28 March 2011

THE FUNDAMENTAL STRATEGIES OF SAVING LIVES AND LIVELIHOODS

The Feinstein International Famine Center is pleased to inaugurate its Saving Lives Series with
this important work by Sue Lautze who now directs the Livelihoods Initiatives Program at our
Center. This paper is based on original work done by Sue for the Office of Foreign Disaster
Assistance in 1996, entitled “Lives vs. Livelihoods: How to Foster Self-sufficiency and
Productivity of Disaster Victims”. The strategy presented here has been revised and honed to
address issues facing the broader humanitarian relief community. This work lays out the major
concepts underpinning a livelihoods strategy and outlines specific actions that agencies can take.
The one-page table found on page three is an excellent overview of these principles, strategies
and actions, and could well serve agencies as a checklist to guide responses to complex
emergencies. Make a copy. Put it on your bulletin board. Whatever you do, do not file it away
out of sight.
The Feinstein International Famine Center, housed in the School of Nutrition Science and Policy
of Tufts University, is committed to preventing famine and improving organizations’ responses to
emergencies. The Center is primarily focused on working with international and local operational
agencies to build their capacity to do innovative work in a changing world. To this end, the
Center provides technical assistance, training, workshops and publications aimed at the
practitioner. The Center is also committed to impacting the academic world by changing the
nature of interactions among academics and practitioners. The Center is working with graduate
students at the School of Nutrition, Science and Policy and at the Fletcher School of Law and
Diplomacy to advance research in pertinent fields. It is sponsoring internships for graduate
students and preparing both a one year professional masters degree program in food security
and international humanitarianism, as well as a short-term “practitioners experts in residence”
program for practitioners returning from the field. The Center also develops policy positions on
important issues in the area of international famine prevention directed towards policy makers
and the media, as appropriate.
The world is undergoing profound transformation. The Feinstein International Famine Center
brings together academics and practitioners, visionaries and operational experts to develop new
models and new approaches to famine and complex emergencies. “The Fundamentals of a
Livelihoods Strategy” is an exciting beginning for our publication series that will explore these
complex issues.




II. WHAT AND WHY SELF-SUFFICIENCY?
A. SELF-SUFFICIENCY AND RELIEF ORGANIZATIONS’ MANDATE TO SAVE LIVES
Complex emergencies are aptly named. They involve an intricate web of often opposing and
hostile political, economic, military and social forces. Unlike natural disasters, complex
emergencies entail the deliberate creation of crises. Complex emergencies are highly destructive
because they radically increase the demands placed on fragile political, economic, environmental
and social systems while simultaneously destroying these same systems. Given the nature of the
political, military and economic assaults that are typical of complex emergencies, self-sufficiency
is a critical survival strategy for many people in complex emergencies. Hence, organizations that
provide survival assistance should design interventions that encourage self-sufficiency.
This point is not widely accepted and deserves elaboration. It is important to note that, except in
genocide, most people survive crisis.1 Even in the worst of disasters, decisions made by
disaster-affected groups reflect an awareness of life beyond the emergency. These groups (e.g.
families, households, clans) make trade-offs between the uncertain but immediate survival of all
and the more certain, longer-term survival of the majority.2 If a group seeks to ensure the
survival of all in the short run, it can reduce the likelihood of its own longer-term survival by
increasing the size of its vulnerable population beyond its capacity, especially where crises are
expected to be lengthy or frequently repeated.
Despite this, relief interventions are currently aimed at maximizing the survival of the greatest
number of disaster-affected people in only one time period: the present. This may only further
burden weakened communities. In complex emergencies, a focus solely on saving lives in the
very short term is insufficient because disaster-affected populations pursue their own
strategies to maximize the trade-off between both lives and livelihoods in order to save
the most lives over several time periods, not just the present. These realities should
motivate relief organization to prioritize some of their limited resources to foster self-sufficiency
and productivity in disaster-affected populations, rather than the current near-exclusive focus on
the short-term survival of the most vulnerable.
In addition, emergency interventions to foster self-sufficiency and productivity may be necessary
to ensure that the most vulnerable survive. For example, even in the face of frank starvation of
its weakest members, a group’s decision-makers (i.e., its power center such as the patriarch,
matriarch or village elders) may determine that the highest priority is to protect assets, such as
oxen, even at the expense of some of its members. In this case, the sole provision of emergency
food aid may be less effective than the establishment of cattle camps, emergency animal
vaccination programs or the negotiation of “cease-stealing” agreements to halt cattle raids.
Despite obvious nutritional stress, distributed emergency food aid may be converted, instead, to
cash (on grossly unfavorable terms for the seller) or traded for other resources needed to save the oxen, such as vaccines or weaponry to protect herds. Only after the group’s main priority is
met will the group invest in its lower priorities, including feeding its weaker members.
It is essential that relief workers be equipped to understand social and intertemporal dynamics in
complex emergencies. Although Western organizations usually place the highest priority on
meeting the immediate needs of the most vulnerable, usually women and children, it cannot
always be assumed that disaster-affected communities share this value structure. Interventions
need to be tailored to reflect the decision-making dynamics of disaster-affected groups;
otherwise, it can be expected that beneficiaries will convert relief resources to meet their own
priorities, an inefficient process at best.
B. DEFINITION OF SELF-SUFFICIENCY FOR RELIEF WORKERS
With respect to complex emergencies, self-sufficiency is the capacity of a community to
either produce, exchange or lay claim to resources necessary to ensure both survival
through and resilience against life-threatening stresses. This definition has three parts.
1. Self-sufficiency is community-wide. Not everyone is expected to be self-sufficient, but it is
the primary responsibility of communities to take care of their own.
2. Resources to achieve self-sufficiency are produced, exchanged or claimed. This precludes
autarky (freedom from imports) or “we eat what we grow” mentalities while highlighting the
crucial role of local markets. “Lay claim” recognizes that public goods (roads, schools,
clinics, etc.) diminish or disappear in complex emergencies.
3. Self-sufficiency entails equipping communities to ensure both survival through and resilience
against life-threatening stresses. Expectations about laying foundations for economic growth
or facilitating a “return to development” may be unrealistic, but interventions to strengthen a
community’s capacity to prevent or mitigate disasters are essential to ensure survival over
the course of repeated crises.
III. UNDERSTANDING COMPLEX EMERGENCIES
Complex emergencies directly threaten self-sufficiency. Like natural disasters, they damage
social services, market networks and agriculture enterprises while at the same time increasing
demands for the essential services they provide. Unlike natural disasters, however, complex
emergencies are also characterized by the deliberate destruction of political, economic, social
and environmental systems, rendering complex emergencies fundamentally more devastating
than other disasters.

CIVILIANS AS TARGETS. In complex emergencies, there are no distinctions between civilians
and combatants in the eyes of aggressors. Displacing populations, sniping civilians, destroying
market systems, raping women and destroying fragile eco-systems are blunt but highly
destructive instruments of intra-state conflict. An age-old military strategy is the destruction of
the adversary’s supply lines. In civil conflict, the “supply lines” are agriculture systems that feed
enemy soldiers and their families; health systems that keep families together and productive;
political systems that foster stability; and, economic systems that provide employment, credit
bases, insurance schemes, and markets for produce, services and household items.
DESTROYING SOCIAL NETWORKS. The deliberate destruction of society (including raping,
massacring, razing villages, displacing populations and disrupting herd migration and trade
routes) fragments communities. School systems are often destroyed in conflict. Entire
generations can be uneducated, leaving them ill-prepared to help their families survive crises,
keep a fragile peace or supervise the development of their countries through post-conflict
transitions. These are important strategies for not only military but also economic and political
ends. Militarily, disrupted communities cannot defend themselves. Economically, desperately
poor displaced people are willing to work for pitifully low wages. Politically, weak civil
societies are associated with weak political opposition.
Bombing Of Civilians, Southern Sudan
Annually, the Government of Sudan randomly bombs civilian populations living in
rebel-controlled areas of Sudan. The rebel SPLA regularly retaliates by shelling
civilian populations living in government-controlled garrisons. According to Africa
Watch:3
Indiscriminate government aerial bombardment has
produced tens if not hundreds of thousands of displaced
persons and refugees...Before the government offensive,
Western Equatoria had regained a semblance of economic
normalcy and crops had been planted. Now the economy is
disrupted and the towns...are deserted and looted.
ECONOMIC CHAOS. Economic assets, infrastructure and networks are targets of war and
exploitation. Some have noted that “famine is functional”4 and serves to enrich the few at the
cost of many. Complex emergencies are marked by extreme impoverishment of vulnerable
groups (“losers”) and massive accumulation by those with power (“winners”). Famine prices
minimize returns on the sale of assets, thereby increasing the attractiveness of rationing
consumption of food, water and medical care, and inducing migration for minimum wage labor.
“Losers” sell livestock, pledge farms, incur debt and borrow grain at high interest rates.5
“Winners” gain by forcing increased reliance on market transactions with prices
depressed/inflated to their advantage. In addition, war entails radical shifts in the division of
labor, with considerable changes in the roles of women, men, children and the elderly. This has
significant implications, as those who remain behind assume additional productive responsibilities
but may not have commensurate access to key inputs, e.g. credit, land tenure, technology,
watering rights, etc. Emergency interventions are required to ensure access to inputs by the most
relevant producers, the majority of whom are likely to be women, children and the elderly.
LOCALIZED FAILED STATES. Conflict forces administrations to redirect their priorities and
funding, usually away from social services to military budgets. Thus, the structures of
government in general and social services in particular often collapse or are severely weakened.
Residents can then no longer make claims on the state and must seek alternatives. However,
conflict disrupts public goods and services not only once provided by recognized authorities but
also those available through the “moral economy”, including kinship networks, informal
reciprocal agreements, ethnic customs, etc. In protracted complex emergencies, publicly
provided goods and services (e.g. health, labor exchange, credit and insurance) can be
completely destroyed, creating a de facto “failed state”.
Dismantling the Eritrean Health System6
Ethiopian occupation of Eritrea in 1952 led rapidly to the deterioration of the
health care system in Eritrea...One of the earliest signs was the sudden closure of
most clinics run by religious and humanitarian organizations...By 1962, the health
budget for Eritrea was cut by about 50%...As in other sectors, the health services
were deliberately crippled to weaken the Eritrean people’s enthusiasm for selfrule.
MANIPULATION OF RELIEF. In tightly controlled markets, relief supplies can be viewed by
“winners” as fair game for direct appropriation or taxation, or as unwelcomed supply shocks
that undermine profits. Interventions to rehabilitate asset bases and infrastructure may become
targets of destruction by those powerful interests that are threatened by the creation of selfsufficient,
productive populations. Targets can include strategic emergency interventions that are
designed to convert relief-dependent populations into viable communities (e.g. transportation,
emergency resettlement/land tenure, livestock restocking/vaccination, seeds/tools/seed banks,
emergency credit or agriculture extension). Programs to foster “relief-free” communities should
be designed to challenge and outright counteract economic processes of impoverishment,
especially in besieged towns and among disenfranchised, displaced laborers.
POLITICAL UPHEAVAL. Conflict is often a last resort to define new political structures. Access
to political resources and representation is essential for productive communities. Complex
humanitarian emergencies are characterized by fluid shifts in political power, a dynamic that
necessitates that relief interventions reflect the changing nature of political landscapes. This may
entail empowering communities that were heretofore not political actors, equipping them to
claim the political resources they lacked in pre-conflict times.
PSYCHO-SOCIAL TRAUMA. Conflict-related death and disability change the nature and
composition of a community’s work force and social structure for generations. The protracted
nature of some complex emergencies results in historic, cultural and social amnesia, in addition to a damaging loss of a generation of skills. The trauma of experiencing or witnessing violence is
known to generate a range of debilitating emotional and mental disorders, including depression
and post-traumatic stress disorder.
ENVIRONMENTAL DESTRUCTION. From the burning of villages to the denuding of forests to the
decimation of wildlife, both armed conflicts and the coping mechanisms employed by surviving
populations can destroy the productive capacity of land. Cropping patterns, herd size and
composition, or industrial systems may no longer be sustainable in the wake of conflict.
Emergency interventions are required to protect and restore productive bases, radically alter
livelihood patterns, or relocate affected populations.
IV. THE FUNDAMENTALS OF A LIVELIHOODS STRATEGY
PRINCIPLE ONE: COMPLEX EMERGENCIES REQUIRE STRATEGIC ASSESSMENT, ANALYSIS
AND INTERVENTIONS
Effective emergency responses to complex emergencies require sophisticated analysis of highly
dynamic military, economic, social and political systems. Today’s relief worker must be part
political scientist, part economist, part anthropologist, part military analyst, part historian, part
peace negotiator, part logistician. Given the brutal realities of civil conflict, failed economies,
illegitimate and undemocratic political systems, today’s relief worker must also be part -- but
only part -- humanitarian. Well-intended, but poorly designed relief operations only serve to
exacerbate the plight of the vulnerable by creating dependency, enriching those with
monopolistic market power or protracting conflict. Effectively providing basic humanitarian
assistance can be ultimately political and frequently controversial. Relief workers must
understand and then design interventions grounded in these difficult realities.
STRATEGY: ASSESS THE POLITICAL, MILITARY, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF EACH
CRISIS IN COMPLEX EMERGENCIES AND RESPOND ACCORDINGLY
ACTION A: PREPARE RELIEF WORKERS TO THINK AND ACT STRATEGICALLY
Disaster relief has not enjoyed the same career rewards and status as international development.
It is difficult to attract qualified individuals to the profession. A common expression from the
field claims that disasters attract three kinds of people: missionaries, mercenaries and misfits.
Disaster relief work is extremely demanding. Days are long and stressful. Relief workers are
expected to be highly mobile. Decisions involving massive resources are made with insufficient
information. Field work is dangerous and often emotionally disturbing. Finally, few relief
organizations invest adequately in their staff. Staff turnover and “burnout” are relatively high.
As a consequence, institutional memories are shallow, leaving the most experienced with the least time to train and educate other staff. In order to respond strategically to complex
emergencies, a stronger cadre of qualified relief professionals needs to be developed by:
•requiring longer-term contracts for field- and headquarters-based staff;
•training staff in the theories, practices and assessment methodologies;
•recruiting exiled, talented individuals from disaster-prone countries;
•(as donors) requiring basic educational and experiential qualifications of funded
NGO and UN staff, not only in vocational areas (agriculture, health, water), but also
in areas of economics, anthropology, political science, development, language or
international relations;
•appealing to universities to provide training in complex emergencies, including the
establishment of a certificate course in disaster relief management;
•hiring individuals with broad backgrounds and relevant overseas experience.
ACTION B: IDENTIFY HOW TO MOVE BEYOND THE DISTRIBUTION OF FREE RELIEF
The basic tool used to inform the relief response is the emergency assessment. Despite the
overarching importance of the assessment tool, it is underutilized in the disaster situation. In too
many instances, the emergency assessment comprises only the roughest of estimates of
population size and nutritional status of the most vulnerable groups. Based on this, relief food
requirements are calculated, plans for feeding centers and health units are drawn and submitted
for funding, transportation is arranged, etc.
Assessments of complex emergencies must delve beyond the observable, beyond physical
appearances. This requires drawing information from a variety of sources in the disaster areas,
as well as those on the outside, such as national and international anthropologists, historians,
sociologists and economists. Importantly, former development workers who were previously
assigned to the country can provide a contextual understanding of the social, political and
economic relations among affected populations.
Assessors must seek to comprehend the economic system that is providing essential supplies to
disaster-affected populations in the absence, lateness or inadequacies of free relief distributions.
All too often these life-saving mechanisms are ignored. Restrictions on access to non-market
goods (firewood, water and wild foods) must also be examined. Assessments of intra- and
inter-communal tensions, such as cattle raiding, should highlight both potential problem areas as
well as opportunities for local peace initiatives.
Analysis should include consideration of economic, military and political systems to identify
“winners” and “winner strategies”. Potential targets of economic appropriation should be
assessed, and alternatives to counter the threat of appropriation should be designed, e.g.
interventions to create markets for surplus production, negotiated access to communal natural
resources, etc. Such investigations will reveal the extent of a community’s vulnerabilities as they relate to priorities for assistance. They will also identify functioning coping strategies and
available capacity that can be strengthened.
ACTION C: FORMULATE COUNTRY STRATEGIES EARLY IN THE EMERGENCY
Pressure from the media, often referred to as the “CNN Factor”, forces relief organizations to
react at break-neck speed. In the rush to “do something” relief workers understandably leave
detailed analysis necessary for the formulation of country strategies until “later”. In the heat of
crisis, such as the first weeks or even months of a crisis, this modus operandi is unavoidable. In
the case of the Khartoum displaced persons emergency, however, this “later” has been nearly a
decade in coming. Those currently working on the Somalia crisis look back and recognize that a
transition to improve productivity and reduce dependency could have commenced as early as
1993. A more rapid transition to strategic planning, once response mechanisms are in place,
will greatly increase the effectiveness of relief interventions. There comes a time when “don’t
just do something, stand there”7 is the appropriate action for all staff. The keys are
•to identify the earliest opportunity for initiating a country strategy process by
charging one member of the response team to plan such a transition from the initial
phase of the emergency response;
•to equip staff to incorporate rigorous political, economic and military analysis in their
assessments and funding decisions by providing training, requiring comprehensive
analytical situation reports, and authorizing more frequent field travel for relief
personnel in the field and at headquarters;
•to include development specialists in the planning of relief operations in extended
complex emergencies;
•to form a policy spelling out the practical means of dealing with media pressure at
the onset of emergencies; and,
•to strive for a high level of effective coordination with host authorities, donors, nongovernment
organizations, and UN agencies.
ACTION D: IMPROVE COORDINATION IN THE DISASTER RELIEF COMMUNITY
Donors must support creative interventions to foster self-sufficiency in complex emergencies and
each must work in concert with other major donors, host authorities, the United Nations and
NGO implementing partners. An individual donor’s efforts to improve the effectiveness of
emergency interventions can be easily compromised by others who readily fund less strategically
designed relief interventions. Indeed, relief organizations have an important motive for seeking
funds elsewhere. In times of budget crises, donors will be asking project implementors to do a
lot more with a lot less.
The UN Department of Humanitarian Affairs (DHA) was created to address problems of
coordination in disaster situations. To date, it has but a few successes. This is a time of apparently low donor confidence. However, effective coordination of strategic interventions,
especially those that are required in protracted complex emergencies, is the only way donors, as
a group, can systematically and effectively support interventions to foster self-sufficiency and
productivity on a wide scale.
PRINCIPLE TWO: THE KEY IS CAPACITY BUILDING
There are at least three options for relief agencies seeking to assist crisis-affected populations,
including, a) intervening to promote livelihoods, including strengthening local initiatives through
capacity building, b) providing free and general distributions of relief assistance, or, c) not
assisting. There is a pressing need for the international humanitarian relief community to learn to
support coping mechanisms through capacity building in all complex emergencies, especially as
awareness grows of the potential for humanitarian assistance to directly harm the most
vulnerable and indirectly hinder the recovery process. There is a clear relationship between
how people cope with crisis and related opportunities for building local capacity.
In response to disasters, such as military attacks, floods or economic collapse, people cope.
Displaced persons seek shelter with extended families. Merchants provide short-term loans.
Parents send their children to live with relatives in safer, more productive areas. In response to
repeated shocks, the ways people cope become systematic and refined. Over time, these
coping responses become coping mechanisms. For example, in an atmosphere of frequent
raiding by armed factions, farmers reduce production and diversify storage techniques. Women
living in displaced camps convert relief grain to alcohol to generate income. The purpose of
coping mechanisms is to protect the disaster-affected populations’ fundamental means of
livelihood.
By their very origin, all coping mechanisms are sub-optimal and are employed only as second-
(or third-) best options to the community’s preferred way of life. These mechanisms are
imperfect and can become more exploitative as the crisis intensifies. Nevertheless, they
represent the best informed response to crisis, as they are developed by those whose lives and
livelihoods are most vulnerable. Understanding these trade-offs requires thorough assessment of
the whole range of coping strategies employed by the affected group. These coping mechanisms
can be highly diverse and complex, including changing grazing, cropping and planting practices,
migrating in search of employment, increasing petty commodity production, collecting wild
foods, using inter-household transfers and loans, obtaining credit from merchants and money
lenders, selling possessions, firewood and charcoal, or breaking up the household.8
Groups experiencing the collapse of coping mechanisms may be very limited in their trade-offs
between lives and livelihoods. It is widely accepted that long-term reliance on coping
mechanisms is unsustainable and ultimately counterproductive.9 Strategic emergencyinterventions in communities affected by protracted conflict or so-called “permanent”
emergencies may need to be longer-term in nature (e.g. training, education, road
rehabilitation/construction, seed bank restoration, etc.) As was observed in Mozambique:
lost assets (whether blown up bridges or drought-dead cattle) do not restore
themselves; the speed of dislocated households’ ability to rehabilitate their
livelihoods is significantly dependent on appropriate supporting measures and
resource allocations; restoring human capacity and building service and market
access is a complex, tedious and expensive process.10
STRATEGY: INTEGRATE CAPACITY BUILDING ASPECTS INTO ALL RELIEF INTERVENTIONS
ACTION A: ADOPT A WORKING DEFINITION OF CAPACITY BUILDING
Emergency relief interventions can prevent the erosion of a community’s ability to employ its
coping mechanisms (capacity damming), strengthen the better aspects of adopted coping
mechanisms (capacity building) or assist communities to derive better alternatives, a process
known as capacity seeding. Capacity building interventions are deliberate attempts to assist
communities to better cope in the face or wake of a disaster. The term “capacity building”
derives from the observation that, although crises occur periodically, they only escalate into
disaster situations when they outstrip the capacity of a community to cope with them. Where
vulnerabilities are the weaknesses that make communities prone to disasters, capacities are the
identifiable strengths upon which communities can draw to avert, mitigate or recover from
disasters. It follows, then, that capacity building is any intervention designed to reinforce or
create strengths upon which communities can draw to offset disaster-related
vulnerability.
ACTION B: INCORPORATE CAPACITY ASSESSMENTS IN THE DISASTER RESPONSE
Both vulnerability assessments and capacity assessments are necessary to determine
appropriate interventions. Since various social strata have unique experiences, assessments of
both the capacities and vulnerabilities of affected populations need to be disaggregated along
relevant lines, e.g. gender, class, ethnicity, lineage, etc. Assessments should consider the
physical/material, social/organizational and motivational/attitudinal strengths of a disasteraffected
community.11 However, capacity assessments are rarely conducted, even though
potential and existing capacities can be identified early in emergencies. Although experts have
prepared vulnerability assessment guidelines, practical field tools for capacity assessments have
yet to be developed adequately.
As with vulnerabilities, interventions can either strengthen or undermine capacities. Unwise
capacity building interventions can not only destroy local capacity they can reinforce coping
mechanisms that, though promising in the short-term, have long-term harmful effects. All coping
mechanisms employed by an affected community must be evaluated on two criteria: Is the
community capable (with or without outside assistance) of reinforcing them? Are the coping
mechanisms worthy of being reinforced? This could be called the “C&W Test” (i.e., capable
and worthy) for coping mechanisms. Once a coping mechanism passes the C&W test, it
becomes a candidate for capacity building.
ACTION C: AVOID CREATING DEPENDENCY
Capacity building entails far more than the channeling of emergency resources through local
organizations. As the name implies, it is a highly involved process of building relationships at the
local/national/international level to more effectively respond to crisis. Properly executed,
capacity building interventions can reduce the cost of relief operations, meet emergency relief
needs without generating dependency or capitalize on available local talent without creating a
“brain drain”. Internationally, however, the current trend is toward increasing dependency on
international agencies, as one NGO worker predicted:
international agencies will become increasingly locked into providing relief in
disasters which involve the total breakdown of states, economies and norms of
behavior (e.g. Somalia , Rwanda, Afghanistan). In such situations, there is very
little prospect of a return to normality, let alone an improvement upon normality,
for years to come. Agencies will increasingly find themselves providing long-term
welfare support, doing the job which one might have expected a government to do
in the past.12
It is often correctly perceived that working through local systems can slow the initial emergency
response. Relief agencies tend to pursue the most expedient route in responding to disasters,
often not taking time to examine what communities are capable of doing for themselves. The
primary response of the donor community has been to fund parallel services (health, water,
sanitation, education, transportation, etc.) provided by international NGOs. In the rush to meet
the perceived needs of disaster-affected populations, this parallel structure by-passes local
capacities, missing critical opportunities to strengthen or create coping systems. This parallel
NGO structure weakens civil society as international agencies (understandably) seek to
maximize their performance in emergencies. Unintentionally, international organizations tend to
maintain control over resources, minimize participation in the decision-making process, siphon
off the best and brightest local staff, escalate local salaries, etc. To avoid generating long-term
dependency on relief resources, agencies should improve the mix of indigenous and international
efforts, and resist creating parallel service delivery structures. This must be accomplished
despite pressure generated by the media and others that cause relief agencies and donors alike
to be caught up in the “myth of speed”.13 Staff must recognize that the pressure of the “media
factor” or the “fundraising factor” can lead to the emergence of a parallel international NGO
response mechanism which, in turn, generates long-term dependency.
The parallel international NGO response mechanism is based on the fallacy that relief operations
are a temporary interruption in the development process. While this system has saved countless
lives at the height of crisis, its effectiveness has declined markedly in protracted emergencies.
This parallel system, with its genesis in natural disasters, was not designed to meet survival
needs for extended periods of time. A different system of rehabilitation is supposed to take over
after the temporary crisis has subsided. In complex emergencies, however, the “temporary”
crisis can take years to pass. Further, as development funds continue to dwindle, humanitarian
relief is, increasingly, the only substantial channel of external assistance to many disaster-prone
countries.
ACTION D: WEIGH THE PROS AND CONS OF CAPACITY BUILDING IN EACH COMPLEX
EMERGENCY
The benefits and drawbacks of pursuing capacity building interventions must be weighed against
two other alternatives: supporting a parallel, international NGO-dominated system or not
providing assistance at all. Currently, disaster relief responses are a mixture of these options.
Most resources are delivered through parallel international NGO/UN structures. In some areas,
assistance is not provided when access is blocked or conditions of operation are untenable.
Elsewhere, limited resources are channeled to and through indigenous organizations or are
generated within crisis-affected areas. None of these options is cost-less or apolitical. The
advantages and disadvantages of each must be evaluated within the context of each emergency.
Every case will be different, depending on the underlying capacities and vulnerabilities of the
disaster-affected community.
Efforts to build the capacity of local organizations have contributed to laying the foundations of
civil society in Angola and southern Sudan. Outside agencies can assist communities to
capitalize on nascent pro-peace interests by providing space and an opportunity for a number of
voices to be heard.14 Support for local organizations to maintain accountability to the
populations they serve and to gain access to donors increases a society’s absorptive capacity
for external resources. In addition to increasing the effectiveness of disaster relief responses,
this has profound implications for the rehabilitation process. From the West Bank and Gaza to
Mozambique and Bosnia, recovery efforts have been dramatically slowed because of limited
absorptive capacity. In northern Iraq, Kurdish organizations in a USAID-funded resettlement
program have produced quality projects because these organizations understand local practices
and preferences. This has been especially important for determining the appropriateness of
sanitation interventions.15 In Sudan, where rehabilitating local capacity is a key element of
USAID’s country strategy, capacity building interventions have jump-started economic
cooperative structures, revitalized a destroyed market economy and reduced long-term
dependence on emergency relief resources.
Just as there are benefits to capacity building, there are potentially negative aspects that deserve
attention. Successful capacity building is a daunting and heretofore mostly elusive task. It is
difficult to identify, understand and enhance coping strategies. In Angola, northern Iraq and
Sudan, capacity building interventions have required extensive administrative and managerial
investments by donors, the UN and NGOs. Project inputs can also create destructive
competition for resources, a process that further weakens marginalized social groups. In
protracted emergencies, community organization might be nearly or completely destroyed,
requiring longer-term efforts to reorganize fragmented social groups. Rejuvenating traditional
socioeconomic structures can unintentionally reinforce bias against women. In addition, local
organizations are usually as impoverished as the populations they seek to serve. Yet, most
donors are not equipped to provide even modest cash advances directly to such groups.
ACTION E: RETHINK NEUTRALITY IN COMPLEX EMERGENCIES
In seeking to maintain neutrality in complex emergencies, organizations have focused on the
perceived “apolitical” tasks of delivering nutrition, health, water or sanitation services through
channels that limit the involvement of local actors to technical aspects. Working to identify,
utilize and strengthen local capacities for, say, organizing community groups or empowering
marginal producers is largely perceived as “too political” by relief organizations and authorities.
These views are not unfounded. In war, working with some organizations can grant legitimacy to
inappropriate factions. Ignoring the political tensions inherent in complex emergencies, however,
does not create neutral humanitarian space. To the contrary, it leaves agencies open to gross
exploitation and manipulation. It is difficult to intervene with a minimum of naiveté and a
maximum of neutrality, a combination that can be accomplished only with extensive
contributions from local communities. For agencies that confuse detachment from disasteraffected
communities with neutrality, however, local capacities to offset the worst effects of
complex emergencies will continue to be missed or worse, exploited or undermined altogether
PRINCIPLE THREE: MARKETS ARE NECESSARY TO FACILITATE PRODUCTIVITY
AND SELF-SUFFICIENCY
Humanitarianism has a long and proud tradition of providing free relief to people in their most
vulnerable hour; therefore, using market channels to deliver relief assistance is controversial.
However, when functioning, markets smooth intertemporal and spatial risks by providing, for
example, credit and insurance. Most of these arrangements in poorer countries are informal.
Active trading in local markets keeps transportation networks open, including information
systems that maintain rationality of prices across regions and limit exploitation. Village markets
provide a forum for petty trading of food and non-food goods, thereby encouraging farmers to
produce above minimum subsistence levels while also reducing outmigration. Because they are
more responsive to consumer demands than are relief organizations, markets provide diversity in
diets, productive inputs and essential items. Merchants’ stocks serve as one form of local
reserve (e.g. grain stores).

The Wider Role Of Markets
Beyond goods and services, village markets are a critical arena for information,
political exchange and socializing, all of which are important for maintaining
kinship ties, increasing efficiency in markets and bringing together groups with
common economic interests. Some SCF/UK staff in Ethiopia observed:
Markets are not only commodity exchanges; they also play
an important social and political role as centers for
exchange of all kinds of information on the surrounding
region and beyond. They are occasions when friends and
kin beyond the village meet, when encounters take place
between country-people and townspeople, and enemies
congregate in peace...16
Experience in complex emergencies indicates that strong and functioning markets serve
communities far better than those either dominated by monopolistic powers or by markets that
have failed completely. “Winners” manipulate markets in times of crisis, much to the detriment
of the poorest people. Markets and merchants are usually perceived as part of the problem in
complex disasters because merchant’s hoarding behaviors contribute to exorbitant prices. In
Somalia, merchants and warlords masterminded the systematic theft of huge quantities of relief
food. However, they were also useful and effective for the monetization of relief food and
contracted relief food delivery. Productive market potential remains largely untapped by the
international relief community.A Indeed, some do not consider market-based interventions as
appropriate actions for relief groups. One program officer working in Sarajevo was asked if
they managed any market-based programs. “No,” he said, “we’re a humanitarian organization.”
In reality, markets are a mixed bag. They play a crucial role in supporting a community’s
capacity to maintain productivity while also serving as a key source of increased vulnerability,
especially for the most marginalized members of a community. Those with resources and market
power are motivated to pursue exploitative economic strategies. Incorporated into a larger
strategy of relief, however, markets and merchants can effectively provide goods and services
to many vulnerable communities.
STRATEGY: USE MARKETS TO MAXIMUM ADVANTAGE
ACTION A: MONITOR MARKETS IN COMPLEX EMERGENCIES
Since relief efforts rarely meet the full needs of crisis-affected populations, markets serve as an
alternative source of food and non-food items. This important function limits dependence on
relief distributions by those with purchasing power. Active markets also provide a tax base to
fund local social services and to offset random looting of local crops and stocks. Further,
A One notable exception, however, is the work of Fred Cuny.
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markets have a close relationship with the informal economy, serving as the forum where claims
staked are recovered or extended, e.g. in-kind repayment of loans and labor, credit, etc.
Importantly, price movements and terms of trade in local markets can be powerful crisis early
warning indicators. In communities where markets have failed, vulnerability is increased in the
absence of these market functions.
Market activities signal the appropriateness of distributed relief commodities. The market
behavior of intended recipients should be routinely investigated to determine how distributed
relief items are utilized. The appearance of relief items on markets can be an indication of a high
demand for cash. Sales of relief items can also indicate a pressing need for consumption items
not furnished by relief agencies. The need to protect livelihoods may also cause beneficiaries to
dispose of distributed goods in the market. Despite serving as powerful signals of the
(in)appropriate nature of relief distributions, such market sales are routinely dismissed as signs of
poor monitoring by the implementing agency or simply accepted as inevitable “beneficiary
monetization”.
ACTION B: ENSURE THAT MARKETS ARE NOT WORSENING VULNERABILITY
Especially in complex emergencies, markets exploit those who lack purchasing power. In times
of crisis, collusion among the wealthy and the empowered forces reliance on markets by limiting
access to non-market resources or other markets. Because of the increased risks associated
with disasters, credit terms are usurious, with particularly acute consequences for women, the
poor or the socially marginalized. “Winners” seek to maximize “famine prices,” thereby
minimizing returns on distress sales of assets. Profit motives can work against the interests of the
most vulnerable because those with market power deliberately keep wages low or limit
competition to inflate prices. Relief organizations should counteract the negative aspects of
exploitative market behavior by increasing competition within and between markets and
removing barriers to non-market resources. This may be accomplished if
•the number of economic actors is increased through revitalized producer or
consumer cooperation (e.g. growers co-ops, consumer organizations);
•access to natural resources is restored by negotiating safe passage or de-mining
water sheds, forests, common grazing areas, etc.;
•fair emergency credit rates are guaranteed for the most vulnerable; and,
•transportation routes are kept open between markets (e.g. de-mining and
rehabilitating roads, increasing the availability of basic modes of transportation
including mules, bicycles and draft animals).
ACTION C: DETERMINE IF MARKETS CAN BE STRENGTHENED THROUGH SELECTIVE
INFRASTRUCTURE SUPPORT
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Markets fail or perform poorly when infrastructure is damaged and destroyed by war. Strategic
military targets include transportation (road, rail, river or air networks) and communication
(radio, television, newspapers and courier) systems. As the threat of conflict increases, some
merchants relocate to safer areas, reducing competition in the market and increasing
opportunities for monopolistic exploitation. Informal insurance and credit markets, two
important forms of managing risk across time periods, cannot withstand protracted crisis
because of limits on communal resources. In addition, these risk markets collapse when the
institutions that enforce contracts break down, e.g. elders councils whose authority is usurped
by military powers, herders’ associations that dissolve due to increased competition for limited
grazing land, villages that are destroyed, etc. Concomitant with other initial emergency
interventions, the state and function of market infrastructure should be assessed. Where market
functions are inhibited, emergency interventions to repair vital infrastructure should be
considered.
ACTION D: UNDERSTAND THE COMMUNITY’S TAX BASE
Incentives for surplus production diminish when markets fail, increasing the risk of food
insecurity as farmers resort to subsistence production. Formal and informal tax bases erode in
the face of declining production, threatening social services and increasing the likelihood of
random appropriation by military armies and insurgent factions. International organizations
routinely decry attempts by local authorities to re-establish tax systems to rationalize
appropriation or to gain self-sufficiency in local administration and social services. Under some
circumstances, however, responsible taxation should be encouraged. In order for communities
to overcome dependency on relief resources, they need tax structures balanced between the
outrageous banditry of Somalia’s warlords and the absolute “no new tax” stand of the
international community.
“Taxation” In Yambio, Western Equatoria, Sudan
Yambio is a naturally fertile area deep in rebel-held territory in southern Sudan.
Prior to 1993, farmers maintained only subsistence production due to the
combined disincentives of a defunct market, destroyed transportation systems that
cut off trade with nearby Uganda, and random appropriation by rebels. With
USAID funding, a barter shop was stocked with blankets, cooking pots and
farming tools -- “relief” items that, under other circumstances, would have been
freely distributed. In response to the barter incentives, farmers produced surplus
cereals far exceeding expectations, and the local market revived due to surplus
production and other OFDA-funded activities, including road rehabilitation and the
re-establishment of productive cooperatives for bicycle repair and tailoring.
Despite the renewed market activity, social services, including the primary health
clinic, remain dependent on emergency funding, primarily because of a lack of an
effective local taxation structure. In response, CRS provided vegetable seeds and
tools to local organizations in Yambio for the establishment of community
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gardens. The produce (the “tax receipts”) will support teachers so that education
can resume in Yambio. In this fashion, an alternative tax structure is emerging
that will, it is hoped, see Yambio become self-sufficient in social services, despite
the ongoing war.
PRINCIPLE FOUR: ASSET BASES ARE FUNDAMENTAL TO LIVELIHOODS
Assets, such as farming tools, land, jewelry, livestock or outstanding loans, serve as a buffer
from starvation in times of emergency. Assets, however, are also essential for households and
communities to sustain livelihoods. In times of stress, the pressure to preserve assets needed for
production is diametrically opposed to the pressure to prevent starvation. Actions to preserve
assets are production strategies that save lives in the longer run; actions to dispose of assets are
consumption strategies that save lives in the very short term only.
Households and communities hold different types and values of assets. Generally, women tend
to hold more liquid assets, such as jewelry, while men control more “lumpy” assets (i.e., those
that are more difficult to sell quickly), such as camels. Understanding the composition of asset
bases held by disaster-affected populations is key for both vulnerability and capacity
assessments. Importantly, however, relief workers should not confuse availability of assets with
access to assets, for even within households access is likely to be highly gender-specific.
Disaster-affected populations dispose of productive assets only as a last resort prior to
permanent outmigration, an indication of the importance of such assets to rural populations.
Productive assets represent the future stream of income or produce that will sustain the
household over time; they are essential for rural livelihoods. The opportunity cost of giving up
these assets and thereby becoming destitute is very high. In disasters, these costs are weighed
against other strategies to protect key assets, such as incurring debt, selling liquid assets or
reducing the intake of food. There is a clear link between nutrition and asset protection
strategies in emergencies. In some instances, disaster-affected populations will choose to go
hungry in order to preserve their assets and future livelihoods.17
Those who must dispose of their assets in order to survive will realize only a fraction of their
value due to desperation to sell and depressed famine prices, and will face both significant
impoverishment and high vulnerability. Asset prices are depressed in emergencies because the
market becomes flooded when populations dispose of similar assets in a short period of time.
When the crisis passes, asset prices are inflated because these same populations seek to reestablish
their lost asset bases. In this fashion, they lose twice.
The above model of asset disposition is based on observations of household behavior in natural
disasters, especially drought. In complex emergencies, pro-active “winner” strategies for
accumulation complicate the model. In areas experiencing a long-term decline of the formal
economy, such as the Horn of Africa, opportunities for legitimate wealth creation, e.g. export of
staples, have decreased significantly. In response, the politically, militarily and economically
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strong have generated a deliberate system of asset transfer from the vulnerable to the dominant.
In permanent emergencies, the assets of the poor and humanitarian relief supplies are some of
the few opportunities for accumulation by the powerful. To date, relief operations have been
unsuccessful in countering this exploitation.18
The problem here is that one is not dealing with a temporary emergency involving
a normally robust and self-sustaining population which can eventually resume its
former life. Relief operations may, to varying degrees, help keep people alive but,
at best, this is all they do. The way such programs are conceived and resourced
means they are usually unable to tackle the process of resource depletion which is
equated with famine.
As with other predatory economic strategies in complex emergencies, humanitarian agencies will
find themselves in the unenviable position of negotiating strategies to counter this “asset
stripping” with those same individuals and institutions that are actively seeking to impoverish
disaster-affected populations. Agencies may face difficulty gaining access to populations,
problems winning counterpart approval for programs or outright hostility.
STRATEGY: PROTECT ESSENTIAL ASSETS
ACTION A: ESTIMATE SEQUENCING OF ASSET DEPLETION AND RE-ACCUMULATION
The fewer assets one has, the relatively more precious those assets become. Likewise, the
weaker the asset base, the more attractive rationing becomes as an alternative to the disposal of
livelihood-sustaining assets. Using available information, relief workers can get rough estimates
of the order of disposition of assets. These serve as important early warning indicators as well
as informing appropriate project design.
Calculating Internal Rates of Return to Estimate The Order of Asset Sales19
In this example based on a food crisis in Ghana, although the sale of bullocks and
plows would realize the greatest amount of cash, their sales were postponed
because of their importance in maintaining productivity, as indicated by their
relatively higher rates of return. This type of readily available, easily calculated
information can be used to improve the design of interventions to protect the most
important of productive assets.
Asset Number
Owned
(N)
Selling
Price/Unit (a)
Income Per
Annum (b)
Rate of Return
(c = b/a)
Selling
Sequence
Radio 1 6,000 0 0.00 1
Goat 8 4,000 200 0.05 2
Bicycle 1 18,000 3,000 0.17 3
Bullock 2 50,000 15.000 0.30 4
Plow 1 25,000 30,000 1.20 5
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Likewise, relief workers can determine the household’s priority for asset re-accumulation. For
example, after the Nuba of Sudan were driven from their hills and rendered devoid of assets in
the early 1990’s, their main priority was to rebuild their cattle herds. However, they did not
seek assistance purchasing cattle but, rather, asked for goats. Relief workers later learned that
the restocking of cattle herds was accomplished by first accumulating goats, selling these for
sheep and, later, selling sheep for cattle. Purchasing a goat was therefore akin to purchasing
about 1/8 of a cow. Based on this information, goats were provided to key vulnerable
households.
ACTION B: KEEP MARKETS OPEN AND COMPETITIVE
In disasters, people’s ability to sell assets of all kinds is an important coping mechanism.
Functioning markets limit depressed famine prices of assets and facilitate the restocking/reaccumulation
of assets better than tightly-controlled markets. For example, livestock herders in
southern Somalia have not suffered from the civil conflict as much as others due to their access
to cross-border markets in Kenya. The difference is significant. One recent estimate indicates
that stocking rates in the Lower Jubba regions are probably no less than 80 percent of pre-
1991 levels while agro-pastoralists and sedentary farmers in this region have faced famine.20
To avoid monopolistic exploitation, markets should be kept as open and competitive as disaster
conditions permit. Markets in complex emergencies will be imperfect due to excessive risk.
Relief organizations should design countervailing market interventions to offset negative market
forces. Interventions include the establishment of barter shops or parallel markets to ensure
minimum floor prices for assets. While temporary and artificial, these market interventions are
important strategies for supporting coping mechanisms aimed at maximizing household food
availability.
ACTION C: FACILITATE THE ACQUISITION OF MOBILE ASSETS
Livestock are recognized as one of the most important forms of mobile assets as they are a
major form of savings, old age and health insurance and inheritance. Unlike many other forms of
rural investment, livestock can be moved quickly when conflict erupts. Innovative emergency
livestock programs are geared toward protecting the essential asset base of pastoralists.21 For
sedentary populations, the challenge of protecting assets is more complicated because any form
of unexpected displacement will result in the abandonment of key assets. Cash, however, is
portable. Relief workers should weigh the pros and cons of cash-for-work vs. food-for-work
programs, especially where food is available on markets. Cash-for-work directly protects
assets by precluding their sale. On the other hand, food-for-work can stabilize the terms of
trade between food and assets by decreasing the demand for food from the market. Likewise,
emergency credit schemes can preclude or delay the sale of assets. Importantly, these types of
programs are not linked with the nutritional status of a vulnerable population; rather, they are
intended to strengthen the position of the weak vis a vis the strong.
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PRINCIPLE FIVE: SOCIAL DYNAMICS INFLUENCE THE SUCCESS OF
RELIEF RESPONSES
Crises can have wildly varying effects on subsets of communities, and indeed, within
households. While this may represent opportunities for some to assume new roles of leadership,
it generally means that the vulnerable must further exploit their limited resources simply to
survive. The effects of complex emergencies are not genderB or age neutral. This section will
focus on women of reproductive age, but similar analysis should be conducted for a variety of
sex and age combinations. Complex emergencies affect men differently than women, the elderly
differently than children, the married differently than the unmarried. Importantly, complex
emergencies impact children’s lives differently than women’s lives, yet “women and children”
are usually grouped together in sweeping generalizations of vulnerable populations. Women,
especially poor women, get caught in a vicious cycle of rising prices, increased threats to weak
capital bases and reduced access to natural resources. Children, once innocent bystanders, can
become integral forces in conflict.
STRATEGY: INTERVENE TO EASE THE IMPACT OF COMPLEX EMERGENCIES ON CIVILIANS BY
ENHANCING THE COPING STRATEGIES OF WOMEN, CHILDREN AND THE ELDERLY
ACTION A: UNDERSTAND THAT TRADITIONAL VULNERABLE GROUPS ARE PROACTIVE
SURVIVORS
One donor’s guiding principles22 state that
within the affected population, first priority will be placed on meeting the needs of
children, then women of childbearing age, then other vulnerables including the
elderly...Assessments will consider particularly the unique status and problems of
children, women and the elderly and recommend means to address their welfare.
While highest priority is placed on providing assistance to women and children, it is with the
underlying assumption that these constitute the most helpless victims in complex emergencies.
Women and children are often chief providers whose primary responsibility is to manage the
delicate trade-off between short-term survival and longer-term self-sufficiency and productivity.
In this capacity, they are not helpless victims but, rather, are proactive survivors. Nevertheless,
the additional stresses placed on women and children as a result of their expanded productive
B Gender is a social construct, as opposed to sex, which is a biological determinant. According to Papanek,
“Gender differences, based on the social construction of biological sex distinctions, are one of the great
“fault lines” of societies -- those marks of difference among categories of persons that govern the allocation
of power, authority and resources. But gender differences are not the only such fault line; they operate
within a larger matrix of other socially constructed distinctions, such as class, race, ethnicity, religion and
nationality, which give them their specific dynamics in a given time and place.”
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roles in crisis do, indeed, make them a highly vulnerable group. It is critical that relief workers
delve into gender and power dynamics to understand the nature and genesis of vulnerability and
capacity in complex emergencies.
ACTION B: AVOID FURTHER BURDENING THE VULNERABLE
War directly disrupts the livelihoods of adult men and women. This process has distinct
economic, social and political consequences for other members of the household. In addition to
direct conscription, war forces men and sometimes women away from their homes as they
evade conscription, migrate to safer areas or search for employment.23 Those who do not leave
may find it necessary to hide to avoid conscription or arrest, rendering them unproductive and
costly for the remaining family members. Thus, in war zones, conflict is associated with labor
shortages at a time of increased productive responsibilities. This profoundly alters the work load
of the remaining able-bodied adults, the majority of whom are, by default, women. Relief
interventions should be designed so that they, at least, do not further burden the work load of
the busiest of disaster survivors. This point should be considered especially in the design of
food-for-work or cash-for-work schemes that employ so-called surplus labor or the distribution
of cereals without facilitating milling.
ACTION C: DESIGN INTERVENTIONS TO PROTECT AND STRENGTHEN WOMEN’S CAPACITIES TO
PROVIDE FOR THEMSELVES AND THEIR DEPENDENTS
Women are usually responsible for the collection of common property resources essential for
self-sufficiency.24 This may include gathering firewood, producing charcoal, fetching water or
collecting wild foods. Given increased disaster-related risks of production failure (e.g. when
crops or food stocks are burned or looted), women intensify their exploitation of natural
resources to meet basic consumption needs. This dynamic has been observed in most drought
emergencies. Unlike drought emergencies, however, complex emergencies are characterized by
decreased access to common property resources. Land mines make ventures “off the beaten
track” especially dangerous, as in Cambodia or Angola.25 Curfews and other restrictions on
movement imposed to protect communities unintentionally hinder the collection of common
property resources. Those imposed to intentionally increase reliance on market transactions are
deliberate “winner” strategies for accumulation. Regardless of intent, such restrictions undermine
a woman’s efforts to provide household essentials at the lowest possible fiscal cost. In these
circumstances, donors should support agencies that provide targeted distributions of natural
resources (e.g. water, fuel, wild foods, etc.) while facilitating increased public access to
common property resources (e.g. demining, negotiating limited cease-fires, road improvement,
etc.)
Especially in poorer nations, women form the backbone of the rural economy. Generally,
however, women lack adequate access to land, capital, credit, technology and training.26
Availability of productive inputs is likely to be limited to the male partner. His unavailability in times of crisis further reduces a women’s access to key inputs, thereby increasing the risk of
production failure. The most direct consequence of a lack of inputs is increased food insecurity in the household, a situation that can be redressed in the very short run by free food distributions. Emergency seeds, tools and credit projects, as well as projects to assist producers to form cooperatives, can help to ease dependency on food aid and increase food security.
However, interventions must target the most relevant producers, the majority of whom are likely
to be women.
Indirectly, women respond to risks of production failure and the loss of any male-generated
cash income by diversifying their economic and consumption strategies. Because women do not
have full access to commodity and labor markets even in the best of times, diversification in
periods of crisis entails increased reliance on illicit or dangerous economic activities, accelerated
exploitation of natural resources and disproportionate reductions of food intake. For example,
women are heavily involved in khat drug trading in Somalia and control the brewing of marissa
in the Khartoum displaced camps. Women increase charcoal production in drought-affected
areas, despite their awareness of the damaging, long-term effects of such practices. Nutritional
surveillance in Bangladesh shows that females more than males tended to reduce their food
consumption in times of food shortages.27 In addition to monitoring women’s nutritional status,
relief agencies should ensure that foodstuffs are available in sufficient quantities to assure
adequate consumption by productive women.
Where women do have access to markets, it is often in the form of trading petty goods or
supplying basic food services. Women’s assets are shallow and are susceptible to destructive
economic forces, resulting in the “cannibalization” of their assets in times of disaster. For
example, a woman who prepares tea in the market may need to divest her “capital” (a small
stock of charcoal, one cooking pot, a kilogram of sugar and tea) to meet the immediate
consumption needs of her family. As food input prices increase due to food shortages, such
women can be easily driven out of business, resulting in the loss of a key source of cash income.
Gender Differences In Market Access
Differences between male and female access to markets as a coping strategy
was studied in the Mandara Mountains of northern Cameroon.28 Of note, 70% of
men and only 33% of women relied on markets to cope with regular seasonal
hunger. A remarkable 21% of women and only 1% of men reduced their food
intake. Even following extremely poor harvests, only 37% of women could rely
on commodity or labor markets for relief, compared to 53% of men.
ACTION D: DESIGN EMERGENCY HEALTH INTERVENTIONS KEEPING THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF
WOMEN IN MIND
In complex emergencies, women are invariably left with not only additional productive
responsibilities but an increased care-taking burden as well. Where formal and informal health
systems fail, women are forced to fulfill the added tasks of health care for the household at a time when their own work burdens have increased markedly and their consumption has fallen dramatically. This has serious ramifications for the vulnerability of the entire household. The careful design of emergency health interventions can greatly ease women’s burdens, reduce vulnerability and strengthen the family’s capacity to cope.
PRINCIPLE SIX: TIMING IS EVERYTHING - - THE EARLIER THE BETTER
The best way to foster self-sufficiency and productivity in complex emergencies is to intervene
early, wisely, appropriately and effectively. Time of exposure to crisis is one critical determinant
of a community’s eventual capacity to recover. Well-targeted, well-timed interventions enable
people to retain essential assets and limit the irreversible effects of extreme food rationing.
Despite the importance of early warning, however, only a portion of the work done by experts
in disaster preparedness, mitigation and prevention (PMP) is currently operationally relevant to
relief workers in complex emergencies. From the late 1980’s to the present, PMP specialists
have produced a wealth of useful research and practical frameworks that directly address issues
of mitigating natural disaster and fostering recovery.29 However, with respect to complex
emergencies, there are critical shortcomings with this work, e.g. most disaster relief workers in
the field neither see nor use much of this information; PMP work has focused on natural
disasters and few attempts have been made to adapt PMP work to complex emergencies, etc.30
Attempts to modify PMP work based on natural disasters to fit the realities of complex
emergencies have been inadequate. Issues of PMP in complex emergencies are different from
those in natural disasters. Rapid or short onset natural disasters are external (exogenous)
shocks. In short onset natural disasters, such as earthquakes or hurricanes, interventions to
mitigate disaster aim primarily for rapid recovery to the status quo ante. Natural disaster
prevention strategies focus on physical construction (e.g. housing designs) and preparedness
strategies include the establishment of early warning and response mechanisms, usually within
the organizational structure of a recognized government. The greatest achievements of PMP
specialists are in this area, especially in Latin America.
In the case of slow onset natural disasters, such as drought, mitigation is achieved through the
direct and free distribution of relief commodities while prevention efforts focus on stabilizing
production. The shocks associated with slow onset emergencies are inherent (endogenous) and
therefore require permanent modification of livelihood practices and patterns. Disaster
preparedness includes, for example, the establishment of national and regional early warning
systems (EWS), or measures to improve grain storage techniques.
By contrast, complex emergencies are a perverse hybrid of both rapid and slow onset disasters.
There are localized rapid onset emergencies nested in widespread, slow onset disasters. The
resulting shocks are both inherent (endogenous) and external (exogenous) to the affected
community.

STRATEGY: DESIGN INTERVENTIONS ACCORDING TO THE CYCLES OF DISASTERS AND
DEVELOPMENT
ACTION A: DEVELOP SOCIAL, POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC EWS INDICATORS
Natural disaster forecasting has evolved into a technologically-based art. While complex
emergencies are often exacerbated by natural disasters, predicting (and therefore acting to
prevent) complex emergencies is not possible using existing computer models. “Softer”
indicators of social, political and economic change need to be identified and incorporated into
early warning models for complex emergencies.
ACTION B: FOCUS ON CONSUMPTION RATHER THAN PRODUCTION STRATEGIES
The initial premise for PMP in complex emergencies should be that, unlike communities stricken
by natural disasters, people trying to survive complex emergencies are primarily concerned with
stabilizing consumption, not necessarily production. This premise alone can lead to very different
PMP interventions. For example, while holding stocks of cereals may be an effective drought
mitigation strategy, such stocks may invite attack by armed groups in complex emergencies.
ACTION C: FOCUS ON SUB-NATIONAL LEVELS OF PMP IN COMPLEX EMERGENCIES
Complex emergencies are almost universally characterized by the collapse of national political
systems, precluding reasonable attempts to establish EWS within government structures and
requiring considerable more focus on local PMP interventions. Specialists should pay special
attention to local (versus national) interventions, e.g. how to perform cost-benefit analysis at the
project level or how to strengthen merchant networks to improve local food stocks or how to
capitalize on markets for pharmaceuticals.
ACTION D: CONSISTENTLY MONITOR AND EVALUATE PMP INTERVENTIONS IN COMPLEX
EMERGENCIES
A PMP intervention is successful if it either reduces vulnerability or enhances the capacity of a
community to withstand the vagaries of complex emergencies over time. Since the concept of
PMP interventions in complex emergencies is still evolving, it is imperative that systems of
monitoring and evaluation (M&E) be included in all PMP projects. All project proposals should
include measurable, realistic and useful indicators of project impact on both vulnerabilities and
capacities. In addition, a system of continuous, accurate and timely reporting must be
established from the outset and maintained throughout and beyond project life. It is important
that M&E systems determine the relationship between PMP interventions and their impact on
the probability that relief assistance will be needed in the future. This means that areas must be
monitored after the initial crisis has passed.
PRINCIPLE SEVEN: STRESS MIGRATION UNDERMINES PRODUCTIVITY
AND SELF-SUFFICIENCY
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Stress migration,C including displacement, heightens vulnerability in complex emergencies.
Aside from military operations that generate sudden migration, most decisions to migrate are
made after consideration of alternative options. This takes time. Potential migrants weigh the
benefits/risks of staying against the perceived benefits/risks of migrating. People in crisisaffected
areas will choose to leave if the expected benefits of migrating are higher than the
expected benefits of staying. This equation may be as simple as certain death or extreme
suffering in one’s home versus less certain death or suffering elsewhere. Interventions to
discourage migration must increase the benefit or lower the cost of staying. Often, there exists a
window of opportunity to prevent stress migration or crisis-induced displacement before it
starts.
STRATEGY: ANALYZE THE SOURCE OF MIGRATION AND MINIMIZE STRESS MIGRATION AND
ITS EFFECTS
ACTION A: DETERMINE IF MIGRATION IS BENEFICIAL OR HARMFUL TO THE MOST VULNERABLE
While stress migration from rural areas is generally viewed as detrimental to both sending
communities and migrants alike, not all crisis-induced migration is bad. Sometimes, outmigration
is essential to reduce competition for limited resources, e.g. in drought-affected areas. The first
step in designing interventions to reduce outmigration is to determine if the migration will be
beneficial or harmful to the most vulnerable population. If determined harmful, stress migration
should be stopped before it starts.
In complex emergencies, migration under duress can grossly undermine self-sufficiency and
productivity by reducing the quantity and quality of labor available in the sending
household/community. Often, migrants are heads of household or key laborers. Their departure
can have particularly deleterious effects on agricultural production. Those of the most
vulnerable population who are left behind may be denied water rights, credit, land tenure, laborsharing
arrangements, etc. Remittances are usually negligible and do not offset losses to the
sending household, especially among the poorest households. Likewise, stress migration can
burden the receiving community by fueling cultural or ethnic conflicts or by contributing to wagedepressing
competition in labor markets.
Unseasonable migration raises uncertainty and signals crisis. As migrants are usually male, their
absence can mean reduced participation by their households in the community’s political
processes, depending upon cultural norms and gender roles. Male out-migration can also
disrupt the family’s access to non-market community resources because the recognized head of
household is not present either to make claims or fulfill them, e.g. extended family labor
arrangements, intra-clan credit agreements, etc. Further, the effects of stress migration on the
C The term “stress migration” is used here to refer to any outmigration from a community threatened by or
experiencing the effects of a complex emergency.
Saving Lives and Livelihoods
migrants themselves are rarely considered. Working conditions are associated with extreme
poverty and elevated morbidity and mortality among migrants. Obviously, if the migrant can/will
not return, all of these effects can become permanent.
ACTION B: UNDERSTAND THE DYNAMICS OF URBAN MIGRATION
Urbanization is a global phenomenon. Growth in urban cities in Africa, for example, is due
more to rural-urban migration than to the rate of natural increase among urban residents. In
times of conflict, trends towards urbanization can increase, often in the guise of displacement.
Urban areas may be perceived to be safer than rural areas because they are more likely to be
protected (e.g. Mozambique). They often offer better opportunities in the casual labor market
while also serving as bastions of relief operations (e.g. Monrovia).
Relief operations in urban garrison townsD have different objectives than relief programs in
urban areas where movement is unrestricted. In the former, self-sufficiency is often not a
realistic aim.
When a city is completely surrounded, for all practical purposes it becomes
entirely dependent on outside aid and because the economy inside has only
restricted access to new sources of currency, more emphasis must be given to
free distribution of relief items than would normally be advocated in other relief
situations.31
By contrast, in cities where there is relative freedom of movement, self-sufficiency is achievable
because of special employment opportunities and desirable because of the strongly negative
consequences of dependency in urban settings. Especially in cities, social networks decrease the
fiscal and psychic costs of migration by providing, for example, information, a familiar face,
transitory accommodation or contacts in the job market. The provision of long-term relief
assistance to displaced persons can create additional incentives for rural to urban migration.
When relief agencies provide assistance to displaced in cities, this can increase the benefits of
migrating, thereby generating further displacement from sending communities or discouraging
voluntary repatriation. News of such relief assistance invariably reaches sending communities. It
follows then that dependency in urban settings can generate ever-increasing demands for relief
assistance.
ACTION C: COUNTER THE DEPENDENCY OF FORCIBLY RELOCATED COMMUNITIES
Thus far, migration and displacement have been presented as a rational response to crisis.
Situations involving involuntary migration, forced displacement and forced repatriation do not fit
this model. Victims of involuntary relocation are the most vulnerable of all disaster-affected
populations. They have the weakest asset bases because they are unable to organize in
D Garrison towns are those where access or egress has been blocked by occupying or surrounding forces.
Saving Lives and Livelihoods
advance of the relocation and are often forced to abandon rather than sell assets. Of all forms of
migration, involuntary relocation is hardest on self-sufficiency and productivity.
The international relief community tends to respond only after forced displacement has begun.
Campaigns of forced migration, however, should be prevented at all costs unless they are
motivated by strains on natural resources. Given that the ultimate aim of forced migration is
deliberate impoverishment or total marginalization, interventions to counter dependency must be
highly strategic. Communities that are relocated usually attempt to reestablish community
organization almost immediately after being displaced. These efforts should be identified and
nurtured by relief agencies that provide assistance.
Once immediate survival needs are met, relief interventions to provide jobs and other economic
opportunities are more important than investing in basic infrastructure in artificial and
unsustainable settlements (aside from water, shelter and sanitation programs necessary for
public health). Cash earned or allotted, as opposed to food aid, will enable migrants and their
families to relocate out of the settlement, either to return to their home communities or
somewhere else of their own choosing.
Forcible relocations are often associated with egregious human rights violations and are,
therefore, highly political. It can be difficult to distinguish between human rights obligations and
humanitarian imperatives. Issues of relief agency responsibility and culpability are particularly
sensitive. On-the-ground relief interventions must be accompanied by a concomitant political
effort to address human rights issues. This can serve the ends of the humanitarian operation if
political interventions ultimately slow the pace of relocation.
ACTION D: PROVIDE JOBS AND ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITIES FOR ALL STRESS MIGRANTS
In the absence of casual employment to provide food for migrants and their families, recurrent
nutritional emergencies will oblige relief agencies to regularly intervene. Migrants need to be
involved in some form of economic activity in order to avoid dependency on relief supplies. A
balanced approach to providing economic opportunities to displaced populations32 may include:
•Lowering the cost of living by providing short-term assistance with land for
gardens for home food production, establishing production or consumption
cooperatives or providing free basic social services.
•Subsidizing the cost of living through targeted feeding for small children or
the establishment of cheap, effective transportation systems.
•Creating direct job opportunities, bearing in mind that artificial settlements
require the creation of artificial jobs.
•Locating development projects near displaced settlements to create demand
for labor, and reserving such jobs for displaced persons.
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•Promoting micro-enterprise development in the settlements, especially
through the establishment of small, community-based, revolving loans.
•Providing access to new markets by facilitating transportation and
communication.
•Training displaced persons, especially those with agrarian backgrounds, for
urban-oriented employment.
PRINCIPLE EIGHT: POORLY DESIGNED RELIEF INTERVENTIONS UNDERMINE
SELF-SUFFICIENCY AND INCREASE VULNERABILITY
In complex emergencies, to be effective (or at least to limit potential harm), relief workers must
understand the underlying systems of production, social services, politics and markets because
some relief interventions can unintentionally undermine self-sufficiency and increase
vulnerability.33 While this principle is applicable across all sectors of production, service and
public goods, this section focuses on examples and possible actions in only one - - health.
While agricultural production is clearly linked to food security, it is less obvious what it means to
be self-sufficient in health. In all countries, rich or poor, economic growth and efficient markets
do not, on their own, solve basic welfare problems. Direct action is required to sustain an
adequate safety net.34 In the poorest countries, especially those torn by civil strife, safety nets
are inadequate. Most of the world’s poor do not have access to state-funded basic medical
services. According to the World Bank, “in low-income countries the poor often lose out in
health because public spending in the sector is heavily skewed toward high-cost hospital
services that disproportionately benefit better-off urban groups.”35
In Sub-Saharan Africa, one-third to one-half of all those who fall ill do not seek care at modern
health facilities but rather draw on home remedies, locally purchased drugs, or traditional
healers.36 This is due to a combination of a lack of facilities and cultural beliefs about the
effectiveness of traditional healers.37 Where the state has provided health facilities, they are often
insufficient. According to MSF, “medical facilities are fragile, insufficiently equipped, badly
funded, often serviced by personnel of doubtful competence who are generally poorly paid and,
as a consequence, not very motivated.”38
STRATEGY: ESTABLISH SUSTAINABLE SYSTEMS
ACTION A: UNDERSTAND THE UNDERLYING HEALTH SYSTEM
In times of disaster, both formal and informal health systems are badly stressed. Where the state
once provided basic health care, services can disappear due to military attack or as national
funds are diverted to “war chests”. Traders who provide pharmaceuticals to markets may
relocate as transportation networks, informal credit systems and other basic infrastructure are
Saving Lives and Livelihoods
threatened. Health professionals, including local healers, are prime targets for conscription into
armed forces, further eroding health systems in rural areas.
Non-western medical systems are damaged when access to wild herbs and roots or physical
mobility is restricted by conflict, including land mines. The design of emergency relief health
interventions can also undermine informal health systems. Local healers, recruited and trained by
NGOs and paid “fair” cash wages, find it more profitable to abandon their private practices.
NGO health clinics that provide free curative care may bankrupt community-based healers.
The emergency provision of free essential drugs can lower market demand for pharmaceuticals
and can have serious long-term ramifications if commercial pharmaceutical traders relocate to
other markets. In short, what few health services existed pre-crisis may be destroyed by wellintended
emergency health interventions implemented in response to disaster.
This is not to suggest that relief agencies should stop supporting emergency health interventions
but, rather, is to encourage the careful design of health programs. Using available market
systems can greatly improve the short- and medium-term impact of emergency health
interventions by strengthening rather than undermining the key role markets play in health care.
To stabilize underlying informal health systems, donors and NGOs should explore monetization
of pharmaceuticals.
ACTION B: ABOVE ALL, MEET EMERGENCY NEEDS
Relief workers need to differentiate between the emergency health needs of a community (that
are often escalated in times of war, drought, famine, etc., such as rape, abuse, wounds and
opportunistic infections) and the longer-term health problems that communities face and address
in times of stability. Obviously, in order to minimize mortality and morbidity, emergency relief
programs must ensure the provision of adequate food, water, shelter, sanitation. Public health
programs that prevent mortality due to measles, diarrhea, and other communicable diseases are
equally important.39 This includes community outreach and, in the case of diarrhea disease
epidemics, the effective case management of ill patients.40
ACTION C: INCLUDE REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH IN EMERGENCY PUBLIC HEALTH INTERVENTIONS
Stress migration, conscription, and war-related death and disability change the structure of
households. This shift in the division of labor coincides with the collapse of limited health
services and has particularly ill-effects for women. To partially redress this, reproductive health
should be considered as an emergency public health issue for at least three reasons.
1. Historic demographic analysis indicates that women reduce their fertility in advance of crisis
as a deliberate strategy to decrease maternal and child vulnerability. Emergency family
planning services can facilitate this temporary fertility suppression and thereby increase the
survivability of key producers.
Saving Lives and Livelihoods
2. Genocidal campaigns, rape and malnutrition-induced infertility seriously undermine a
community’s ability to reproduce itself. These same forces also generate a strong demand
for children in affected populations (e.g. lineages, clans, tribes) whose very survival as a unit
depends upon restoring the size of its population. This creates pressure to increase fertility in
highly vulnerable women.
3. Just as land mines keep killing long after the fighting stops, so HIV/AIDS continues to
indiscriminately besiege communities. Rape, demobilization of soldiers and migration
increases the incidence of HIV infection and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).
Research indicates that in areas of high STD prevalence, treatment of STDs (other than
HIV) can significantly decrease the transmission rate of HIV from infected to uninfected
partner.
V. CONCLUDING REMARKS
With aggressive acts of mankind superseding accidental acts of nature as the primary source of
human suffering in disasters, survival of the most vulnerable is threatened now more than ever. In
the coming months and years, relief workers can be certain of two facts: first, emergency relief
resources will be further limited and, second, demand for disaster relief assistance in complex
emergencies will increase. The fundamentals of a livelihoods strategy presented here is grounded
in these realities. Productivity and self-sufficiency are important components of any relief
organization’s response to complex emergencies. There are times when we must save
livelihoods in order to save lives.

27 March 2011

DIFFERENT TOOLS OF DISASTER MANAGEMENT BY KANIZ FATEMA

Chapter One
Introduction
The earth in the solar system is unique among the nine planets; that is it has enough oxygen and plentiful water to support life. It supports Human life but side by side it destructs Human life whenever the nature changes its course based on various geological reasons and that results various Natural disasters. During Jurassic time Gondwanaland was a southern super continent that included the present South America, Africa, Antarctica, Australia, New Zealand and India. The outer layers of the earth are always involved in a recycling known as tectonic cycle. Mountain rise, volcano eruption, earthquakes, bending down of sea floors etc. are the result of tectonics. Disasters occur where the earth unleashes its concentrated energy. A large earthquake or major volcanic eruption or Flood or drought is becoming a challenge for the survival of human beings in the affected areas.

Disaster is an event, natural or man-made, sudden or progressive, that seriously disrupts the functioning of a society, causing human, material, or environmental losses of such severity that the affected community has to respond by taking exceptional measures. The disruption (including essential services and means of livelihood) is on a scale that exceeds the ability of the affected society to cope with using only its own resources.
Disaster affects society as a whole these focusing events or destabilizing events have also had an impact on scholarly enterprises shifting the attention of sociologists from more traditional areas of professionals inquiry to the expansion and application of innovative concepts and methods to the study of disasters ( Birkland 1997 Picou and Marshall 2007).

Defining Disaster
‘Disaster’ is defined differently by different people: to some ‘disaster’ is a summative concept’ (Kreps, 1984) or a ‘sponge world’ (Qurantelli and Dynes, 1970). Some researchers mentioned disaster as a ‘collective stress situation’ (Barton, 1969) while others identified it with ‘social crisis period’ (Qurantelli and Dynes, 1977). Britton (1986) argued that “disasters can be more easily recognized than they can be defined”.

Disaster is a severe, relatively sudden and unexpected disruption of normal structural arrangements within a social system over which the system has no firm control (Barton, 1974). A disaster may also be viewed as “a significant departure from normal experience for a particular time and place” (Turner, 1978). Disaster is also viewed as a mental construct imposed upon experience. This is because to understand disaster knowing the number of deaths, the value of property destroyed or the decrease in per capita income is not sufficient. The symbolic component requires knowledge of the sense of vulnerability, the adequacy of available explanation and the society’s imagery of death and destruction (Barkun, 1977).

Objectives;
• To know about the disasterous condition of The Earth along with Bangladesh
• To know about different tools of disaster management
• To elaborate various types of approaches
• Specify Environmental approaches and Technical approaches of Disaster management.
• To know the advantages of environmental and technical approaches regarding disaster management
• To know the process of these two types approaches in global and national context
• To know different priority area of action about disaster management
Chapter Two
Situational analysis

International and Global Context

Disasters are situations or events which overwhelm local capacity, necessitating a request to national or international level for assistance. These are classified into two main categories i.e. Natural disasters which are hydro-meteorological and Geophysical, and non-natural disasters which are man-made and can be industrial related; chemical spill, collapse of industrial structures, explosion, fire, gas leak poisoning, radiation; miscellaneous events such as collapse of domestic/non industrial structures, explosion, fire, and Transport related; air, rail, road and water-borne accidents (World Disasters Report, 2002).

Disasters and how they are managed, have become the subject of increasing research and debate in recent years. This heightened interest signifies that the world has become a more dangerous place for its inhabitants who are becoming more vulnerable to disasters.
Data gathered worldwide over the last three decades suggest that, while the number of people killed by natural disasters has leveled out at around 80,000 per year, the number affected by disasters and associated economic losses have both soared. As during the 1990s, an annual average of around 200 million people was affected by natural disasters nearly three times higher than during the 1970s. Economic losses from such disasters in the 1990s averaged US$ 63 billion per year which is nearly five times higher in real terms than the figure for the 1970s (Brussels-based Centre for research on the Epidemiology of Disasters-CRED)

While the figures sound sobering, they disguise the devastating effects that disasters can have on poorer nations’ development as disasters undermine development by contributing to persistent poverty. As Didier Cherpited says “disasters are first and foremost a major threat to development, and specifically to the development of poorest and most marginalized people in the world. Disasters seek out the poor and vulnerable, and ensure they stay poor.” (World Disasters Report, 2002)

It has been evidently documented that, vulnerability to disaster is not simply by lack of wealth, but by a complex range of physical, economic, political and social factors. Flawed development is exacerbating these factors and exposing more people to disasters. Rapid population growth and unplanned urbanization force poorer communities to live in more hazardous areas. However, even the better-off are at risk as expansion of infrastructure over the past decades including bridges, railway lines and roads have created a barrier across the valley leading to limited access, and excessive rainfall resulting in floods. Growth in infrastructure across the globe has increased both the level of assets at risk from disasters, and the people dependent on such lifelines as electricity, gas and water mains.

Economic growth may increase risks particularly in the poorest countries of the world as economic activities can result to environmental degradation, deforestation which disrupts watersheds leading to more severe droughts, as well as floods. People switch jobs or their mode of crop production in response to improved marketing opportunities, and in doing so, they may increase their vulnerability to disasters. Clearly, disasters are a major threat to the global economy and to society and therefore sustainable development is society’s investment in the future or otherwise; investments will be squandered if not adequately protected against the risk of disaster.

Recognizing the fact that disasters are complex problems arising from the interaction between the environment and the development of human beings, disaster requires complex responses drawing on a wide range of skills and capacities. It requires the cooperation between multilateral development agencies, national and local governments, non-governmental organizations, businesses, natural and social scientists, technical specialists and the vulnerable communities. Central to the United Nations Conferences in Stockholm in 1972, Rio de Janeiro in 1992, and the World Summit on Sustainable Development held in Johannesburg, was global commitment to mainstreaming sustainable development in all aspects of national development.


National Context
Disasters are annual events in Bangladesh. These disasters range from ravaging tornadoes to devastating floods. Of all the disasters the problem of flood has aggravated most from 1955 to 2004 and become one of the main concerns of people in Bangladesh. Abnormal floods submerge about 60 percent of the land, damage crops, property; disrupt economic activities and cause diseases and loss of life. Similarly, cyclones, which are sometimes accompanied by storm and tidal surge, pose multiple threats to human society along with erosion of soils, riverbank and coasts. Surge water creates salinity problem in the coastal belts. Consequently, cyclones are very destructive of property and people and disruptive of economic activities. Another hazard, drought, affects the standing crops, water supplies and plant growth leading to loss of productions, food shortages and famine. (Nasreen and Hossain, 2002). Arsenic, a toxic element and a silent disaster, is teaching a bitter lesson to humankind, particularly to those in Bangladesh who have been suffering from arsenicosis. The excessive level of the presence of arsenic in drinking water is redefining water from 'life saver' to a 'threat' to human survival. Because it takes 10 to 20 years, depending on the amount of arsenic accumulated in the body, to be identified as arsenic patient, people's response to the disease is not so prompt. Because of its severity and frequent occurrence, floods have attracted wide attention and are well documented by the researchers. However, sociological research on disasters, even on flood, is scant in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh is beset by a myriad of natural disasters. Tropical cyclones, tidal surges, tornados, floods, droughts and large-scale riverbank erosion all wreak havoc on the lives and livelihoods of the population. The country’s propensity to natural disasters is due to various environmental factors and its geographical location. Recent estimates suggest that about 4 percent of the world’s cyclones hit Bangladesh and that damage and losses to the country amount to about 96 percent of the global total. In November 1970, Bangladesh’s coastal regions were devastated by a cyclone that killed more than 300,000 people and caused over $2.5 billion of property damage. More recently, floods in 1988 and 1998 brought immense suffering to the population. Agricultural production was disrupted and the country’s economy was severely affected in 1998, when nearly two thirds of the country was under water for three months. Bangladeshis and their government are doing their best to prevent and mitigate natural disasters, but there is an overwhelming need to strengthen the country’s disaster preparedness and management capabilities.

At the national level, disaster management issues are gradually being given more attention in national planning processes but until recently was seen in sectoral lens and hardly have the effective structures, policy, legal framework and more so the proper understanding and capacities.

The recurrence of disaster events and the increasing concerns about disaster impacts have attracted a lot of attention from both governments and development partners not the least because the risk calculus for vulnerable groups within society and the infrastructure is enormous.

The DFID Policy Paper entitled ‘Reducing the Risk of Disaster-Helping to Achieve Sustainable Poverty Reduction in a Vulnerable World’ among the developing countries at high risk of disaster. The highest in ranking is Bangladesh followed by Nepal. The implications for The Bangladesh in this ranking are evident in that if no prevention and preparedness measures are taken now to mitigate this high risk, it may erode the significant development gains registered in The Bangladesh especially in the area of infrastructure and the well elaborated poverty reduction strategies among others.

The risk calculus for vulnerable groups within society and infrastructure will be enormous and hence the urgent need to design strategy that would outline the development of standard instruments for disaster prevention and preparedness as well as the organizational mechanisms for plan implementation. The underlying assumption, as indicated in the Policy document, is that disaster prevention and preparedness are crucial entry points for disaster risk reduction.

Despite the potential high risk been posed by disaster, the old view of disasters as temporary interruptions on the path of social and economic progress and should be dealt with through humanitarian relief is deeply rooted in the country. Until recently, disaster issues were treated and handled through our various environmental management programmes and sectors as an added on activity. It is increasingly becoming evident that those notions are no longer credible and disaster issues are too big to be an added on to a sector or being perceived as a sectoral mandate. Disaster issues are multidimensional, multi-sectoral and need to be mainstreamed in all development concerns with a central coordination.

Analytical Review of Disaster issues in the Bangladesh

The World Watch Institute in Washington estimates that the earth’s continents lose 24 billion tons of fertile topsoil every year and forest destruction put at 15 million hectares of forest worldwide with depletion worst in developing countries such as the Gambia. The expansion of the agricultural frontiers into fragile ecosystems, eliminating stabilized forest cover has increased the frequency of flash floods and lower agricultural productivity.

In 2003, about most of the Bangladesh population lived in village area. Uncontrolled urban sprawl and speculative land markets have pushed many marginal settlements into high-risk areas that are flood-prone areas. The country’s natural resources and the environment are seriously endangered as human lives are increasingly harmed by pollution, desertification, climate change, floods and unplanned urbanization.

Climate change will have repercussions as it can lead to desertification, rising sea levels, rapid shifts in vegetable zones, lower agricultural production and a greater shortage of fresh water. This affects the country in general particularly the poorest who will be worst hit.

In recent years, the Bangladesh experienced a significant number of disastrous events of both natural and human origins. The Hazards Profile of the Bangladesh and its Vulnerability and Capacity Assessment Report indicates that these disasters are related to cyclone,floods,drought, river bank erosion ,environmental degradation and epidemics.

All these incidents, a combination of man-made and natural disasters are causes for concern and thus call for concerted and coordinated efforts to plan to prevent, manage and mitigate the effects of disasters. This should not be done in isolation but integrated into the national development planning framework.
Chapter three

NATIONAL DISASTER MANAGEMENT POLICY:
GOALS AND OBJECTIVES
Disaster Management in the Bangladesh

The main limitations and major obstacles to effective disaster management policies in the past has been a dominant approach that justifies disaster response. The current debate is now moving from the idea of a basic diagnosis of relief operation to a more proactive strategy of disaster prevention. Existing policy responses of both governments and the international community treat disaster as a series of unexpected events whose remedy lies in the provision of humanitarian relief which in essence is what is called ‘crisis survival’ as the aim is to minimize short-term suffering. The need to move away from the old technocratic, command-and control approach to risk reduction to more innovative approaches and partnerships opens the door for greater success in disaster management.

The paradigm shift in recent years from disaster response to disaster prevention and disaster risk reduction is largely motivated by the high toll of disasters both in terms of human sufferings and the loss of economic assets. What is needed, as clearly indicated in a recent Policy Paper is ‘a well-resourced and prepared response system with a focus on national and local capacity.’

Cognizant of the above, the Bangladesh government developed a National Disaster Management Bill and Policy which emphasizes that any successful mechanism for disaster prevention must be multifaceted and designed for the long-term. The capacity to anticipate and analyze possible disaster threats is a prerequisite for prudent decision-making and effective action. Yet even practical early warning will not ensure successful preventive action unless there is a fundamental change of attitude towards disaster perceptions. An integrated approach that brings together the efforts of the government, UN agencies, NGOs, civil Society, Local authorities and local communities is the most viable, effective and sustainable disaster management strategy.

Currently the UNDP provides project support in the form of a National Disaster management programme aimed at developing a comprehensive disaster management framework in the country and to improve national capacities to anticipate, manage and respond to disasters. Through the project, a secretariat was fully operational and served as the nerve-centre for all disaster related issues in the country. The capacities and institutional memory developed during the project implementation were used to establish a National Disaster Management Agency charged with the implementation of the disaster Policy and Act thus justifying the formulation of this strategy. The project also assisted in the development of a national hazard/disaster profile, restructured regional disaster committees and undertook training and capacity building country-wide in addition to the development of a comprehensive National Action Plan for Avian and Human Influenza.

Justification of the Strategic Plan

To operationalize the Disaster Management Bill and Policy, there is a need to develop a multi-dimensional strategy that provides for disaster mainstreaming in development, the strengthening of the institutionalization of disaster, the strengthening of disaster management analysis skills, research and the development of an information system, advocacy, partnership and policy dialogue.

The critical need for the disaster management agency to have a comprehensive plan that will guide its interventions towards effectively implementing its mandate gives the right to the formulation of the 2008-2011 Strategic Plan. The Plan is a critical instrument to establish, build capacity of the national disaster management office and creating the conditions to effectively execute its mandate.

The strategic plan will serve as the roadmap and building blocks for operating and reaching the disaster management goals and objectives in the Bangladesh.

It will further serve as an integrated document for all stakeholders’ participation in this urgent and important national task.


Vision, Goals and Objectives

Vision

Assurance of safer and resilient communities in which the impact of hazards would not hamper development and the ecosystem and provision for a better quality of life will be achieved through effective emergency and disaster services.

Policy Goals

The overall goal of the disaster management policy and strategy is to ensure a proper and effective mechanism for disaster mitigation and preparedness that will save lives and livelihoods in the country. The goals are:

1. Articulate the vision and goals for disaster management in the Bangladesh
2. Outline the strategic direction to guide the development of disaster management policies
3. Align the strategic direction for disaster risk reduction with international norms and framework conventions
4. Mainstream disaster mitigation into relevant areas of activity of Government, NGOs, Private Sector and Civil Society Organizations.
5. Strengthen the governance and accountability arrangements in place that support achievements of disaster management priorities.
6. Build adequate and sustainable capacity at the community level in order to enhance the culture of safety and resilience at the local level.

Policy Strategic Objectives
1. To integrate disaster risk reduction into sustainable development policies and planning;
2. To develop and strengthen institutional mechanisms and capacities to build resilience to hazards
3. To systematically incorporate all international, regional, national and local disaster risk reduction strategies and approaches into the implementation of emergency preparedness, response and recovery.
4. To achieve a comprehensive, all hazard, all agencies approach by achieving the right balance of prevention, preparedness, mitigation, response and recovery;
5. Prepare communities to ensure that they are fully equipped to anticipate and respond to disaster events.
6. To promote a transparent, systematic and consistent approach to disaster risk assessment and management.
7. A multi-stakeholder participatory approach including community participation at all levels
8. Develop a database and information exchange system at national, regional and international levels.

Chapter Four
Technical & Environmental Approaches Regarding Disaster Management

Natural and technological hazard
The principal focus of planning for natural and technological hazards is risk assessment and reduction. Efforts to prevent and plan for natural and technological disasters have arisen from the need to protect society from hazards that are prevalent in the area of governmental jurisdiction. This approach to risk reduction and civil protection has been developed through legislation, the defining of institutional responsibilities and the allocation of financial resources (top down), coupled with local responses and community involvement (O’Brien and Read, 2005; Alexander, 2002a). Such a comprehensive approach to multi-hazard planning is a feature of the strategy of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries and has evolved from extensive research into both natural and anthropogenic disasters (Lindell and Perry, 2003; Alexander, 2002b; McEntire et al., 2002; Mileti, 1999; Tobin, 1999). Disaster planning is based on risk assessment and lessons learned, which are codified into a set of risk management and emergency plans designed to enable effective and efficient policies and practices. This approach to risk management can be effective in areas prone to natural hazards, such as flood plains, storm corridors and seismically active zones. In Australia, Japan, the US and other MDCs, preparedness and mitigation strategies, combined with high coping capacity (a function of income, savings and insurance), ensure that, although events may cause extensive damage, mortality rates are usually low and communities are able to recover quickly.2 Examples include the recovery of Florida, US, from numerous recent hurricanes (Tobin, 1999), the decade-long recovery of Kobe, Japan, from the 1995 Great Hanshin-Awaji earthquake (Toshihisa et al., 1999) and the recovery of Darwin, Australia, from the destruction of 70% of its building stock by Cyclone Tracy in 1974 (Blong, 2004). The ultimate aim of planning is disaster risk reduction, with the final outcome being a decrease in losses and a speedy return to normality. To work effectively, this holistic approach to planning requires accountable, democratic government institutions, financial support, political will and the trust of civil society. In LDCs, such an approach to risk and disaster management also exists, at least on paper. It involves commissions and institutions at the national, sub-national, regional and municipal level, which have proliferated since the beginning of the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR) (1990–99). There had been another flurry of similar institution building during the ‘environment decade’ of the1970s, during which institutions were developed to monitor and protect the human environment from pollution. Implementation, however, lags behind institutionalization and planning in many of these countries.



Technical approaches
The technical approach (Bolt et al. 1977; El-Sabh and Murty, 1988) focuses on geophysical approaches to disaster such as studied in seismology, geomorphology and volcanology and seeks engineering solutions.

Some plannings;
The goal of the national disaster management strategic action plan is to contribute to the sustainable improvement of the well-being of Bangladeshi’s by:
(I) creating a socio-economic, legal and institutional environment that is conducive to disaster management in the Bangladesh and;
(ii) Effectively mainstreaming disaster management issues into national policies as well as in sector-specific development programmes and projects.

Some Principles
All the activities in operationalizing the national disaster management policy must consider the following crosscutting core principles and mainstream them into national development.
• Advocacy
• Service delivery
• Capacity Building
• Community/local empowerment
• Emergency Preparedness
• Integrated planning and programming
• Partnership and Alliance Building

For any disaster and risk reduction management programme, the following features are essential for any success;
• Social cohesion and solidarity (self-help and citizen-based social protection at the neighborhood level).
• Trust between the authorities and civil society
• Investment in economic development that explicitly takes potential consequences for risk reduction or increase into account.
• Investment in human development.
• Investment in social capital.
• Investment in institutional capital (e.g., capable, accountable and transparent government institutions for mitigating disasters.)
• Good coordination, information sharing and cooperation among institutions involved in risk reduction
• Attention to lifeline infrastructure.
• Attention to the most vulnerable.
• An effective risk communication system and institutionalized historical memory of disaster.
• Political commitment to disaster management.
• Laws, regulations and directives to support all of the above.


Key Stakeholders

The stakeholders involved in the implementation of this strategy are numerous and can be categorized as follows;
• Government including local authorities
• NGOs including civil society organizations
• Private sector
• International development partners
• Local communities
• Women and Youth groups
• Other vulnerable groups such as children and the physically challenged

Some Priority Areas for Action

The definition and identification of disaster management priority areas for intervention is informed by its’ policy, bill and the outcome of disaster analysis in the country. This strategic plan is thus an important framework for the establishment of an institutional framework for National Disaster Management which will position itself as an Office of excellence by responding to disaster and risk reduction matters in an efficient and prudent manner. The following priority areas will be the disaster management agency’s building blocks to championing disaster management and risk reduction issues in the country.

Priority Area 1: Development of institutional framework and structures capable of preventing, preparing for and responding to disasters at National, Regional and Local levels.

Interventions in this area will aim at creating institutional environment for addressing disaster and risk reductions. This will involve the establishment of a National Office and related technical committees at national, regional and local levels, and the strengthening of capacities of all actors: government, civil society, organized private sector, decentralized agencies, state institutions and development partners.

Priority Area 2: Integration of disaster risk reduction into sustainable policies and plans.

The interventions in this area will focus on mainstreaming disaster management and risk reduction into National policies and Plans through the development of national platform for disaster management, sensitization, and awareness creation on disaster management, capacity building and introduction of disaster risk reduction into the school system. Establishing the necessary linkages and capacity building will be among the key activities. Interventions in this area will aim at building capacity at all levels and develop and implement an effective resource mobilization mechanism and necessary follow ups. Mechanisms will be developed for mainstreaming disaster issues in overall development plans and policies.


Priority Area 3: creation of a body of knowledge that is useful to support government, humanitarian organizations and other partners; to anticipate, plan for and manage disasters effectively

Interventions in this area will aim at developing and improving on effective early warning systems, development of a comprehensive data-base, system development, conduct surveys and develop communication channels.

Priority Area 4: Create broad and effective partnership among government, humanitarian organizations and other partners, to engage in disaster risk reduction activities and addressing the underlying factors in disasters

The national disaster management Office’s intervention will focus on ensuring that the necessary platform or structures and processes exist for genuine partnership and concerted efforts in disaster risk reduction. The interventions will focus on policy dialogue and establishment of effective linkage with the environmental impact assessment process.

Priority Area 5: Develop an efficient response mechanism to disaster management and make available the necessary resources

Interventions in this area will aim at building capacities at all levels; develop strategies for resource mobilization and for monitoring and evaluation.

Priority Area 6: To strengthen national capacity in the timely detection, prevention, control, investigation and reporting of different diseases within animal and human populations

Interventions in this area will focus on training livestock, wildlife and health personnel and other critical partners for early diagnosis and reporting. It also emphasizes the need to provide basic supplies and also strengthen laboratory diagnostic capabilities.

Priority Area 7: Introduction of regional and international best practices in disaster and risk reduction management.

The National Office will establish links with external institutions for best practices and sharing of experiences in disaster and risk reduction issues.

Some Expected Outcomes
• A well functioning National Disaster Management Office under the Office of the Vice –President
• Formation of well functioning participatory structures e.g., committees at all levels
• Strengthened National capacities in disaster management and risk reduction strategies
• Availability of sufficient, reliable and timely data for informed decision-making on disaster and risk reduction matters
• Disaster issues fully mainstreamed or realigned in all national policies, programmes and projects
• School system introduces disaster management and risk reduction in their teaching curriculum e.g., integration into social studies
• Resources available for disaster management and risk reduction activities. (Government should take the lead role by making adequate provision as a startup for counter funding.)
• The adoption of the national disaster management bill and policy providing legal and administrative authority for implementing the set actions.
• Existence of a National early warning system which is regularly updated.
• Existence of effective communication strategy and a well informed citizenry on disaster and risk reduction issues.

Priority target groups

This strategy will assist every body in the development sector of the country in particular all the Departments of state, State authorities and agencies, local governments, private sector, civil society, youth organizations, children, women, the physically challenged, reproductive health needs of vulnerable groups, Parliamentarians, opinion leaders the university, technical and financial partners to acquire knowledge, skills and right attitude for the attainment of an effective disaster and risk reduction system in the country.
Special attention will be paid to special interest groups like school (formal and non-formal) and people living in highly disaster prone areas.

Strategies

To achieve this, the National Disaster Agency will embark on the following:

Financing and Resource Mobilization Strategy

To mobilize funds for financing of the strategic plan, two funding sources are identified, namely:
• To take advantage of available resources by incorporating some of the activities of the plan into the regular annual budget of government
• To resort to the mobilization of additional resources from development partners and the private sector for activities that could not be incorporated in the government budget.

For resource mobilization, the government budget is very important for successful implementation of the strategic plan. It will illustrate government’s strong commitment to disaster management and risk reduction.
The Disaster Secretariat will organize mini roundtable discussions with its development partners and other stakeholders with a view of informing them about the programmes of the strategic plan and identifying possibilities for partnership and financing.

Partnership Strategy

The Disaster Agency will establish strategic partnerships and network with key actors involved in disaster management and risk reduction in the country namely:

• Departments of State
• Disaster management focal points
• National Assembly
• UN Agencies
• National, regional and international NGOs
• Traditional institutions and leaders
• Private sector/business community
• Researchers
• Civil society organizations
• Faith-based organizations
• Security and Emergency Services

The Agency will also develop partnership with actors internationally to share knowledge, experience and good practices.

Communication Strategy

Communication strategy is instrumental not only in the implementation of the strategic plan but also in the area of profiling and positioning the newly created National disaster Management Office in the country and beyond.

Within the framework of information and communication technology (ICT) the National Disaster Office will:
• Establish a documentation and information centre responsible for collecting, managing and disseminating reliable information on disaster and risk reduction in the country.
• Develop a national platform that will organize on-line discussions on current and emerging disaster and risk reduction issues in the country.
• Create a bi-annual news letter that will keep all actors informed on national disaster and risk reduction issues
• Involve the private and public media in the activities of the National Office.

Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) Strategy

Monitoring and evaluation is part and parcel of any planning process, as it is critical to the assessment of progress against benchmarks.
While monitoring and evaluation are closely linked, it is important to understand the distinction between them. Whereas monitoring is a routine on-going activity to assess programme implementation in terms of resources (inputs) invested in the programme and the outputs produced, evaluation is concerned with the assessment of the programmes’ impacts on disaster and risk reduction management e.g. on the safety and welfare of citizens.



National Emergency Strategy
There is an urgent need to develop a national emergency strategy/plan since not all emergencies are classified as disaster but could be fatal and threaten national security and stability.

Risks

During the implementation of this strategic plan, the disaster management agency is likely to face a number of risks that can undermine and or slow down the effective implementation of the well-outlined strategic actions. Some of these risks are:
• Lack of adequate capacity to implement the strategic plan owing to the weak agency staffing (in quality and quantity)
• Lack of enough funding is also an important risk as, without enough resources, the agency will not be able to translate the strategy into concrete actions.
However, giving the high commitment of government and the donor community specially UNDP, these risks could be met.


In Global context, different steps to manage disaster. Different types of conventions are held several times to manage disaster and to raise public awareness regarding disaster. The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) also provides the international community with a framework for sustainable development of dry lands. The objective of the convention is to secure the long-term commitment of its parties through a legally binding document. It provides an international framework for States affected by desertification to work jointly with industrialized countries to implement National Action Programmes. The Convention is a powerful instrument for sustainable natural resource management in affected regions and for ensuring long-term, mandatory external support for these efforts. Such declaration calls for the concerted efforts of all UN member states to reducing the occurrence and impact of natural disasters and therefore disaster mitigation and preparedness appear to be firmly on the aid agenda.

Further to the declaration of the international decade for disaster reduction (1990-1999) the UN General Assembly in 2000 founded the ISDR (International Strategy for Disaster Reduction), a coalition of governments, UN agencies, regional organizations and civil society organizations. In 2002, the UN published a document entitled Living with Risk: A Global review of disaster reduction initiatives. In 2005, a major reform within the UN system resulted in some UN agencies, in particular UNDP, becoming increasingly concerned about disaster risk issues by actively engaging in enhancing disaster risk programmes at country level. The road map towards the implementation of the United Nations Millennium Declaration (Secretary –General’s report to the General Assembly) touches on areas which are closely linked to vulnerability to natural hazards such as ensuring environmental stability, the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger and promoting gender equality.
In furtherance of these UN’s efforts, several governments and NGOs championed issues of disaster reduction. During the world conference on disaster reduction held in Kobe, Hyogo, Japan, world governments agreed on the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015 which was formulated as a comprehensive action-oriented response to international concern about disaster impacts on communities and national development. For its part, the World Bank launched the Global Environment Facility in the mid 1990s and Provension Consortium in 2000, which works towards a more effective public- private dialogue on disaster risk.
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) declared by the international community to halve extreme poverty and hunger, combating infectious diseases, ensuring universal primary education and sustainable development, are critical to disaster management. Bearing in mind the importance of disaster management, the UN declared in 1990 the International Decade for Natural disaster Reduction (IDNDR). Thus the realization that environmental threats could result in serious socio-economic and human costs has refocused the disaster management agenda on some critical challenges relating to disaster reduction initiatives. Some of these challenges are in essence development challenges,
especially when many of these threats that confront the international community emanate largely from failures of development.


Environmental Approaches
In Bangladesh It can be said that disaster research from Environmental approach is done only in rare occasions.Past research on natural disasters (such as, famine, river bank erosion, floods or cyclones) in Bangladesh has followed the it of the Chicago-Colorado-Clark-Toronto School of Natural Hazard Studies associated with Kates, 1962, 1971, White, 1964, 1974 and Burton et al., 1978. Disaster response studies (Islam, 1974; Paul, 1984; Alam, 1990, 1991) deal with people's behaviour, such as their perception, attitudes, beliefs, values, response and personalities. These studies fall in the first school of thought (i.e. Environmental approach) described by Alexander. They are concerned with discovering people's choices, behaviour and adjustments to disaster, for example, how people viewed the hazard and how they perceived alternative opportunities available to them in coping with the hazardous events. However, social impact of disaster is also mentioned in some of these studies.A recent publication, following the regarding topic (Ahsan and Khatun, eds., 2004) in disaster focused on gender aspects during disasters. Various disasters such as flood, cyclone, riverbank erosion, earthquake, arsenicosis, famine and others have been discussed from geographical perspective. However, although in some of the writings in the study impact of disasters on people and coping with disasters have been emphasized, majority of them have only a environmental perspective.Hossain et al (1987) examined, from this approach, whether rural people in flood-free and flood-prone areas adopted different survival strategies or not and also focused on the responses of rural people in general, but not on women's responses. Shaw (1989) highlighted the problems of poor women in a relief camp in Dhaka city. She noted how women bore the social burden of shame when living with strangers and drew attention to the difficulties women faced when trying to maintain parda during floods. In his study on riverbank erosion and floods Rahman (1988) argued that people's ability to adjust to hazards should be viewed as an extension of social and natural systems already existing in society. He also pointed out that there are differences in people's reaction to riverbank erosion and flooding according to their socio-economic location.Alam's (1991) study focused on the survival strategies of rural people on the flood-prone and relatively flood-free villages. The author observed that some middle and poor income households sold or mortgaged their lands and other assets to avert hunger during floods.
Research conducted following geographical and behavioural approaches are significant in
relation to disaster studies but some of their interpretations regarding people's problems and behaviour are misleading (see for example, Islam, 1974). They see Bangladeshi people as 'traditionally fatalist'. This mistaken idea came from certain answers given by rural people in response to questions such as, "What do you do when flood hits your homestead?" and from the response, "Pray to God". The reasons for such responses were not studied carefully (Rahman,1988). Zaman (1989; 1986) points out that behaviouralists fail to understand the socio-cultural background of adjustment for Bangladeshi people. Alam's (1991) study, however, discusses human behavioural factors in the context of existing social relations. He sees flood-prone people in relation to vulnerability and argues that people's behaviour differs by gender, age, ethnic group and economic status.
There are also some approaches to natural disasters. The structural approach sees disaster
as a consequence of administrative or institutional weakness. This approach makes a valuable contribution regarding structural remedial measures to cope with disasters but lacks an understanding of people's own initiatives to cope with disaster. According to the historicostructuralist approach individual responses to disasters in Bangladesh should be viewed in a broad socio-cultural and historical context ( Haque and Zaman, 1989). Some of the researchers (Latif, 1989; Custers, 1993) have pointed out that any steps to control disasters, e.g. floods, should emphasise both the structural (i.e. building of embankments) and non-structural (i.e.people's initiatives) approach. They have discussed the problems and the negative consequences of floods and flood control projects for the environment, fisheries and many other aspects of life (Adnan, 1990; Boyce, 1990; Rogers et al., 1989; Pearce, 1991; Custers, 1993, Khalequzzaman, 1994).Very recently (Hussain, 2001) anthropological approach to disaster has been discussed with only a few relevant ethnographic examples. The theoretical viewpoints of anthropological approach can be divided into four perspectives: human behavioural perspective, eco-feminist perspective, theories of vulnerability, and theories on women’s oppression. The Flood Action Plan 14's (FAP-14) study (1992) on peoples' responses to floods was conducted under the auspices of the Bangladesh Flood Action Plan. Findings of ‘The Gender Study’ were included in FAP 14's draft final report (Hanchett and Nasreen, 1992). Using the case study method this study dealt with the experiences of a few women in female-headed households. It contributed significantly to the understanding of gender issues in floods through highlighting some of the major problems faced by women during floods. Ahmed (1993) emphasizes the importance of kinship during disasters. The author conducted the anthropological study on the survivors of riverbank erosion and found that kinship, especially patriarchal, bonds are very strong in Bangladesh. In most of the cases the whole patrilineage becomes affected by riverbank erosion due to their proximity. The author argues that under such circumstances, it becomes difficult to seek support from patrilineage and many people depend on matrilineage for their family sustenance.Like flood, cyclone is also a regular phenomenon, especially in the coastal areas and in offshore islands. In the Ain-E-Akbori of the 16th century cyclone is mentioned as a disaster in this belt. During the last three decades almost all of the coastal areas and offshore islands faced cyclones. Detail and in depth sociological study on cyclone is also limited in Bangladesh. Hossain et al (1992) conducted a research after the devastating cyclone of 1991. The cyclone extended from Teknaf in the southeastern seaboard to Barguna – a coast line of 644 kilometers. The study dealt with peoples’ immediate responses to disaster in the context of providing support to the survivors, governments’ relief operation, problems and contributions of women during disaster, warning system, support from NGOs, health, conditions of children and others. Although the researchers emphasized on some of the coping mechanisms adopted by the cyclone affected people and some of the social aspects related to disaster, they were not based on sociological approach and lack proper methods in social research.Though useful, past studies did not take sociological approach into account. Although some of the above-mentioned studies have considered socio-economic and cultural variables in assessing human responses to cyclones, riverbank erosion and floods, they have failed to provide a theoretical basis.
The pioneering disaster research (Nasreen, 1995) based on sociological approach portrait a detailed picture of a disaster experienced by rural households. It focused on the pre, during and post disaster activities performed by men and women during floods. The author argues that disaster affect both women and men but the burden of flood coping falls heavily on women.During floods men in rural areas lose their place of work while women shoulder the responsibilities to maintain households’ sustenance. Nasreen (1995, 1999) argued that although poor rural women have very few options open to them to overcome their problems, their roles in disasters are obviously not simple: they relate to a complete range of socio-economic activities.During floods women continue to be bearers of children and responsible for their socialization,collectors and providers of food, fuel, water, fodder, building materials and keepers of household belongings: they also represent a productive potential which was not recognised earlier. The study argues that it is women's strategies, developed over the last few years, those are vital in enabling the rural people to cope with disaster. Government and many other bodies dealing with disaster management mainly communicate with wealthier, influential landowners who do not represent or serve the interest of the poor or of women. Nor does it seem to have occurred to policy makers that women might be involved in activities different from men or experience disasters differently than men.Vast majority of the rural people is inextricably linked with the arsenic contaminated water for their daily survival. It is reported that most of these people neither had the idea of arsenic contamination, or the future impact of the catastrophe of arsenicosis. However, there has been very limited discussion on the socio-economic impact of arsenicosis in Bangladesh.
A research (Nasreen, 2002) has been conducted on the problem of arsenicosis from
a new environmental paradigm. It has been argued in the study that arsenic contamination in Bangladesh ground water is a widely recognized fact and that is causing suffering to millions. The author identified some of the social consequences related to arsenicosis such as social instability,superstition, ostracism, diminishing of working ability, increase of poverty, impact on women,disruption of social network and marital ties and causing death.Hanchett (2003) argued that there is a gender side to the arsenic problem because women and men are affected in different ways.

Chapter Five
Conclusion & References

Disasters are frequent events in Bangladesh. Disaster research in Bangladesh has been
dominated by environmental approach probably because disasters are mainly considered as physical phenomena. However, although many disasters are related to physical phenomena, they mostly affect society, community, people, institutions and the overall environment. In this paper it is argued that much attention has been given to conducting in-depth research on disasters,especially from sociological perspective. In times of disasters government and otherorganizations pay attention to identify causes of disasters, mechanisms to control disasters and disaster mitigation instead of focusing on coping strategies. There is a need for timely and wellfocused policy to solve disaster related problems. Raising of awareness regarding the coping mechanisms of disaster should be given priority. Sensitization of community people, lawenforcement authority and policy makers to manage disasters and support to survivors are also necessary. Rehabilitation programme for disaster victims/survivors should be taken by all.Adopting environmental & technical approach is necessary to exhilarate any programme to manage disasters.Sociological research is very much relevant to identify what attempts should be made to grasp the different issues relating to disasters, such as the problems, coping with the wounds and gender based differential impact of disasters on the survivors. It has been argued by the disaster research that women are the major victims of disasters due to their lower status than men in society. Thus attention should be given to special groups such as women and children.Programmes on disaster management will be most effective if they are backed by strong policy support and guidance. This paper lends support to the policy that a sociological perspective is necessary to involve disaster survivors in planning, that takes into account the disadvantageous position, especially of poor and of women and give priority to them.Different approaches are available to protect these distressed condition.Appropriate measures should be taken to implement these approaches. Public awareness should be raised.
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