disasters during the 1990s were three times those in
the 1980s and 15 times those of the 1950s.
Existing data dispels the myth that the economic and social consequences
of such disasters are limited to the areas where they struck. This was
the central issue at a conference – Crowding the Rim – at Stanford
University, California, in 2001. Geologists and disaster mitigation and
relief experts assessed the possible effects of disasters, including
earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, on the Pacific Rim, from Lima
through to Los Angeles, Seattle, Anchorage, Tokyo and Taipei (3).
As one noted, “The linkages that we have built to connect the US west
coast and Asia are all vulnerable to echo disruptions, and much larger
and devastating earthquakes are in prospect for Seattle and San
Francisco” (4). The 1999 earthquake in Taiwan was costly there in life
and property, and also disrupted economies as distant as that of San
Jose, California, where electronic industries were halted because of a
lack of essential components usually supplied by Taiwanese companies.
The earthquake revealed a disturbing, if not totally unforeseen,
dimension of globalisation: the economic vulnerability – in large-scale
lay-offs – of Californian workers to an event thousands of miles away.
Returning to Lieven’s concern about the immediate consequences of the
melting Himalayas, hundreds of millions of South Asians will be deprived
of water and livelihood at the same time as a combination of global
warming, inadequate conservation and overpopulation cause effects
elsewhere. We need to anticipate the migratory impact that hundreds of
millions of desperate people searching for survival will have on the
urban areas of South Asia and the security and stability of states in
the region. We need to consider how such potential insecurity and
instability (in the form of globally transmitted diseases, disruptive
migration patterns, regional conflicts) might expose our large-scale
human vulnerability worldwide. Disasters and emergencies are not the
monopoly of the developing world. The current global level of insecurity
resulting from 9/11, the “war on terror” and intervention in Iraq all
dramatically remind us that we can no longer hold on to the idea of
peripheral and geographically-contained humanitarian crises. We are all
unwilling participants in a global pandemic brought upon us by human
actions, whether guided by ruthless self-interest, messianic zeal or
perceived economic survival.
Not all such trends are inevitable, but we need to change how we view
disasters and emergencies, their causes, locations and effects. The
future is now. Professor Martin Rees of Cambridge University says
categorically that by ” 2020 an instance of bio-error or bio-terror will
have killed a million people” (5). Professor Thomas Homer-Dixon suggests
that humanity has already created the conditions for major global
catastrophes. He foresees “the synchronous failure of global, social,
economic and biophysical systems arising from diverse yet interacting
stresses” (6).
Yet the structures responsible for anticipating ways to mitigate,
prevent or prepare to respond to large-scale human vulnerability seem
incapable of doing so. The organisations deemed “humanitarian” –
governmental, non-governmental or inter-governmental – are stuck with
perceptions and processes that have more to do with institutional
survival and familiar routines.
Still, we have to recognise the problems of any organisation in
attempting to anticipate the future. Professor Rees notes that in 1937
the United States National Academy of Sciences organised a study to
predict breakthroughs: “Its report makes salutary reading for
technological forecasters today. It came up with some wise assessments
about agriculture, about synthetic gasoline, and synthetic rubber. But
what is more remarkable is the things it missed. No nuclear energy, no
antibiotics, no jet aircraft, no rocketry nor any use of space, no
computers; certainly no transistors. The committee overlooked the
technologies that actually dominated the second half of the 20th
century. Still less could they predict the social and political
transformations that occurred during that time” (7).
The issue for humanitarian organisations is less that of forecasting,
more the capacity to monitor, analyse and adapt to a global environment
marked by rapid change and complexity. The institutions required to
address effectively rapid technological and political changes and
anticipate potential humanitarian crises are those that are able to cope
with rapid change and complexity.
They are adaptive organisations with the capacity to monitor compelling
trends and the willingness to invest time and energy in understanding
their consequences. Their structures are designed to integrate a
relatively wide range of expertise and they most likely have
accommodated the different languages of the scientist, the political
strategist, the policy planner, the ethicist, and the decision-maker.
They have the courage to unpack power, confront their weaknesses in
accountability and work in partnership.
And organisations, even well-prepared, future-oriented, technically
savvy ones, cannot assume the responsibility to respond to current and
future crisis unilaterally: those affected directly or indirectly must
be genuinely involved in shaping the response if the response is to be
legitimate and effective (8). Above all, adaptive organisations are
externally oriented, more focused upon understanding the environment in
which they operate, than self-referential and self-absorbed non-adaptive
organisations.
The “humanitarian community” of today does not meet these requirements.
It is inherently reactive, more often than not unable to develop
strategies to anticipate, let alone respond, to looming crises. Only at
the beginning of the past decade did humanitarian organisations begin to
anticipate the human consequences of state collapse: the idea of
“complex emergencies” was a belated recognition. Yet a range of
large-scale crises was clearly inevitable, given states’ inability or
unwillingness to provide protection and welfare for their citizens.
Decline of livelihoods, uncontrolled violence and the collapse of
infrastructures presaged mass displacement, starvation and uncontrolled
disease. The warning signs had been visible since the 1970s (East
Pakistan) and were increasingly evident in the 1980s (Sudan), but it was
only when multiple crises (former Yugoslavia, the Horn of Africa) could
no longer be explained away using the conventional language of agencies
that a new perspective emerged.
These organisations also continue to perpetuate the divide between
“natural” and “man-made emergencies”, despite their obvious interactive
dynamics. Even now most organisations responsible for disasters and
emergencies do not focus on the links between natural disasters
(droughts and decline in livelihoods) and their potential political
impact upon the stability of affected societies. That natural disasters
and political emergencies are intertwined is an idea that eludes the
response mechanisms and often the perceptual frames of reference of most
humanitarian organisations.
Another telling example has to do with the relationship between
crisis-threatened communities and humanitarian organisations. Some in
the humanitarian sector have over the past 10 years addressed questions
of their accountability and unequal relationships with crisis-affected
populations (9). At the centre of this is the realisation that relief
workers do exercise power over the lives of such individuals and
communities and that humanitarian power can be abused or mismanaged.
Some agencies insist that the humanitarian ethos should take its moral
cue from those who suffer and survive crises rather than be defined only
through and by the well-intentioned intervener (10). The search for
accountability mechanisms is one of the most important ethical
developments. Yet these developments have failed to permeate mainstream
humanitarian thinking and practices. The security and political
challenges arising from operations in Afghanistan and Iraq have
sidelined the search for greater accountability.
Failure to anticipate the sources of humanitarian crises, to be
strategic in efforts to mitigate as well as to respond to disasters and
emergencies can be explained in several ways. First there is the
organisational culture of much of the humanitarian community; the
community’s underlying ethos, like that of firemen, is to respond to the
most acute immediate challenge. Then there is the competitive aid
environment in which NGOs and United Nations agencies operate. Four
recent independent studies have concluded that increased funds for
humanitarian assistance have led to an unseemly rush for donor
resources, often at the expense of the needs of both the disaster
victims and of the organisations’ integrity (11).
Humanitarian organisations are often guided by the interests of their
donors, who put national interests first when allocating funds (12).
There are no institutional rewards for those organisations that think
strategically about future vulnerabilities. This encourages agencies to
perpetuate the belief that disasters and emergencies are aberrant
phenomena that cannot be anticipated. Organisations, and those that fund
them, are reluctant to invest energy, let alone funds, in activities
thought speculative and theoretical. The perceived inability to forecast
provides everyone with an organisational excuse not to try to think more
strategically.
Organisations supposed to be on the front line of emergency prevention
and response are averse to taking risks. If they did, they might have to
embark on advocacy (warning against the sources of growing
vulnerability) and prescription (bold measures to offset disaster and
emergency agents). Both risk pitting them against funders who ensure
their organisational survival. According to Jean-François Rischard,
World Bank vice-president for Europe, there are at least 20 global
issues that must be resolved quickly if the world is to survive, from
global warming to global regulation of biotechnology. But there is no
pilot in the cockpit. Our present methods of dealing with global
problems are inadequate (13); consider the persistent attempts of the
governments of the US, and other countries, to ignore the threat of
climate change and derail global treaties to reduce the rate of change (14).
NOTES
(1) Anatol Lieven, “Preserver and Destroyer,” London Review of Books, 23
January 2003.
(2) Albert Harrison, Spacefaring: the Human Dimension, University of
California Press, Berkeley, 2001.
(3) Ibid.
(4) Donald Kennedy, “Science Terrorism and Natural Disasters”,
Science,18 January 2002
(5) Martin Rees, Our Final Century: Will the Human Race Survive the 21st
Century, William Heinemann, London, 2003.
(6) Lecture note by T Homer-Dixon, “The Real Danger of the 21st
Century”, part of a series on security sponsored by the US Congress
bipartisan study group, 1 December 2003.
(7) Martin Rees, op cit.
(8) See arguments by Amy Bartholomew and Jennifer Breakspear against
Ignatieff’s position on the war in Iraq: “Human Rights as Swords of
Empire”, in Socialist Register 2004, Leo Panitch and Colin Leys, eds,
Merlin Press, 2003.
(9) See the work of Sphere <;, Humanitarian
Accountability Partnership () and the Active
Learning Network for Accountability and Performance in Humanitarian
Action <;.
(10) See Hugo Slim, “Doing the Right Thing” in Studies on Emergencies
and Disaster Relief, no 6, Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 1997.
(11) Development Initiatives, Global Humanitarian Assistance Flows 2003,
May 2003; Larry Minear and Ian Smillie, The Quality of Money: donor
behaviour in humanitarian financing, Humanitarianism and War Project,
Feinstein Famine Centre, Tufts University, April 2003; James Darcy,
“Measuring humanitarian need: A critical review of needs assessment
practice”, Overseas Development Institute, Humanitarian Policy Group,
Feb 2003.
(12) Minear and Smillie, op cit.
(13) Jean-François Rischard, High Noon: 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to
Solve Them, Basic Books, New York, 2002.
(14) So far 124 states, not including the US, have ratified, acceded to
or accepted the Kyoto protocol on climate change.
Original text in English