Dyson College of Arts and Sciences
Issue link: http://dysoncollege.uberflip.com/i/128987
levels will cause disasters, as the U.S. Weather Service's storm surge maps for the Atlantic coast reveal. Elsewhere, new flood levels and new designs for storm drains are required to address the greater volumes of storm water associated with the heightened precipitation of current weather patterns. Thus, disaster-rebuilding planning faces an entirely new mix of challenges. It must anticipate the new physical conditions of a region, and not rely on past conditions. Existing land-use development standards no longer provide a foundation adequate to sustain future land-use practices. In addition, the rapid emergence of distributed energy regimes and "smart grids" means that entirely new ways of providing energy to redesigned local developments must be anticipated and deployed. Comparable reforms exist for supplying potable water and coping with waste. Efficiencies of "old" infrastructure, and the costs sunk into those systems, need to yield to a new generation of technologies that will fuel cities in the coming years. The specifications appropriate for "rebuilding" after disasters strike will be those of tomorrow, not yesterday. The planners need to have green technologists in their midst. Margareta Wahlström at the Pace Resilience Summit described how the United Nations is helping nations' development planning and response coordination systems through the mechanisms of international cooperation. The Hyogo Framework for Action 20052015 has led nations to strengthen disaster response and climate change adaptation planning. It has five components: (1) governance—planning for a strong local and national response to disaster; (2) risk identification—assessing and monitoring risks to prepare; (3) knowledge—building capacity to respond; (4) reducing underlying risk factors, whether physical, environmental or social; and (5) strengthening disaster response preparedness. This Hyogo Framework, however, is not well meshed into socio-economic development. New "sustainable development" planning needs to be integrated with enhanced emergency response planning. From this perspective, the United Nations' planning systems mirror the same problem at the national or local level. Significant attention is devoted to immediate disaster response, but little to the longer-term problems associated with relaunching the sustainable developments necessary in the recovery stage. As the United Nations approaches the World Conference on Disaster Reduction in 2015, it should look to a better integration of its planning with that of the UN Economic and Social Council. In like vein, the outcomes of the UN "Rio+20" Conference in June 2012, should examine how the systems for sustainable development of Agenda 21 can be integrated into the post-Hyogo planning. There is reason to believe that nations will cooperate to enhance resilience for both disaster relief and post-disaster sustainable development. The United Nations system is founded on the obligation of states to cooperate with each other. Cooperation is at once an ethical norm, a duty of good neighborliness, which is a customary law norm found within all legal systems, and a principle of International Law. Governments and individuals alike instinctively cooperate when providing mutual aid for disaster relief, and strive to do so by facilitating each other's socio-economic development. From the perspective of Darwinian evolution, the human disposition to cooperation increases as the problems challenging human well-being also increase. This is the scientific finding of Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, in their study of human social evolution. They demonstrate how humans have evolved and matured patterns of cooperation among themselves throughout the Holocene Epoch. A part of their evidence is found in the ancient roots of this ethical norm. It exists in the "golden rule" found throughout religions and philosophies. Mark Pagel's natural history of human cooperation 40