2009: Reducing risk saves lives
Mountains are hazardous places. Many mountain communities live under the threat of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions caused by shifting tectonic plates.
Gravity pushing down on sloping land compounds the destructive power of storms and heavy rains, producing avalanches, landslides and floods. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scenarios, it is very likely that heavy precipitation will become more frequent and likely that future storms will become more intense.
These outcomes will make mountain regions even more hazardous to live in. In December 2009, high level policy-makers will gather in Copenhagen at the 15th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Convention on Climate Change.
As International Mountain Day falls in the middle of this important conference, the theme of disaster risk management in mountains was chosen to highlight the urgent need to adopt climate change adaptation strategies that reduce the risk of disasters in mountains.
Understanding vulnerability
There may be many natural hazards in mountains, but there are no ‘natural’ disasters. A disaster is a measure of a hazard’s
impact on society. This impact is determined by the extent to
which a community is vulnerable to the hazard. Vulnerability is
not natural; it is a combination of a variety of physical, social
and economic factors.
An obvious step to reduce the vulnerability to disasters in
mountains is to avoid building settlements in hazardous
areas. But there are strong cultural forces that cause
people to expose themselves to such threats. For example,
individuals may choose to live in scenic mountain properties
despite the risks of landslides or wildfires. Ties of kinship and
community bind families to lands that are prone to hazards.
A culturally different world view may well mean that some
people perceive risk differently and are more fatalistic about
the prospects of disaster.
However, the greatest factor that causes people to live in
vulnerable situations is poverty. In many large mountain cities,
slums climb the sides of the surrounding hillsides where the
risk of floods and landslides is greatest. In rural areas, it is
the poorest families who are forced to earn their livelihoods
higher up, on steeply sloping and dangerous terrain.
Other factors make mountain communities particularly
vulnerable to disasters. For example, in remote mountain
areas, providing advanced warnings of possible threats and
emergency relief can be extremely difficult.
In many countries, mountain areas are home to indigenous
peoples and cultural minorities. Their marginalization,
combined with language differences, often mean they do not
participate in disaster risk reduction activities.
Women, children and the elderly are especially vulnerable to
disasters. And in many mountain areas, it is these members of
the community that are looking after mountain homesteads,
as the men move to lowland cities or abroad to earn a better
income and support their family through remittances.
Gender inequality in mountain areas compounds the
impact of disasters on women. Even when they are heads
of household, few women are given title to mountain
farmland, which can often be a requirement for receiving
emergency relief and rehabilitation assistance. Often
women’s movements and social interactions are restricted.
This prevents them from learning about potential hazards,
participating in disaster risk reduction initiatives and
benefiting from emergency relief.
Considering the often extreme vulnerability of mountain
people and the high number of natural hazards, it is not
surprising that more than half of the deaths caused by
natural disasters occur in mountains and adjoining lands.
Degraded mountain ecosystems spell disaster
For centuries, mountain agricultural systems produced a wide
variety of nutritious foods in ways that protected the soil
from erosion and conserved water resources. These systems
were explicitly designed to reduce the risks of disasters
triggered by natural hazards.
However, as mountain populations have grown and the
expansion of commercial agriculture has reduced the
availability of arable land for small-scale farming by local
communities, impoverished farmers have had to clear
marginal lands on steep slopes unsuited to agriculture.
More
and more animals graze on mountain pastures and forested
land. This overgrazing destroys ground cover and compacts
the soil.
Traditional agricultural systems have been abandoned or
become unsustainable. For example, small agricultural
producers often clear land for agriculture by slashing and
burning mountain forests.
Although this can be a sustainable
approach with a small, widely dispersed population, when
communities grow and competition for land increases,
the needed fallow period that allows soils and forests to
regenerate is often reduced.
Forces from outside mountain communities, such as
commercial logging interests and market-driven agricultural
production also put dangerous pressure on mountain
ecosystems. All of this can lead to permanent deforestation
and irreversible environmental degradation.
The loss of
forest cover deprives mountain communities of a protective
barrier against landslides and avalanches and further
contributes to increased soil erosion and water run off.
The disastrous effects of the unsustainable management of
natural resources were illustrated in the 2005 earthquake in
Pakistan. More than half of the landslides were caused by
human-induced factors, especially grazing and conversion of
forest land, poor terracing, settlements located on exposed
slopes and road construction.
Disasters in mountains and the forces that help trigger
them affect larger areas, for example entire watersheds.
Landslides, soil erosion and increased water run off
contribute to flooding in nearby low land areas and can
affect water quality and water availability.
Paying for protection
Mountain regions in wealthy industrialized countries are not immune to natural hazards and disasters. Switzerland has established a system of protective forests to shield cities, industrial zones and transportation routes against avalanches and landslides.
These forest ‘shields’ also sustain biodiversity, preserve the beauty of the landscape and provide recreational areas for locals and tourists. These forests benefit everyone, but maintaining them is not profitable for the forest owners. For this reason, federal and local governments provide financial compensation to the forest owners for their services. Although this involves a considerable outlay of public funds, this approach offers protection comparable to heavily engineered structural solutions at a lower cost.
Many developing countries are not in a position to adopt this approach. However, considering the high cost of landslides and flooding, investing in protection forests may be a feasible and cost-effective solution to reducing mountain hazards in many areas.
Other types of payments for environmental or ecological services (PES ) schemes could play an important role in disaster risk reduction in mountain areas. Currently, the four main markets for PES schemes are climate change mitigation, watershed management, biodiversity conservation and landscape aesthetics. All of these services directly contribute to disaster risk reduction. If this added value was well advertised, the market for these environmental services would expand.
Surviving Hurricane Mitch
In 1989, Central America experienced a severe drought. The
Honduran government, with technical support from FAO and
funding from the Netherlands, initiated a project in the hilly and
impoverished Lempira Sur region to introduce new practices to
better conserve water in the soil. The practices involved growing
maize, sorghum and beans interspersed with trees and maintaining
maximum soil cover at all times through mulching crop stubble.
In 1998, Hurricane Mitch damaged or completely destroyed
over half of Honduras’ agricultural infrastructure and production.
Large-scale deforestation, the cultivation of marginal lands without
soil conservation practices and a lack of adequate watershed
management were blamed for severely compounding the effects of
the hurricane.
However, the Lempira Sur region suffered less damage than
the rest of Honduras. The reduced impact of the hurricane was
due not only to the newly introduced agricultural practices.
The building of ‘social capital’ played perhaps a greater role
in reducing the vulnerability of local communities during the
emergency. The project fostered the creation of diverse interest
groups, which later began working together through a community
development committee. It was through such committees that the
producers in Lempira Sur obtained crucial first-level warning and
assistance during the emergency.
Confronting the mountain tsunami
There is increasing evidence that climate change is causing many of the
world’s glaciers to retreat. As ice melts, lakes form at the foot of the
receding glaciers. The banks of these lakes are weak and when they
are breached a natural hazard known as a glacial lake outburst flood
(GLOF) results. Because of their suddenness and potential to cause
catastrophic damage, GLOFs have been called ‘mountain tsunamis’.
In the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region the rates of warming are
significantly higher than the global average.
The Kathmandu-based
International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, known by
its acronym ICIMO D, has identified more than 200 lakes that are
considered to be susceptible to outburst floods.
Outburst floods can be prevented. Nepal has collaborated with the
Dutch government on a US $3 million project to release water from a
potentially hazardous glacial lake. However, such costly solutions are not
always feasible. What is essential for preventing a humanitarian disaster
in the event of an outburst flood is an understanding of the flood’s
probable path and the speed of the deluge.
The Imja glacier in Nepal, just 6 km from Mount Everest, is retreating
at a rate of 74 m a year – the fastest rate of all the Himayalan glaciers.
Imja Lake, at the foot of the glacier, almost nonexistent in 1960, now
covers nearly 1 km2 and is considered one of the most likely sites for a
catastrophic outburst flood.
To raise awareness at the local and international levels about this
threat, WWF Nepal, a Sherpa students association and iDEAS , a local
non-governmental organization, staged the ‘Beat the GLOF Action Run’.
Local runners followed the path of the potential torrent, from Imja Lake
to Khumjung village, where a flood could have disastrous effects.
The way forward
Policy-makers involved with disaster risk management cannot afford to neglect mountains, considering the high number of natural hazards in mountain areas and the high vulnerability of mountain communities. Key activities that should be undertaken to reduce the risk of disasters in mountains include:
- supporting sustainable agricultural, pasture and forestry
practices in mountain areas as a key element of disaster
risk reduction for both upland and lowland communities;
- carrying out baseline vulnerability studies in mountain community areas using gender analysis to ensure that disaster risk reduction initiatives and emergency relief and rehabilitation efforts target those most at risk;
- increasing awareness and developing integrated strategies and policies on disaster risk management at the national level;
- integrating local environmental knowledge and community memories in disaster risk reduction strategies.
- increasing capacity building in all the elements of disaster
risk management, including preparedness, mitigation,
response and rehabilitation;
- facilitating mountain communities access to resources
through several tools such as microcredit and banking,
non-farm income opportunities, as well as disaster
mitigation strategies that offer payments to mountain
communities;
- conducting further research on the natural hazards threatening mountain regions and studying the likely increase in these hazards that will result from climate change.