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| Sunday, 22 June 2003 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Grassroots wisdom for disaster mitigation by Jayanthi Liyanage
"See the ants going up the trees carrying their eggs to a safer place. It will rain soon and we will have floods." If you hear a wizened old villager making such an observation, do you tend to dismiss it as nonsense of a rustic ignoramus? Take care that you do not, without investigating, for he may not be far from the truth. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) rightly gauged the merits of grass root community wisdom when Okama Ekpe Brook, United Nations Volunteer (UNV) Programme Officer, United Nations Development Programme, took the team of eight young Indian UNVs (IUNVs), brought in by the UNDP to assist in flood relief, to Thembuwana. Their aim was to meet the villagers and the Government Agents (GAs) of the affected areas, collect flood and landslide related data at the community level, assess damage and help in giving out relief. By this exercise, they intended to make stronger the disaster preparedness capabilities of the Government and communities at risk, so that when disaster strikes again, the villager will be prepared. The loss of lives will be near nil and the destruction to property will be minimal. The aim "The idea is to build the capacity of the people to face a disaster, for it is the people who will be affected," said Balaka Dey, National Training Co-ordinator for the Disaster Risk Management Project in India, which the Indian Government set up after the 1999 super cyclone in Orissa State, killing more than 10,000 people. "The whole village turned up to meet us and the government official including the GA, to give us their input," says an enthusiastic Okama. "We asked them to draw us a rough map of the village on the floor, showing the river and the location of their houses. One lady knew exactly which houses would go under when floods come again. She was pointing and directing, 'see, this will go under water, and this will not'." the theme
Such indigenous knowledge is absolutely vital when planning for national disaster mitigation, she points out. "If you don't tap that grassroot wisdom effectively in the planning process, the Government loses the advantage of using that knowledge in national planning. Only the villager knows his own village!" It is absolutely necessary that national planning for disaster mitigation rises from the rock bottom, the village community level, to the national level at top, she emphasises. For this is the first time Sri Lanka is mapping out a national disaster preparation and mitigation plan. The concept of citizens taking resposibility for local development was very much the theme when UNDP recently recruited four National UNVs (NUNVs) to pick up from the leaving IUNVs to assist the Government authorities in rehabilitation and reconstruction in the disaster-struck areas. After a few days of theoretical orientation by the IUNVs, all four were fiercely keen to get to the field for a week's understudy with the IUNVs at the proposed District Operation Centres in the five affected districts of Ratnapura, Matara, Kalutara, Hambantota and Galle. "We can't wait to get to the destroyed villages and do something for our country," is what they all chorused. "We have to motivate people to come up to their living standards before the disaster. In some villages, school education, the very core of their lives has been destroyed. The first thing we will do when we go there is meet the GA, win the hearts of the villagers and then meet the NGOs working there." UNDP will deploy the four NUNVs individually in each district and hopes to increase this cadre to ten and recruit a co-ordinator. Techniques The IUNVs were expected to prepare a community contingency plan before they left. "The plan will spell out what each village should during floods, what first aid they should give before the doctor comes, the techniques of a rescue opoeration, when to give a warning, where to take shleter and what are the vulnerable houses of the disabled and the old," explained Balaka, saying that all these will be identified in the village plan.
They have also developed a disaster data web site (www.govt.lk) giving the flood situation for the information of Government and donors. Once the District Disaster Management Committees are formed with the GA as the convenor, the disaster preparedness plan will carry information up from each village, division, district to the national level. "The merits of volunteerism is not very well understood in Sri Lanka," is what Okama feels. Volunteerism evolves in response to emerging needs and priorities of communities. They could play an acute role in helping people to rebuild their lives and restore normalcy. "The four NUNVs are not specialists but they have got the interest to work as neutral persons from the UN at the District Level. It is important that such volunteers work with Government planning." Bimal Prasad Achary, the Geographical Information Systems (GIS) Software Engineer of the IUNVs, had to say that GIS is almost at zero level locally. "Each and every village should have GIS. What is available in National Building Research Organsation is not adequate at village level." On the foundation of the newly recruited NUNVs, much can be planned for the national development of the future. |
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