Floods in Thailand, Cambodia,Vietnam and Laos, have disrupted the lives of nearly 16 million people since July
BANGKOK (AlertNet) – Flood-embattled Mekong countries must toughen up codes on building and engage citizens in risk reduction efforts in the face of mounting natural disasters, the chief of the U.N. disaster reduction agency told AlertNet.
Devastating floods in Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, and to some extent Laos, have killed almost 1,000 people and disrupted the lives of nearly 16 million people since July.
“The floods are an extremely shrill alarm bell for the countries in the region,” Margareta Wahlstrom, head of UNISDR, said. “It’s time to get stricter on building codes and codes for infrastructure… and there has to be public education.”
Wahlstrom said that as the latest U.N. scientist report predicts more extreme weather events due to changes in climate, individual responsibility is as important as government regulations to keep people safe.
To fend off crises governments need to work with local communities and the private sector, to ensure factories and business are built in safe areas, she said.
“As much as governments govern and issue regulations, if they don’t have full engagement or understanding from the community, it’s not going to work,” Wahlstrom told AlertNet.
“Looking at how you and I, in our daily lives, behave is very important,” she added.
She pointed to how some people choose to build houses and factories in unsafe areas or over natural waterways without looking at an alternative route for the water to flow. Such decisions lead to mudslides and landslides during flooding. She called some of these “self-inflicted” wounds.
“Many of these vulnerabilities that build up are because as individuals we take these types of decisions every day and that certainly doesn’t make the environment any safer,” she said.
SMART ECONOMICS
The waters, which are now receding in some areas of the region, also caused millions of dollars’ worth of damages, from submerged industrial estates in Thailand to flooded paddy fields in Vietnam and Cambodia.
There are no simple or short-term solutions, but governments should consider measures such as building new urban areas and making them attractive to people to ease the pressures off megacities, Wahlstrom said.
“Another lesson learnt is that no engineering solution lasts forever,” Wahlstrom said, referring to dykes and canals in the region that were meant to protect citizens but were too weak to hold back this year’s massive amount of water.
“They may have been good for 20 or 30 years but because of environmental changes, more people living in the area, climate variability and stresses, the conditions under which they were built are no longer valid,” she added.
The cost of adjusting constantly to such changes is significant and almost impossible for most governments.
Still, governments and politicians should look at the financial impact of disasters as it makes more economic sense to invest in prevention rather than paying for the damages later, she said.
MORE EXTREME EVENTS
The main findings of a U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released this month predicted that some events, including heat waves, heavy rainfall, floods and landslides, will happen more in the future and be of greater magnitude.
It also said it is “likely” – a two-thirds chance or more – that daily temperatures around the globe have already increased because of human influences.
The findings of the report – whose 800-page full version is due for issue in February – challenge governments that question whether humans are causing climate change, Wahlstrom said.
“If they are uncertain about the validity (of the data), the government may not move ahead. Now the evidence is on the table,” she said.
“Some are having arguments that this has happened before two million years ago. Possibly interesting, but what relevance does it have?”
“We are in a slight crisis right now and it’s this civilization that’s going down the drain, not the one two million years ago,” she added.
(Editing by Rebekah Curtis)
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