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2015 | Buch

Natural Disaster Management in the Asia-Pacific

Policy and Governance

herausgegeben von: Caroline Brassard, Arnold M. Howitt, David W. Giles

Verlag: Springer Japan

Buchreihe : Disaster Risk Reduction

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Über dieses Buch

The Asia-Pacific region is one of the most vulnerable to a variety of natural and manmade hazards. This edited book productively brings together scholars and senior public officials having direct experience in dealing with or researching on recent major natural disasters in the Asia-Pacific. The chapters focus on disaster preparedness and management, including pre-event planning and mitigation, crisis leadership and emergency response, and disaster recovery. Specific events discussed in this book include a broad spectrum of disasters such as tropical storms and typhoons in the Philippines; earthquakes in China; tsunamis in Indonesia, Japan, and Maldives; and bushfires in Australia. The book aims to generate discussions about improved risk reduction strategies throughout the region. It seeks to provide a comparative perspective across countries to draw lessons from three perspectives: public policy, humanitarian systems, and community engagement.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter
Chapter 1. Confronting Disaster: Recent Lessons from the Asia-Pacific
Abstract
Despite the fact that disasters have become more frequent and more costly in terms of economic losses throughout the world, most governments have yet to make a clear priority of addressing and managing risk reduction before disasters strike. According to the Annual Disaster Statistical Review 2012, in the last 10 years, the five countries most hit by natural disasters were China, the United States, the Philippines, India and Indonesia. In 2012 alone, Asia accounted for nearly 65 % of global disaster victims, with hydrological events, such as floods, storm surge and landslides, accounting for 75 % of the disasters in Asia during that year (Guha-Sapir et al. 2012). Taking these factors into account, this chapter discusses current and proposed efforts to reduce natural disaster risk in countries across the Asia-Pacific. It also overviews how subsequent chapters address the issue from a public policy and governance perspective, with a focus on three broad themes: (1) emergency response and humanitarian relief, (2) recovery and resilience, and (3) improving preparedness.
Caroline Brassard, Arnold M. Howitt, David W. Giles

Emergency Response and Humanitarian Relief

Frontmatter
Chapter 2. Localising the Humanitarian Toolkit: Lessons from Recent Philippines Disasters
Abstract
Over the past decade, the political and legal landscape for managing disaster risk in Asia has undergone significant shifts. Almost all Asian countries have legal and institutional frameworks for managing disasters, regional bodies have assumed an increasingly prominent role, and national governments are asserting their capacity to manage their own disasters. But increased national capacities have not always kept pace with increased disaster risk, and international actors still have an important—albeit complementary—role to play. This shift in dynamics poses challenges for the international humanitarian system, which for the most part has been set up on the assumption that international actors will take the lead.
The Philippines is one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world. The action that has been taken by the Philippines Government to manage disasters has been commended for enabling the provision of well-coordinated, government-led humanitarian assistance; and thus provides a valuable example for other governments in the region. At the same time, it raises questions regarding the capacity of government-led systems to coordinate humanitarian response, targeting vulnerable groups and ensuring alignment with humanitarian principles, in the context not only of increasing disaster risk but also of ongoing internal conflict.
This chapter examines the response of national, regional and international actors to recent Philippines disasters, and questions whether the humanitarian response system is equipped to respond to increasing disaster risk. It provides recommendations to national, regional and international actors with a view to ensuring that when a disaster does occur, aid is provided where it is needed, when it is needed, to those who need it most. While the analysis and recommendations focus on the Philippines as a case study, the issues discussed are broadly applicable throughout the Southeast Asian region.
Rebecca Barber
Chapter 3. Muhammadiyah and Disaster Response: Innovation and Change in Humanitarian Assistance
Abstract
In the past 50 years, nine out of ten people affected by disasters were in Asia. Southeast Asia, in particular, has been the site of some of the worst natural disasters in the world over the past 10 years. At the same time, many Southeast Asian nations are now “middle-income countries” and for a variety of political reasons, their governments increasingly decline to request humanitarian aid through traditional channels coordinated by UN agencies. This has opened the door for a more active role to be played by domestic and international NGOs (INGOs). Muhammadiyah, Indonesia’s second largest Muslim organizations, is one of the country’s largest and oldest social welfare organizations—running thousands of schools, clinics, hospitals, and universities. Since the 2004 tsunami, it has also become one of the country’s most active private disaster relief agencies, responding to the Yogyakarta earthquake (2006), Sumatra earthquake (2009) and Mt Merapi eruption (2010). Muhammadiyah’s leading role in the area of disaster and humanitarian assistance in Indonesia has furthermore brought it into international political discourses on humanitarian aid.
Robin Bush
Chapter 4. The Impact of the Indian Ocean Tsunami on Maldives
Abstract
This chapter examines the impact of the December 26, 2004, Indian Ocean Tsunami on the political, social, and economic situation of Maldives and also looks at the recovery work that was done with the assistance of, and in collaboration with, international aid agencies, shedding light on both its successes and failures. At the same time, the chapter also reveals the impact of the tsunami on a democracy in its infancy and explores the positive and negative effects of the interplay between the disaster and the country’s rapidly evolving political environment. It concludes with lessons that are useful for small countries when dealing with large-scale disasters.
Mohamed Waheed, Hussain Alim Shakoor
Chapter 5. Collaboration in Emergency Response in China: Evolution from the Wenchuan Earthquake, May 12, 2008 to the Lushan Earthquake, April 20, 2013
Abstract
Collaboration is the central issue of emergency response. Using a method of comparative case studies, this paper demonstrates the evolution of collaboration in emergency response in China from the Wenchuan Earthquake in 2008 to the Lushan Earthquake in 2013. In the intersectoral dimension, collaboration between governments and nonprofit organizations has been significantly improved. In the intergovernmental dimension, more reliance on local agencies has been observed only in response. In the interagency dimension, no progress has been made to the collaboration between the newly established Chinese Comprehensive Emergency Management system and the conventional typed-based disaster management system. To improve collaboration in emergency response in China in the future, this paper suggests that an inclusive framework for intersectoral collaboration should be developed. At the same time, assigning more responsibilities to local governments is critical for rebalancing external assistance and local reliance in the periods before, during, and after a disaster. Finally, a unified command and coordination structure for interagency collaboration is urgently required.
Haibo Zhang

Recovery and Resilience

Frontmatter
Chapter 6. “One in Trouble, All to Help”: The Paired Assistance Program to Disaster-Affected Areas in China
Abstract
Paired Assistance to Disaster-Affected Areas (PADAA) is a mutual disaster aid and recovery program with Chinese characteristics, which has shown its efficiency after the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake in restoring and reconstructing the expansive disaster-impacted regions. This chapter aims to describe how PADAA works in China. The chapter provides an overview of the history of PADAA, and depicts the process by which PADAA incrementally developed from local experiments to a national policy and finally became a planned and institutionalized political mobilization in the Chinese emergency management system after several decades. We adopt the concept “campaign-style governance” to explain how PADAA works in the Chinese administrative system. China’s central government was able to require provincial and local governments from more economically developed areas to provide necessary assistance to devastated areas for post-disaster restoration and reconstruction. This was effective because of the Chinese system’s stringent vertical controls and the practices of local accountability that gave provincial and local officials from donor provinces strong incentives to perform effectively in reconstruction work. We use the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake as a case to demonstrate how PADAA works in reality, and discuss the challenges of PADAA in its implementation process.
Kaibin Zhong, Xiaoli Lu
Chapter 7. Collaborative Manpower Support for Restoring Hope in the Aftermath of the March 11 Disasters in Japan
Abstract
Local governments can be expected to play a crucial role in rebuilding communities damaged by disasters, but what if a disaster affects a large number of local government employees so that the functioning of the local government is compromised? This was the case in Japan when an offshore earthquake of magnitue 9.0 and a massive tsunami hit the municipalities in the Tohoku on 11, 2011. As a result, the disasters highlighted, in an unprecedented way, the importance of manpower support for the affected municipalities. A variety of collaborative governance arrangements have been put in place by the Japanese authorities to boost manpower support for the recovery and reconstruction process in years ahead. Japan’s experience in this endeavor offers suggestive lessons and should prompt policy makers elsewhere, too, to reassess their governance to make their communities more resilient.
Naomi Aoki
Chapter 8. Communities at the Heart of Recovery: Reflections on the Government-Community Partnership for Recovery After the 2009 Black Saturday Bushfires in Victoria, Australia
Abstract
On February 7, 2009, the day that would become known as Black Saturday, over 700 bushfires ravaged the State of Victoria, Australia. Devastating many communities and shocking the entire nation, the fires took 173 lives, injured many more, and caused widespread destruction. In their wake, the national and Victorian governments established a central agency, the Victorian Bushfire Reconstruction and Recovery Authority (VBRRA), to lead and coordinate a massive recovery and reconstruction process that placed local communities at its core. This chapter provides a case study of how the VBRRA collaborated with community partners by examining the recovery planning efforts in Victoria’s Marysville Triangle region. In particular, it explores how representatives of local communities, local businesses, and all levels of government jointly developed a framework for rebuilding in and around Marysville; settled on recovery priorities; and identified catalyst initiatives for regenerating community life and the local economy. The chapter concludes with a set of lessons drawn from this experience—but broadly applicable to other post-disaster scenarios—about government-community partnerships for the recovery planning process.
Kerry O’Neill
Chapter 9. Disaster, Mental Health, and Community Resilience: Lessons from the Field in Aceh Province, Indonesia
Abstract
The mental health burden of a disaster is immediately apparent and remains for a considerable period of time. Focusing on Aceh, Indonesia, where a large-scale natural disaster washed over a landscape marred by a protracted conflict, this chapter discusses some lessons about community resilience in the face of natural disaster. This chapter draws on field experience and presents two studies, one quantitative and one qualitative, in the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. It draws out some lessons about psychosocial intervention and the provision of aid, and considers how aid can help without undermining local capacities and resilience. We conclude that a “cookie-cutter” model of intervention in disasters is not effective. Beside ongoing response and provision of mental health services, an effective response to disaster needs flexibility in adapting to local context. This can be achieved through the inclusion of local systems and the strengthening of service channels. Partnerships between local and national and international organizations enable a response, which is “with” rather than “for” the people who need the assistance.
Dicky Pelupessy, Diane Bretherton

Improving Preparedness

Frontmatter
Chapter 10. Regional Business Continuity Management Through Public-Private Partnerships in Japan
Abstract
In a modern networked society, most business operations are diversified and interdependent cross-regionally. This is a very efficient system in a normal situation but will cause many chain-failures through its interdependencies once large disasters hit any SPOF (Single Point Of Failure) in the networked structure. In order to assure an organization’s business continuity at the time of disasters, BCM should expand its scope by including stakeholders and regional BCMs based on PPP (Public-Private Partnership). This will play a key role to enhance a local community’s resilience. Based on the case studies on the three recent large earthquakes in Japan, the limitations of existing PPP are assessed and the importance of the intermediaries to provide economic incentives are recognized. Several BCM-related financial schemes are discussed as one form of effective economic incentives.
Kenji Watanabe
Chapter 11. The Rise of Disaster Risk Insurance and Derivatives
Abstract
This chapter deals with disaster risk insurance and risk-linked securities. It examines the potential of such instruments to strengthen disaster risk management. Since they are often not (yet?) commercially viable, these instruments have been developed in the context of public–private partnerships. Aid organizations and the insurance industry have teamed up to promote disaster risk insurance and derivatives in developing and emerging economies. These products face some of the political economy constraints that are well known in the insurance and foreign aid worlds. Asian governments may have a preference for free ex-post foreign aid over the alternative of paying ex-ante insurance premiums and interests on bonds. Yet, insurance and risk-linked securities offer the potential to transfer a substantial portion of disaster costs abroad irrespective of the humanitarian response. They can contribute to reducing dependency on foreign aid, consistent with national sovereignty claims.
Gilles Carbonnier
Chapter 12. Building the Urban Community Disaster Relief System in China
Abstract
This chapter examines the existing urban community disaster relief system in China. It is based on in-depth interviews and site visits in five urban communities, of which China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs regards four as model disaster relief communities. The chapter finds that the present urban community disaster relief system in China has been roughly shaped yet is far from complete. The system has just begun to shift from administration-dominated to autonomy-dominated. It includes a relatively complete preparedness plan and provides mechanisms for resource sharing and civic engagement. However, there are still problems in building the urban community disaster relief system. For example, administrative mobilization is still the main operational model; there is no institutional channel for social force participation. Within the existing system, effective cooperation between the government and the community is still absent, and horizontal resource sharing mechanisms between communities have not yet been developed. These problems make the collaborative linkage between the government and the communities weak and inefficient. From the perspective of collaborative governance, the building of the urban community disaster relief system should shift from disaster management to disaster governance. The government and community play different yet complementary roles, which means that they should share technological and other resources, unify information management, and, through the support of the government and social forces, make volunteers more professional.
Songyan Chu
Metadaten
Titel
Natural Disaster Management in the Asia-Pacific
herausgegeben von
Caroline Brassard
Arnold M. Howitt
David W. Giles
Copyright-Jahr
2015
Verlag
Springer Japan
Electronic ISBN
978-4-431-55157-7
Print ISBN
978-4-431-55156-0
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-55157-7