Dyson College of Arts and Sciences
Issue link: http://dysoncollege.uberflip.com/i/128987
the unfolding and all too familiar narrative of disasters, human loss, infrastructure destruction, and escalating economic loss. Human beings' risk-perception is guided by many factors that we cannot control or influence without understanding them better. But we can fully understand the trends of destructive events and how these impact the welfare of communities, individuals and countries. One of the paradigm shifts in how disasters are perceived and acted on was the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2005. It became everyone's concern, no matter how far away you were. In 2005, just after the Indian Ocean Tsunami, the Hyogo Framework for Action 20052015 (HFA) was agreed upon and then endorsed by the UN General Assembly. This framework guides action for building and strengthening the resilience of nations and communities. A fundamental of this framework is that it requires all parts of society to work together to achieve a more resilient community and nation. Let's take, for example, the issue of the economic losses and consider the answer to the question "Who pays?" I have quoted above the recorded losses for 2011. These are enormous, but certainly not the full picture. In wealthy nations, there is normally a high insurance coverage. Nevertheless, governments absorb most of the relief, recovery, and rebuilding costs. What the full losses are to individuals over time is poorly known—and so is what the losses to business are. We must start counting! The Hyogo Framework offers a series of practical "things to do" that have been proven to reduce risk and impact. The voluntary cooperation in wide and diverse networks that the HFA has generated has lead to good progress. In early 2011, an HFA Mid-Term Review was done to hear from the "users" their views on progress made, challenges, constraints and opportunities. Much positive was said and noted, not least the value of cooperation. However, the two most significant constraints identified were, firstly, the difficulties and obstacles to share and have easy access to information and knowledge, and secondly, the quality and design of institutions, which includes the challenge of coordination within institutions, as well as among institutions. Here comes the question of authority and accountability: Where does the buck stop on risk management, risk reduction, and resilience strengthening? These are strategic issues that require a high level of authority to ensure an "all-of-society" approach and working method. Without a clear institutional framework, it can easily become an increasingly complex matrix of crossing lines, and more time spent than is perceived to be value-added in discussing how, rather than actually doing. Let's also look now at the positive things that are happening. On the average, only 15 percent of wealth in a given country today is public, the rest is private. Without the full engagement of private and business sectors, resilience cannot be achieved. The instruments for engagement have so far been laws, regulations and to some degree corporate social responsibility. The cooperation and joined action are growing but are very visible. A critical thing to achieve is what the title of this conference calls for: securing our future. Resilience building—in other words, what we have do to protect ourselves from hazards and "disaster proof " our societies—is, at the end of the day, everyone's business—government, local authorities, the public and private sectors, civil society organizations and citizens. Perhaps after a disaster the most instrumental partnership in rebuilding with resilience and disaster-risk reduction is the one that brings together the private and public sectors. Different working cultures, methodologies, and objectives have rendered cooperation hard. Yet we have to try harder to make this work, and use the potential at 18