Poor struggle to weather the storm

Mumbai is one of the world's cities most vulnerable to flooding, with over half the population living in slums, many built on reclaimed swampland. In July 2005, floods caused 900 deaths, mostly by landslips and collapsed buildings. With its crumbling drainage system, uncontrolled development and the destruction of mangrove swamps that once soaked up intense rains, the urban poor are facing increasing risks from the weather in this 21st century megacity.It's not just Mumbai. In rapidly swelling cities across Asia, Africa and the Americas, from Jakarta to Lagos to Port-au-Prince, rapid urbanisation is pushing people to live on marginal land at risk of flooding and other climatic disasters.At the same time climate change is bringing new and unpredictable weather patterns, increasing the number of storms and their intensity. Rising sea levels will leave 200 million people living in coastal floodplains at risk of losing their homes and livelihoods.The effects will be huge. Research collated by Oxfam shows that in six years' time the number of people affected by climate-related crises is projected to rise by 54 per cent, from 250 million people currently to 375 million. This doesn't include the huge numbers of people affected by wars, volcanoes and earthquakes.It takes poverty to turn a storm into a full-blown disaster. The US saw this very clearly when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. Poor people are more likely to live in densely populated areas, in rickety houses, without savings or access to healthcare. Living so close to the edge, they are easily killed or pushed into utter destitution.Huge numbers of people in East and Central Africa and South Asia are growing ever more vulnerable to an annual drought and flood cycle. In 2008, failed rains in Ethiopia left millions in need of food aid. Nearly four million people, mostly peasants, were affected by floods in Bihar in 2008.Many of climate disasters don't make the headlines.. As John Holmes, the UN's Emergency Relief Coordinator said: "All these events on their own didn't have massive death tolls, but if you add them together you get a mega-disaster."The massive increase in disasters would be shocking enough if the world could cope with the current humanitarian situations. But the international system struggles to cope with current crises, like the millions going hungry in Somalia and hundreds of thousands adrift and homeless in the jungles of the Congo.In 2006 the world spent an estimated $14.2 billon on international humanitarian aid, less than the amount spent on video games. Keeping pace with the expected increase in disasters means the world will have to spend around $25 billion to maintain the current levels of humanitarian aid. But at $50 per person this isn't enough to meet their basic needs.If all governments of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) gave as much as its ten most generous countries, then global humanitarian aid would increase to $42 billion. Aid must not only be increased, it must be spent more fairly. In 2004, victims of the Asian tsunami received aid at an average of $1,241 per head. In Chad, which received far less media coverage than the tsunami, only $23 per head was spent on similarly destitute people. Their misfortune was to suffer a disaster that was slow, quiet and insidious.Poor countries can do a lot to deal with the effects of storms and flooding — if the political will is there. Bangladesh, Cuba and Mozambique have all invested heavily in protecting their people, and suffer much less loss of life in disasters than other poor countries. With extra help from the rich world and a serious commitment from developing countries' governments to invest in such prevention measures, more countries could be able to follow their example. As well as improved and increased aid, the rich world must also help poor countries to cope with the extra stress of climate change. Oxfam estimates they need to provide at least $50 billion annually — in addition to their aid budgets — to help people protect themselves from climate change. This means developing drought or flood-tolerant crops, improving infrastructures, raising bridges and roads in flood-prone areas or strengthening buildings to cope with increasing numbers of hurricanes.Stress-proofing entire regions against weather disasters is a long, hard slog. Few Western politicians are going to win plaudits for increasing aid budgets in a recession, or for cooperating with poorer nations in tackling the tough job of improving the humanitarian system.There are no Oscars for Hollywood directors making films about an Indian boy building an embankment to save his slum. This doesn't make it any less urgent or important.

 

 Business Line, 29th  April 2009