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Coping with catastrophe: enhancing community capacity to respond

The poor are hardest hit by the cyclones, earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, landslides, droughts and forest fires to which Central America is so prone. Should national preparedness plans be beefed up? What can communities do to prepare for and mitigate the consequences of natural disasters?

A report from Oxfam GB reports on a participatory mapping exercise into the range of natural hazards and other risks to which people in Mexico and Central America are exposed. As global warming, deforestation and population growth add to the frequency of disasters, the report’s call for greater involvement of local people in preparedness and mitigation is of global relevance.

Across the region official institutions are more concerned with responding to the impact of disasters than with prevention, mitigation and preparedness. Data collection focuses on the physical aspect of disasters, not the social and economic effects. Slow progress in implementing decentralisation is making it harder for communities to develop their own disaster plans or to engage with national authorities.

The Coordination Centre for the Prevention of Natural Disasters in Central America (CEPREDENAC) is the only regional institution to provide management support. It is weakened by the inability of some member states to define priorities and by political posturing. Funds have not been made available to CEPREDENAC’s Regional Gender Coordination Unit, a gender-blind institution in a region where disaster preparedness plans are routinely made by men. This is despite the reality that poverty and vulnerability are becoming feminised. Women head a quarter of all households in the region. Due to the legacy of war and family breakdown, 36 percent of families in Nicaragua are headed by women.

Among other points in the study are:

The political reluctance of some governments to declare national emergencies often prevents the international community from providing timely assistance.
The all-too-common split in NGOs between departments specialising in development and in disasters is very unfortunate: they are not mutually exclusive.
Some four million people are exposed to risk from volcanoes. With the exception of Popacatepetl, there are no proper studies of life-threatening volcanoes.
An earthquake disaster of horrendous proportions looms in Mexico City, where 60 percent of buildings have been built on danger zones.
The region’s indigenous people are particularly unlikely to survive disasters.
Emergency coordination committees are closed institutions which do not welcome civil society participation.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch, what lessons can be learnt? The study calls on national governments and NGOs to:

strengthen local organisations and local disaster response capacity
implement gender-fair emergency policies
support regional and national information networks
include cooking utensils in all emergency packages
base building regulations on proper seismic research, with more focus on individual housing
do more to investigate flood risks
disseminate information outside the political/scientific elite; inform local communities; get disaster data and preparedness measures into school curricula.

Source(s):
‘Risk-mapping and local capacities: lessons from Mexico and Central America’ Oxfam Working Papers, Oxfam GB, by Monica Trujillo, Amado Ordonez and Carlos Hernandez, 2000 Full document.

Funded by: Oxfam GB

id21 Research Highlight: 21 November 2001

Further Information:
Helen Bowers
Oxfam Publishing
274 Banbury Road
Oxford OX2 7DZ, UK

Tel: +44 (0)1865 311 311
Fax: +44 (0)1865 313 925
Contact the contributor: publish@oxfam.org.uk

Oxfam GB

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