Syed Mohammad Ali

Pakistan has failed to give disaster risk management national priority, with almost no separate budget line and allocations in the sector. Disaster risk management-related departments are said to be surviving on donations from the international community

Despite being prone to a variety of natural and man-made threats, our decision makers have traditionally chosen to contend with these threats only after disasters have occurred. Subsequent to the October 2005 earthquake, which badly hit the northern areas of the country, it was, however, realised that disaster is not always best dealt with in a reactive manner, and that developing disaster preparedness and management capabilities can significantly help curb the extent of the damage.

The devastating scale of loss and the challenges faced during the aftermath of the 2005 earthquake, at least impelled establishing the required policy and institutional arrangements for dealing with disasters in Pakistan. Thus we saw the creation of a National Disaster Management Commission (NDMC), the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) and the passing of the National Disaster Management Ordinance (NDMO). Considering the fact that disaster risk management is a provincial subject, provincial governments were also asked to create Provincial Disaster Management Authorities (PDMAs).

Yet even after the promulgation of the disaster management ordinance and creation of the NDMA/PDMAs, a host of parallel organisations and departments have continued to undertake preparedness and response activities. Much of this work has also taken place in isolation, causing overlapping and waste of public money. The inability of the NDMA and its provincial chapters to cope with flooding in Sindh and Balochistan during the summer of 2007, and thereafter with the 2008 earthquake in Balochistan, proved that the establishment of institutional arrangements is not sufficient to guarantee that disaster management capacity has actually been built.

The government failed in decentralising the institutional framework for disaster risk management, as the provincial disaster management authorities neither had the powers nor the resources for institutional development. There was no PDMA in Balochistan during the earthquake in 2008 as the social welfare department had taken the lead in relief coordination. Even during the IDP crisis in NWFP, the PDMA was replaced with the temporary Provincial Emergency Response Unit (PERU). Even the NDMA was bypassed by the federal level Special Support Group (SSG), which was led by the law enforcement agencies.

The latest study carried out by the Institute of Social and Policy Sciences (ISPS) on ‘Public Spending and Disaster Risk Management in Pakistan: Trends, Issues and Implications’, observed that the concerned authorities are still more focused on emergency response than on preparing for natural and man-made disasters during the last 11 years. This assertion is based on the calculation that the federal government had spent a total of Rs 190 billion on disaster management during the period between 1998 and 2008.Out of this total amount, Rs 18.9 billion was spent on preparedness in comparison to Rs 171 billion on emergency response. Thus, a major portion of the funds allocated for disaster management seem to have been utilised in responding to emergencies. Based on these cited figures, between 1998 and 2008, the spending on disaster response has been nine times higher than preparedness. This pattern of spending does not conform to the newly revamped policy and institutional arrangements for disaster management in Pakistan, which recognise that disaster preparedness has to be given a high priority for mitigation of risks and effective response to disasters.

This above-mentioned study is part of an initiative by the NDMA itself to bring policy matters, pertaining to disaster risk management, to the surface. Such initiatives are indicative that the NDMA has begun thinking of disaster management in a more strategic manner. There is still room for much improvement before the desired paradigm shift can take place, whereby Pakistan moves away from response and relief oriented approaches towards the adoption of a participatory and responsive disaster risk reduction perspective.

At a broader level, the international community has, too, been taken by surprise due to the enormous scale of recent disasters worldwide such as the Southeast Asian tsunami for instance, and it has thus begun creating mechanisms and organisations to better cope with such major disasters. The UN has been prompted to create the Organisation for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (OCHA). Moreover, the Hyogo Framework for Action has been formulated to provide a global blueprint for disaster risk reduction by 2015. The World Conference on Disaster Reduction was held in early 2005 in Hyogo, Japan, which devised the Hyogo Framework in order to place a much higher priority to reducing risk and vulnerability, rather than continuing to focus on being prepared to respond to disasters.

While it made a commitment by signing the Hyogo Framework for Action, Pakistan is still far behind in achieving the disaster risk management and preparedness targets set in this framework. Pakistan has failed to give disaster risk management national priority, with almost no separate budget line and allocations in the sector. Disaster risk management-related departments are said to be surviving on donations from the international community. Resultantly, provincial disaster risk management authorities, instead of playing a role in disaster risk management, have made relief, recovery and rehabilitation a liability.

Building the resilience of the nation and local communities to disasters requires an effective integration of disaster risk considerations into sustainable development policies, planning and programming at all levels. The need for outlining a strategic and systematic approach to reduce vulnerabilities and risks to hazards is still lacking in the case of our nation. This is why chaos, suffering and disgruntlement continue to ensue every time there is a new man-made or natural calamity.

The journey towards making Pakistan less vulnerable to disasters is not easy but it is not impossible either. It does, however, require the cooperation of diverse stakeholders including concerned line departments, technical agencies, the armed forces, multilateral agencies, civil society and the vulnerable communities themselves. Unless this happens, the toll of the next man-made or natural disaster will again cause a devastating blow to life and property. Meanwhile divergent entities will haplessly try to deal with the multitudes of unfolding on-ground tragedies, even though the severity of many of them can be significantly reduced if adequate disaster preparedness and risk management practices are put into place.

The writer is a researcher. He can be contacted at ali@policy.hu