LONDON (AlertNet) - The more developed a country the better it tends to cope with natural disasters and conflicts. But it does not necessarily follow that if a nation cuts poverty and improves education, as set out in eight U.N. development goals, it will be better able to mitigate crises, experts say.
Making the connection is vital because failure to act on a disaster or a violent dispute can in turn wipe out hard-won gains on health and hunger targets.
To create this Â?virtuous circleÂ? as one U.N. expert put it, governments and aid agencies must pursue the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as part of broader development policies, towards the rule of law and fairer distribution of wealth for example, and in coordination with more technical measures against crises.
Â?Achieving progress on development - and the MDGs are a sort of an indicator, not very satisfactory sometimes but an indicator - is necessary but not sufficient for achieving progress on disaster risk reduction,Â? said Philip White, a development researcher at the University of East Anglia.
Â?ItÂ?s quite possible to have quite good progress on the MDGs and still be very vulnerable to disasters.Â?
And sometimes efforts of MDG and disaster communities can even be in conflict with each other.
THINK OUTSIDE THE BOXES
For example poverty, injustice and a lack of natural resources such as water can all be a cause of violence. During disasters the poor are also much less resilient.
Cultivating high-yielding crops at the expense of traditional varieties can reduce hunger and poverty, as called for in the first MDG, but it can also make farmers more vulnerable during droughts because such prolific crops are less able to survive water shortages than their humbler peers.
Likewise, mangrove stands protect coasts from tidal storm surges but these have been destroyed to make way for shrimp farming in Bangladesh and Vietnam.
Research by BritainÂ?s Overseas Development Institute has found that educated people cope better during conflicts as they can find creative ways to make a living and interact with authorities more easily by, for instance, writing letters.
A literate population - including girls and women whose needs during disasters can be different from menÂ?s - is better able to partner with experts in designing ways of protecting communities. Educated people respond better to warnings and other public announcements, the U.N. Development Programme said in a report.
Schools can also run drills on how to stay safe if a natural disaster hits.
However, putting up more schools in an earthquake-prone area to reach the second MDG of universal primary education could lead to more deaths during a quake because a large number of children stays in a single building.
Therefore, when working towards that MDG, the government should ensure schools are designed to hold up in natural disasters and that builders actually implement such design features instead of cutting corners as happened in badly-governed Haiti.
The same goes for other public buildings, for example hospitals in relation to health MDGs.
EVERYTHINGÂ?S CONNECTED
Â?Disaster risk reduction needs to be built into the way that you work on the MDGs for them to be sustainable,Â? White said, echoing many others.
Targeted measures to avert humanitarian crises range from simple to sophisticated.
People in disaster-prone areas can be taught to have their vital belongings ready in carrier bags, big bowls, buried in the ground or tucked away high up in their houses in case they need to flee flooding or an earthquake, and to ensure the most vulnerable, such as children and the sick, are evacuated first.
On the other end of the scale, governments and aid groups can provide so-called social protection for the poorest, including pensions and child support or seasonal grants when the times are hardest as is the case in Africa during the Â?lean seasonÂ? - the period between harvests when food stocks are low, even after good rains.
In this way, not only will the impact of disasters be reduced but a descent into deeper long-term poverty will also be prevented. Often, because of a drought, poor farmers sell livestock or tools to buy food and that puts them in a worse position when the weather improves.
As for broader, cross-cutting measures necessary to mitigate crises, such as boosting the rule of law, many developing countries could start by investing into something not spelled out in the MDGs: a professional, well-trained and honest police force, said MDG critic Dan Smith of peace-building group International Alert.
So disasters, the MDGs and wider human development are all sides of the same coin. Progress on all of them, as two academics explain in a paper, Â?can only be accomplished if they are undertaken in an integrated mannerÂ?.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
