Saturday, April 03, 2010

DWF Song Flood and storm Prevention in Viet Nam

Friday, April 02, 2010

Q&A-Hopes battle fears in Haiti reconstruction challenge

PORT-AU-PRINCE, April 1 (Reuters) - Nations, multilateral institutions and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from around the world have pledged nearly $10 billion for Haiti’s reconstruction following the Jan. 12 earthquake.

World leaders say the commitments expressed at Wednesday’s donors conference in New York give the Western Hemisphere’s poorest state an historic opportunity to escape its poverty trap and “build back better” from the natural disaster.

Here are some questions and answers about the challenges involved in rebuilding Haiti:

DID THE DONORS’ PLEDGING CONFERENCE MEET EXPECTATIONS?

In terms of promised financing, it exceeded them.

The total pledged, $9.9 billion for the next three years and beyond, $5.3 billion for the next two years alone, was well over the initial short-term target of nearly $4 billion being sought by the United Nations, the conference organizer.

Haiti’s government has talked of a global needs figure of $11.5 billion, but donors seem to have heeded the appeal to deliver substantial sums quickly to tackle both continuing humanitarian needs and long-term reconstruction requirements.

Of course promises are one thing and delivery another, as shown by many donor pledging conferences that responded to other world disasters and conflicts.

“These pledges will need to turn into concrete progress on the ground. This cannot be a VIP pageant of half promises,” Philippe Mathieu of Oxfam said in New York.

WHO WILL LEAD HAITI’S RECONSTRUCTION?

The United Nations and major donors have all been careful to stress that the reconstruction will be Haitian-led, respecting the sovereignty of the world’s first black independent republic born in 1804 following a slave revolt.

But this is something of a diplomatic fig leaf as donors recognize that the administration of President Rene Preval, a mild-mannered agronomist, was crippled by the Jan. 12 quake, losing ministries and scores of trained civil servants.

An Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC) is being co-chaired by former U.S. President Bill Clinton, the U.N. special envoy for Haiti, and by Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive.

On the Haitian side, the commission’s members include legislators, government officials, local authorities, union and business representatives.

International members include the Organization of American States, the Caribbean Community and donor states and institutions contributing more than $100 million to the recovery effort. These include the United States, Canada, Brazil, France, Venezuela, the European Union, the World Bank, the United Nations and the Inter-American Development Bank.

The IHRC will operate for 18 months before handing over to a Haitian Redevelopment Authority to be set up by the Haitian government. The World Bank will monitor the Multi-Donor Trust Fund created to pool the financial contributions.

How much say will ordinary Haitians have in the reconstruction? Probably very little. Most quake survivors sheltering in camps in and around the wrecked Haitian capital had no idea the donors conference was even taking place.

WERE WORRIES OVER TRANSPARENCY, ACCOUNTABILITY ADDRESSED?

Yes, but this does not mean these worries will go away.

Over decades of unrest and chaos in Haiti, the specter of corruption has become closely associated with the country’s unenviable image as an economic basket case located just two hours flying time from the richest nation on the planet.

Pressed about this at the post-meeting news conference, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other international figures took pains to stress that the reconstruction plan would have monitoring mechanisms to ensure funds were well supervised and spent.

Ban announced a “robust” Internet-based tracking system to report on the delivery of financial pledges, emphasizing performance and results. Each pledge would be published and assistance flows tracked through the web-based system being established by the United Nations with Haiti’s government.

This should allay some fears over corruption and misuse but they are likely to hang over the reconstruction effort.

WILL THE INITIATIVE FINANCE DEVELOPMENT, NOT DEPENDENCY?

This is the real test of the reconstruction initiative, to turn Haiti from an aid-dependent “Republic of NGOs,” as some derisively call it, into a viable sovereign state that can feed itself and stand on its own two feet economically.

Suggested strategies abound, including emphasizing the private sector in the reconstruction, but whether these can really unlock Haiti from its poverty trap remains to be seen.

“We need investment in the private sector in Haiti, both within Haiti and also from the diaspora, and also foreign investment,” President Preval said in New York.

Regine Barjon of the Haitian-American Chamber of Commerce believes the army of foreign NGOs that have dominated development efforts in Haiti for decades should make way for private entrepreneurs, or concentrate on job-creating economic projects in agriculture or energy renewal.

Some fear Haiti’s reconstruction may trigger a free-for-all scramble by foreign companies looking to snap up lucrative rebuilding contracts in rubble removal, water and sewage, health, communications and other areas.

“If you don’t control the profiteering, some things will get done, but most money will go into non-Haitian pockets, or go only to some Haitians,” said Dr. Enrique Ginzburg, chief medical officer of the University of Miami’s Medishare and Global Institute initiatives.

The University of Miami has operated a multi-purpose intensive care unit in Haiti since the quake and has a proposal to rebuild the country’s health system. One of the university’s doctors, Barth Green, has suggested a cap on profits for reconstruction projects so Haiti can reap the major benefit.

There are doubts too about whether Haiti’s government can absorb and handle a flood of rebuilding contract proposals.

ARE ORDINARY HAITIANS OPTIMISTIC ABOUT RECONSTRUCTION?

They are hopeful but wary. Too many are used to seeing past foreign aid disappear into the pockets of corrupt politicians or pay the salaries of foreign consultants and experts.

“We hope the money will be used to really rebuild the nation ... Otherwise, we’ll be saying the New York conference never took place,” said Alvin Morisseau in Port-au-Prince.

“I’d like to see Haiti transformed, with houses, roads, and all Haitians living better and together,” said St. Cyr Guerline Occeda, a nurse. But she added: “Only God can change Haiti.”

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Haitians want a bigger say in post-quake reconstruction

LONDON (AlertNet) - As donors gather in New York to pledge hundreds of millions of dollars for reconstruction in quake-devastated Haiti, many local groups feel they have been shut out of the action plan their government will present on Wednesday.

A total of $11.5 billion is needed to rebuild the impoverished country’s shattered infrastructure, economy, institutions and social services and to protect it from future disasters, the international community and the government estimate. The aim of this week’s conference, which will be attended by almost 140 nations, is to raise close to $4 billion for the coming 18 months.

The Action Plan for National Recovery and Development of Haiti, which will guide reconstruction efforts over the next 10 years, states it is a Haitian proposal because “key sectors of Haitian society were consulted”, including communities living abroad, mainly in the United States.

Yet some of the country’s largest non-governmental organisations (NGOs) say discussions with Haiti’s civil society were limited.

“The plan concocted in the name of the people without their participation will be presented in New York this week,” said agronomist Jean-Baptiste Chavannes, founder of Haiti’s Papaye Peasant Movement (MPP), which was set up in 1973 and has more than 50,000 members.

“There is nothing we can do before this meeting,” he said, adding that “the Haitian social movement must mobilise to ensure its voice is heard” from now on. “We cannot allow the government - which does not have the confidence of the people - to make all the decisions on building the country.”

Samuel Worthington, who will represent U.S. aid groups at Wednesday’s meeting, told AlertNet that Haitian NGOs complained at a meeting last week they had been given a copy of the government’s plan at the last minute and asked to validate it, which they felt unable to do.

“Since then they have recognised there are many good things in the plan, but they have not had a sense of ownership,” said Worthington, who heads U.S. NGO umbrella body InterAction.

TIGHT TIME FRAME

The need to make decisions on reconstruction quickly after the Jan. 12 earthquake - which killed possibly more than 300,000 people and left about 1.3 million homeless - has made a thorough consultation process difficult.

“In an ideal world, more time would have been required to have much deeper and much more consultation,” said Bruno Le Marquis, deputy director of the Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), who has been coordinating the pledging meeting with the U.S. State Department. “Given the time frame that was set for this particular conference, a lot has been achieved.”

Meetings with different sectors of Haitian civil society were held through March to elicit feedback on the government’s reconstruction strategy. And donors at Wednesday’s meeting will hear from the country’s private sector, NGOs, municipal authorities and diaspora, as well as from a U.N. initiative to gather the views of Haiti’s poor.

Anne Hastings, chief executive of Sevis Finansye Fonkoze (Fonkoze Financial Services), the country’s largest microfinance institution, participated in the gathering for the private sector and said her organisation feels fully engaged in the relief and reconstruction process.

With 41 branches around the country, Fonkoze is a major partner of international agencies, including UNDP, in implementing cash-for-work programmes which enable earthquake survivors to earn money. But Hastings told AlertNet the international community does often overlook existing institutions.

For example, it has been criticised for doing so during relief operations. Oxfam said in a report last week that the United Nations held coordination meetings in English, rather than French or the local language, Creole, and AlertNet was told that, on one occasion, five mayors who wanted to attend an aid agency meeting to discuss shelter were not allowed in because aid workers said they were not ready to talk with them.

ALTERNATIVE VISION

Local NGOs are determined to buck this trend and to promote an alternative model of development for Haiti - one based on social inclusion, political decentralisation, environmental sustainability and support for food production - which they plan to firm up soon at a national assembly.

MPP’s Chavannes says Haiti’s movement of small-scale farmers will organise a major debate in the first half of May to decide on its position. In the meantime, he adds, the urgent need is to provide seeds to avert a hunger crisis in rural areas, while another key priority is to create jobs in soil conservation, reforestation, the provision of drinking water and road construction.

Some international aid groups are also making efforts to understand the views of the people they are trying to help.

A survey of 1,700 Haitians commissioned by Oxfam found jobs are the most pressing need, followed by schools and homes. Respondents also said they had little confidence in their government’s ability to lead the reconstruction on its own, saying it should work jointly with Haitian civil society or a foreign partner.

And British-based charity Tearfund plans to set up temporary schools and provide funding to help people, including street vendors, restart their businesses after talking with more than 1,000 men, women and children in badly hit areas west of the capital.

Aid consultant Emilie Parry, who has worked with Haitian grassroots organisations since the 1990s, says community-based groups offer an invaluable network for reaching out to the poorest people.

“The need is so great, the challenge is so great that you need to utilise all of the resources available here,” she said.

The United Nations and the government will launch a website on Wednesday aimed at enabling the public to keep track of how much money has been donated by whom, and how the funds are being spent (currently available in English and French only).

Haiti hopes for $4 billion to rebuild after quake

* Haiti to ask the world for $4 billion to rebuild

* Donations for relief efforts have “stagnated,” U.N. says

UNITED NATIONS, March 31 (Reuters) - Haiti will ask the world on Wednesday for $4 billion to help it rebuild and modernize in the wake of the earthquake that destroyed the Caribbean nation’s capital and killed up to 300,000 people.

Some 120 countries, international organizations and aid groups will meet at the United Nations in New York to pledge support for a Haitian government recovery plan that includes decentralizing the economy to create jobs and wealth outside Port-au-Prince, the capital of some 4 million people.

Haitian Finance and Economy Minister Ronald Baudin told Reuters earlier this week that the country was hoping to obtain commitments of just over $4 billion over three years, $1.3 billion of which would be delivered in the first 18 months.

Haiti was already the poorest country in the Western hemisphere before the magnitude 7.0 quake struck on Jan. 12, with high unemployment and illiteracy among its 9 million people, almost 80 percent of whom lived on less than $2 a day.

Estimates of the total damage inflicted by the earthquake range between $8 billion and $14 billion.

“The country has the best chance in my lifetime ... to build a modern self-sustaining state,” former U.S. president Bill Clinton, a U.N. special envoy for Haiti, said in a speech last week.

The European Union and a coalition of U.S.-based humanitarian groups have indicated they are likely to pledge more than $2.7 billion for Haiti at the U.N. conference, while U.S. President Barack Obama has asked Congress for $2.8 billion in funds for Haiti relief and reconstruction costs.

Cheryl Mills, counselor and chief of staff to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, said on Tuesday that the United States was planning to help Haiti rebuild in the areas of agriculture, energy, health, security and justice.

The United Nations is also urging countries to support rebuilding Haiti’s government capacity after all but one of the country’s ministries were destroyed and almost a third of civil servants killed.

Donors and aid partners are insisting that Haiti directs the reconstruction, but monitoring mechanisms are being included in plans to finance the rebuilding effort. The World Bank is due to act as “fiscal agent” of a Multi-Donors Trust Fund to be created for Haiti.

But aid workers are urging donors not to ignore the immediate needs of more than 1 million homeless quake survivors still camped out in streets and open spaces, vulnerable to the approaching rains and hurricane season.

A campaign by the United Nations to raise $1.4 billion in humanitarian aid is still 52 percent short of its goal.

“The appeal has stagnated,” Elisabeth Byrs, spokeswoman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday. “It is essential that the burst of generosity that we saw at the beginning of the crisis continues.”

Haiti: The people have spoken : Jobs. Schools. Homes.

These are the top priorities now for Haitians desperate to get their country back on its feet following January’s devastating earthquake. Those are the results of a survey of 1,700 people carried out by an independent Haitian polling consultant and funded by Oxfam.

 

Monday, March 29, 2010

Haiti “Build back better”

Haiti’s quake recovery needs run into billions

March 28 (Reuters) - Haiti’s government, foreign donors and humanitarian groups will attend a pledging conference in New York on Wednesday aimed at securing funds and agreeing to a blueprint for the country’s reconstruction after the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake.

Here are some facts on the estimated scale of the damage inflicted by the quake, and the needs and strategies being considered to rebuild the Caribbean country.

DEATHS AND DAMAGE

- Haiti’s government has reported 222,570 people killed in the quake, but President Rene Preval says the real final death toll could be over 300,000. A similar number were injured.

- Around 1.5 million people were left homeless and displaced by the disaster. Around 600,000 fled the wrecked capital Port-au-Prince.

- Haiti’s government has estimated the economic damage and loss from the quake at close to $8 billion. Economists from the Inter-American Development Bank had previously given an estimated damage range of between $8 billion and nearly $14 billion.

- In Port-au-Prince, which concentrates 65 percent of Haiti’s economic activity, more than 100,000 homes were destroyed and over 200,000 damaged. More than 1,300 education centers and more than 50 hospitals and clinics collapsed. The country’s main port, presidential palace, parliament, justice palace and most ministries were destroyed.

- Leogane, a town southwest of Port-au-Prince, was 80 percent destroyed.

ESTIMATED NEEDS, RESPONSES

- In a report to donors and development experts preparing for the New York meeting, Haiti’s government estimated that $11.5 billion would be needed for the country’s reconstruction.

- A preliminary target amount of $3.8 billion was foreseen for an 18-month period starting October 1, 2010, to fulfill needs identified in the Post-Disaster Needs Assessment. World Bank officials have called this a “short-term target,” and there is recognition that much more is needed over the longer term.

- Haiti’s government is also asking for an immediate $350 million in direct budgetary support to help maintain essential state services and civil servant salaries and plug the gap caused by a drop-off in revenues following the quake.

- The European Union and a coalition of U.S.-based humanitarian groups have already indicated they are likely to pledge more than $2.7 billion in aid at the New York meeting.

- The governing board of the Inter-American Development Bank agreed last week to give $479 million in post-earthquake debt forgiveness and other relief to Haiti.

- U.S. President Barack Obama has asked Congress for $2.8 billion in funds for Haiti relief and reconstruction costs.

RECONSTRUCTION STRATEGIES

- The rebuilding plan being considered by donors foresees the creation of a Multi-Donors Trust Fund, to be managed by Haiti’s government and representatives of donors.

- Also envisaged is the setting up of an Interim Reconstruction Commission, to be chaired by Haiti’s prime minister and a United Nations representative, along with the establishment of a Reconstruction Agency for the longer term.

- Haiti’s government and donor partners are insisting on a decentralization strategy to be at the heart of the reconstruction plan. This will seek to “decompress” and decongest the crowded and wrecked capital and set up economic development poles in the rest of the country, to create jobs and industries.

- President Rene Preval has told private investors he sees them as the “backbone” of the reconstruction effort. One Haitian private investor, the Mevs family’s WIN Group, has already announced a major redevelopment and expansion project with a Florida-based company for the Varreux port terminal.

- The government and donors also foresee major reform and investment to revitalize Haiti’s weak, peasant-based farm sector, aiming for increased domestic production to reduce dependency on imported rice, sugar and poultry.

Haiti, donors face huge task to ‘build back better’

* March 31 donors conference to fund Haiti reconstruction

* Aim is not only to repair, but relaunch development

* Ordinary Haitians skeptical, worries over corruption

PORT-AU-PRINCE, March 28 (Reuters) - “Retou ala Vi. Ayiti Pap Peri” (Back to life, Haiti will not die) reads the banner in Creole stretched up beside a crowded camp of earthquake survivors in the heart of the wrecked capital Port-au-Prince.

Life, in the form of bustling pedestrians, chaotic traffic and teeming street markets, has indeed bounced back in the city after the devastating Jan. 12 quake that killed maybe more than 300,000 and turned streets into jumbles of rubble.

But a massive task of reconstructing the quake-shattered capital and its dependent nation—a small Caribbean state that was already a byword for poverty in the Western Hemisphere—now faces Haiti’s government and donors when they meet in New York on Wednesday to pledge funds and agree to strategies.

President Rene Preval and the country’s foreign partners have stressed that the rebuilding should seek not just to put back what was lost—the destroyed buildings, schools and hospitals—but lift Haiti out of the cycle of instability and underdevelopment that has kept it mired in misery for decades.

“Haiti is on its knees, we must get it to stand back up,” Preval said in a recent speech to private entrepreneurs.

Estimates of damage inflicted by the magnitude 7.0 quake, viewed by some as the most deadly natural disaster in recent history, range between $8 billion and $14 billion.

Participants in Wednesday’s conference will look to secure not only a major envelope of funds—an initial figure contemplates $3.8 billion over 18 months, much more for the longer term—but also a viable blueprint for Haiti’s successful future development.

This will try to tackle some of the restraints that have locked Haiti in a poverty trap for years.

Proposals include an urgent decentralization strategy to create jobs and wealth outside the capital of some 4 million people—more than a third of the country’s population—which has so monopolized national economic life that Haitians jokingly refer to it as the “Republic of Port-au-Prince.”

There are also calls to rally private investment to the reconstruction effort, for example in textile manufacturing, tourism, and agriculture, where cheap subsidized imports of rice and sugar have kept Haitian peasant farmers relegated to dirt-poor subsistence farming.

Supporters of Haiti, who include former U.S. President Bill Clinton, who spent his honeymoon there and is now the special United Nations coordinator for the relief effort, say the disaster provides an opportunity to “build back better.”

“This country has the best chance to escape its past that it’s ever had,” Clinton said last week in a visit to Haiti. “As horrible as this is, it gives them a chance to start again.”

STILL AN EMERGENCY OPERATION

But this hopeful vision must be set against the deep pessimism that seems to affect many ordinary Haitians, accustomed as they are to seeing the country’s resources, and foreign largesse, being monopolized by a small elite. The specter of corruption looms large in the national conscience.

“There might be some more money (from the donors), but those who need it won’t receive it,” said mother of three Gilene Morquette, as she jostled in a crush of women waiting to receive a Save the Children aid handout at a sprawling quake survivors’ camp in the city’s Petionville golf club.

Skepticism also gripped 47-year-old barber Raymond Martin as he showed reporters his destroyed barber shop in the ruined downtown city center. He lost a child in the quake.

“For Haiti to have a chance, the foreigners must be the ones who reconstruct,” he said. “I don’t want Haitians to govern, we should have a foreign protectorate here,” he said, touching off a debate on the still rubble-strewn street side.

There will be no foreign protectorate—donors and aid partners are careful to insist that Haiti’s government directs the reconstruction—but monitoring mechanisms are being included in plans to finance the rebuilding effort.

The World Bank is due to act as “fiscal agent” of a Multi-Donors Trust Fund to be created for Haiti.

But while the government and donors plan reconstruction, aid workers are urging them not to ignore the immediate needs of the more than 1 million homeless quake survivors who are still camped out precariously in streets and open spaces, vulnerable to the approaching rains and hurricane season.

“For us, this remains an emergency operation,” said Iain Logan, head of Haiti operations of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

He saw Haiti’s rebuilding as a bigger challenge even than the reconstruction after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. “In my professional lifetime, we’ve never had to rebuild a capital city, on which the whole country was fundamentally based.”

The European Union and a coalition of U.S.-based humanitarian groups have indicated they are likely to pledge more than $2.7 billion for Haiti at the New York conference.

U.S. President Barack Obama has asked Congress for $2.8 billion in funds for Haiti relief and reconstruction costs.

But there is recognition this will be a long job. “No one walks away from the scenes of devastation I’ve seen ... within 18 months. This is for the long haul,” said British International Development Minister Mike Foster, after a visit last week.

Friday, March 26, 2010

Microfinance can play key role in Haiti’s reconstruction

BOGOTA (AlertNet) - Lending small amounts of money to Haitians can help kick-start the local economy and play a vital role in rebuilding the hundreds of thousands of businesses and homes destroyed by the Jan. 12 earthquake, the Inter-American Bank of Development (IDB) says.

While international aid agencies focus mainly on providing shelter, healthcare and food, major lenders like the IDB say microfinance institutions can enable quake survivors to recover their losses and get back on track, especially in rural Haiti.

“People can cope with disasters by restarting their business,” said Fernando Campero, senior financial specialist at the IDB’s multilateral investment fund.

“Haitians suffered significant losses because of the earthquake and microloans can help them get back capital, kick-start local economic activities and provide an opportunity for small businesses to access finance,” he told AlertNet by telephone.

The IDB, Haiti’s biggest source of financing, is providing millions of dollars in grants to local microfinance institutions to support their services, increase the number of customers they serve and ensure liquidity.

“In Haiti, there’s plenty of room for microfinance institutions to grow and specialise, especially in the housing sector,” said Campero.

Fonkoze, Haiti’s largest microfinance institution, is offering some of its 55,000 women borrowers extensions to pay back existing loans, providing new loans and in some cases writing off loans following the quake.

“We will recapitalise 6,000 clients who lost businesses and or homes following the earthquake through a recovery package including loan forgiveness and new loans,” said Leigh Carter, head of Fonkoze USA, the Haitian institution’s American arm.

Fonkoze’s customers, the majority poor women living in rural areas, are using the loans - of $180 on average - to buy everything from cooking pots and pans, building materials, fertlisers, seeds and livestock to rebuild their businesses.

Fonkoze is also gearing up to recruit new clients and scale up their microcredit services, offering loans of US$25 and less.

The microfinancier hopes to expand its microcredit programme by securing $5 million of donor aid to target Haiti’s extreme poor - defined as those living below $1 a day - who make up around half of Haiti’s population of 9.8 million.

“We have 200 women on the bottom rung of our programme, including people with no assets and no business, those who don’t know where to start,” said Carter. “We would love to take that up to 5,000 people.”

REMITTANCES PROVIDE LIFELINE

Since the earthquake, increases in remittance flows - money sent to Haitians by friends and relatives living abroad - mean microfinance institutions are playing an even more important role in providing cash to struggling Haitians to buy basic goods as, by and large, they are the only organisations that process remittance flows.

Even before the quake, around a third of Haitians relied on remittances to survive. In 2008, the million-strong Haitian diaspora sent home nearly $1.9 billion, accounting for some 20 percent of Haiti’s gross domestic product.

“Remittances have always been important in Haiti, but after the quake they have been super important,” said Carter.

During the first two months after the quake, remittances processed by Fonkoze almost doubled, totaling nearly US$9 million last month.

With 42 branches in rural areas unaffected by the quake combined with a large network of customers, Fonkoze and other local microfinance institutions are well positioned to reach people living in remote rural areas where traditional banks do not operate.

As hundreds of thousands of people continue to migrate from the wrecked Port-au-Prince to the provinces in search of a livelihood, the role of microfinance companies has become even more crucial.

Microfinance institutions also proved to be more resilient than traditional banks in the immediate days following the quake than traditional banks.

While the central banking system took nine days to partially operate again, microfinance institutions, like Fonkoze, were up and running within a few days and some branches did not close. In one town, Fonkoze set up a mobile bank to serve its customers.

In a stealth operation shortly after the quake involving the Pentagon, the United Nations, and various U.S. state agencies, $2 million of dollar banknotes were airlifted from the United States to Port-au-Prince by military planes and helicopters and were distributed to 34 Fonkoze branches across Haiti.

MICROCREDIT NOT THE COMPLETE SOLUTION

Since the 1980s, microcredit schemes have grown into a global phenomenon, receiving the backing of major aid agencies and donors including the IDB, the United States Agency for International Development and the U.N.

But critics argue that a lack of regulation of the microfinance industry, a rise in rogue microlenders, and high interest rates - sometimes up to 60 percent - put poor borrowers in a debt trap rather than lift them out of poverty.

Microfinanciers acknowledge that microcredit alone is not the complete solution to Haiti’s problems.

“Microcredit is one piece of a big puzzle. It’s an answer to provide real hope to women who are very poor, bring people up the ladder and it’s one way to energise rural areas,” said Carter.

“That’s just one piece of the pie, though, that goes along with investment by the private sector and investment in infrastructure,” she added.

Still for the majority of Haitians who do not qualify for loans from traditional banks, microcredit before and after the quake remains one of the few sources of cash and opportunity to start a small business.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Viet Nam: Nutrition rapid assessment report

his rapid assessment on the nutrition situation effected by Ketsana typhoon was conducted in Quang Nam, Quang Ngai, Kon Tum and Gia Lai provinces under support from UNICEF and the National Institute of Nutrition.

In September, the Ketsana Typhoon slammed into the Midland and Highland area of Vietnam (from Quang Binh to Binh Dinh province) with a wind speed of 118 – 149 kph (kilometres per hour) and torrential rain. In addition, the heavy rain after this typhoon caused serious flooding. According to the latest report, the typhoon not only killed 163 people, and 14 persons still missing, and over 600 were injured, but also thousands of houses, public buildings and classrooms were destroyed. It influenced all aspects of society, the economy and life, especially the health of the people who live in affected areas. The most vulnerable groups in these areas are women, especially pregnant and the lactating women, and children under five.

After the typhoon, disease control activities and the collection of dead animals were rapidly carried out. In November 2009, 6 weeks after the typhoon, the National Institute of Nutrition (NIN) conducted the survey with support from UNICEF and the Nutrition Cluster in order to recommend timely and suitable nutritional interventions, tools and policies. For this, it was very necessary to address the consequences of the typhoon that influenced household food security and nutrition status of pregnant women, mothers and children under five.

Download Nutrition Rapid Assessemt report.

Resettlement a challenge for typhoon survivors in Philippines

MANILA (AlertNet) - On a sunny Sunday morning a group of people were hard at work in a village south of the Philippines’ capital, heaving bags of sand and digging away at a plot of land, their excitement palpable.

In two weeks, 26 families that have lost almost everything in typhoons which tore across the Southeast Asian country last year, will no longer be homeless. With materials donated by the local Red Cross and land leased for 10 years, they will soon have a roof over their heads in Pila.

An average displaced family in this area consists of seven people, so the one-bedroom houses being built will be a bit of a squeeze. But few are complaining about the space or location of their new homes after spending the last six months living with relatives or camped out in the village hall.

“Most of us are fishermen. We used to live near Laguna de Bay lake,” an elderly man said. “The new place is about a kilometre from the lake but it’s OK.”

Resettlement following a natural disaster is always a slow process, but aid agencies say scarce funding and a lack of suitable resettlement sites are added challenges in densely-populated Philippines of 92 million.

A series of typhoons—starting with Ketsana, which dumped a month’s worth of rain in 24 hours in September—killed more than 900 people and made 1.7 million homeless last year.

More than 9 million people were affected in some way by the storms which destroyed and damaged their homes, or swept away their means of making a living.

As of early March, 53 evacuation centres still house over 24,000 people. Tens, if not hundreds, of thousands more have been living with relatives with no new homes in sight.

LAND IS THE KEY ISSUE

“The main limiting issue is land. Land is just not available,” said Joe Curry, country representative for Catholic Relief Services (CRS) which has been providing cash vouchers to families to buy building materials.

“People don’t have security of land titles and are living in very vulnerable areas. It’s an urban problem—this is a densely-populated city where a very significant population is very poor and lives in slum dwellings,” he told AlertNet.

More than 11 million people live in Manila and its surrounding areas. Of that number, over half a million live in slums on low-lying floodplains, precarious slopes, exposed riverbanks, within highly toxic zones and other areas unfit for settlement, according to Habitat for Humanity, a charity which provides housing to poor communities.

Many of the homes destroyed by typhoons were located in areas that have since been declared hazardous, such as the shoreline along Laguna de Bay, which means evacuees cannot return.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said relocation of people to safer sites is dependant upon suitable land being made available, either by government or other sources.

However, most land in and around Manila is privately owned and most landlords are unwilling to donate their land, even though it might lying unused, analysts said.

SHELTER NEEDS

Even when there is available land it is often further from the city and away from people’s livelihoods, aid workers said. The government, they said, had initiated schemes to encourage survivors from other provinces who have been living in Manila slums to go home but success has been limited.

A government official, who did not want to be named, said the land issue was a “serious concern” impeding recovery efforts, adding that: “There is not much we can do, but we cannot allow the survivors back in the shanties.”

Aid agencies said some residents have nevertheless rebuilt houses in the slums or continued to live along banks and shorelines, mainly due to livelihood concerns.

The closure of evacuation centres, which throws “the evacuees into any available plot”, has not helped, Paula Brennan, Oxfam Philippines’ Ketsana Response Manager said.

She cited government figures at the end of February which showed 34,198 houses were totally destroyed and 151,561 partially damaged.

“Clearly, there are many un-met needs in responding to shelter needs,” Brennan said. “And it seems that people are just pressured to return to unsafe areas as they are pressured out of remaining ECs (evacuation centres).”

Others said funding for reconstruction has been limited, compounded by the fact that many emergencies were going on elsewhere.

For example, the IFRC’s appeal for 16.3 million Swiss francs ($15.35 million) has been less than half-funded. The aid organisation has be able to provide transitional shelters for only 1,900 households out of the 6,500 targeted and shelter repair kits for 4,000 households out of the 10,000 targeted.

In the long term scientists are predicting more intense and more frequent storms as a result of climate change, which suggests that resettlement will continue to be a challenge for the archipelago, which already sees around 20 typhoons a year.

“In a lot of the disasters, there’s a big focus on building back better but I don’t think the disaster here caught the attention or have the resources necessary to do that,” CRS’ Curry said.

“And that’s a big worry—if there’s another major flood in the Manila area, the same people would be affected.”

Written by: Thin Lei Win

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

FM Global CEO: Insurance Losses are Preventable, Not Inevitable

FM Global, the mutual commercial property insurer founded by the owner of a textile mill in 1835, still operates under the same philosophy it did 175 years ago: Insurance losses can be prevented.

“If you think about it, what we are really saying is losses are preventable versus inevitable,” said Shivan S. Subramaniam, chairman and chief executive officer of FM Global. “If you want to prevent them, you need an engineering approach. If you look at [losses] as inevitable, you use an actuarial approach.”

The company regularly beats the industry average in profitability. Its combined ratio was 67.2 for 2009, and its five-year combined ratio is 77.2, according to BestLink, which provides online access to A.M. Best’s Global Insurance & Banking Database.

Those are “very good numbers that say if you focus on preventing losses, and if you work with your clients—who also happen to be your owners—you will have a successful formula. This whole approach has worked well over time. We are still doing the same thing today that we did 175 years ago, although we aren’t doing it just in New England, we are doing it all over the world,” Subramaniam said.

FM Global wasn’t unusual in having a profitable year in 2009. “It’s turned out to be an amazing year for the commercial insurance market,” Subramaniam said. The lack of natural disasters, the lack of large losses and the huge upturn in the financial markets has led commercial insurers to post strong earnings, and underwriting profits, for 2009, he said. That trend may not continue.

“Everyone has a strong balance sheet and good underwriting profits, which means the marketplace is going to be very competitive—which means there will probably be some reduction in price levels,” Subramaniam said. “If you combine that with natural disasters returning to normal levels, I think the outlook is very possible that [the industry] will have an underwriting loss this year.”

FM Global said it’s too early to have a good understanding of the biggest insurance event so far in 2010, the Feb. 27 earthquake that struck Chile. “We expect that we would end up with less than our market share of losses, due to our loss prevention work,” Subramaniam said.

FM Global is unusual in that it uses an army of engineers to both study how to prevent losses as well as work with individual clients to help them prevent losses at their particular sites.

The company recently expanded its 1,100-acre research campus to include a 70,000-square-foot natural hazards lab, which includes an earthquake table, wind lab and flood lab, which allow researches to model how natural hazards impact buildings and their contents, and what can be done to help prevent losses from happening in the first place.

For instance, FM Global’s researchers found that the corners of a building’s roof are the weak spot when exposed to strong winds. “If you focus on securing the roof at the corners, you will have a higher degree of success in keeping the roof in place when the wind is blowing very hard,” Subramaniam said. “It changed the way we look at roof design.”

FM Global isn’t shy about sharing its findings. For instance, the company has “open source” fire modeling software that allows other researchers to share and build on FM Global’s work in studying the destructive capability of fire on different materials.

“We are always seeking ways to innovate and push the cause of property loss prevention further. We aren’t interested in having proprietary knowledge about these things,” Subramaniam said. Fire is hard to test because “you have to burn things down, and once it’s burned, you have to start all over again.”

However, by developing a fire computer model, Subramaniam hopes to find a solution that is more economical. “We want to bring our expertise into play, open it to the community who want to develop better approaches to computer modeling. This way everyone benefits,” he said.

FM Global currently has a Best’s Financial Strength Rating of A+ (Superior).

Website FM Global

Disaster risk: How poverty leads to catastrophe

Date:17 Mar 2010
Source(s):Allianz SE
Editorial by James Tulloch

From the Book of Genesis to the Epic of Gilgamesh and the fable of Atlantis, stories of Great Floods are common to many cultures. These catastrophes are almost always acts of angry Gods. And today we still name hurricanes and cyclones as if they were furious deities: it was ‘Katrina’ who destroyed New Orleans.

Looked at this way, right now the Gods must be very angry indeed. In the last two decades, more than 1.5 million people have been killed by natural disasters.

Disastrous floods, tropical storms, earthquakes and droughts—which together claim over 90 percent of natural disaster deaths—are happening twice as often as in the 1980s and seven times as often as in the 1950s, according to the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED). Most striking is the huge jump in weather-related disasters.

But what really explains this extraordinary acceleration?

From natural hazard to natural disaster

The answer lies in the difference between a natural hazard—cyclone, earthquake, volcano—and a natural disaster—death and destruction on a large scale.

“A hazard’s destructive potential is a function of the magnitude, duration, location and timing of the event. To be damaged, however, elements exposed must also be vulnerable,” explains a report by the Global Natural Disaster Risk Hotspots project backed by the World Bank and Columbia University.

Put more simply: “it only becomes a disaster when you introduce poverty,” says Ian Bray, spokesman for UK charity Oxfam.

Poverty equals vulnerability. “Global disaster risk is highly concentrated in poorer countries with weaker governance,” is the first key finding of the United Nations’ 2009 Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction.

That’s why the Haiti earthquake killed over 200,000 people while the much stronger Chilean tremor a few weeks later claimed less than 1,000 lives. And that’s why the 10 hurricanes, storms and floods that have struck both Haiti and the Dominican Republic since 2004 killed 3,500 people in Haiti but just 200 people in its richer island neighbor.

Weak infrastructure, crumbling buildings, rapid population growth, poor governance, precarious rural livelihoods and ecosystem decline all underpin the rapid expansion of disaster risk, especially weather-related risk, in the developing world.

Climate change will make things worse, skewing disaster impacts even more towards poorer communities.

Knowledge is power

The UN Development Program (UNDP) pinpoints which kinds of countries are most exposed to particular disaster types in its report ‘Reducing Disaster Risk’.

Earthquakes: Countries with high urban growth rates like China and Indonesia

Tropical cyclones: Countries with a high percentage of arable land like Myanmar and the Philippines

Floods: Countries with low Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita like Bangladesh and India

The UNDP report also found that smaller countries were more exposed to natural hazards and while only 11 percent of the people exposed to natural hazards live in poor countries, they account for more than 53 percent of total deaths. As the above examples show, disaster risk is concentrated in Asia.

In rural areas the poor are concentrated on the most marginal lands vulnerable to drought, flood and other natural hazards.

And the poor, through ignorance and desperation, can contribute to their own downfall by deforesting hillsides or over-cultivating farmland thereby leading to new cycles of flood, drought or landslides.

Meanwhile rapid, uncontrolled urbanization is also creating new disaster risks in the developing world’s densely populated, poorly constructed cities with people crowding into ravines, steep slopes or floodplains.

“In the next 20 years the world’s population will grow by about 2 billion people and all the growth will occur in cities in the developing world. That results in more people in shoddily-built buildings,” warns Brian Tucker, president of NGO Geohazards International.

Knowing these risk factors makes disasters more foreseeable and therefore means governments can plan how to protect people and develop their economies more safely. “Development needs to be regulated in terms of its impact on disaster risk,” says the UNDP report.

That means building better rather than blaming ‘Acts of God’ and relying on disaster relief aid. Knowledge of the risks also paves the way for insuring and microinsuring people and property against those risks.

To protect and serve

Unfortunately, as Tucker and the UN agree, to poverty we can add poor governance as disaster risk factors.

It wasn’t Katrina that flooded two New Orleans neighborhoods, ruled District Judge Stanwood Duval in 2009. It was the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ “negligent failure” to maintain flood defenses.

It wasn’t the weather that turned drought into famine in the Congo, Kenya and Sudan. It was armed conflict and weak food distribution networks.

And in China, the government faces accusations that it was not the Sichuan earthquake that collapsed schools killing schoolchildren, but corrupt builders and officials.

In stark contrast, no child has died in a Californian school during an earthquake since 1933. Similarly, earthquakes in Japan kill fewer people than in developing countries thanks to “better enforcement of building codes, better emergency response, and the generally high level of preparedness,” says the Disaster Risks Hotspots report.

Like the Japanese, the Dutch have shown how it is possible, with proper planning and political will, to contain natural hazards, in their case storm surges and flooding rivers.

So have the Bangladeshis, in a more low-tech way, by setting up early warning systems for floods and cyclones based on volunteers on bicycles with megaphones, and text message alerts.

“Good progress is also being made in other areas,” reports the UNDP. “Upgrading squatter settlements, strengthening rural livelihoods, protecting ecosystems, and using microfinance, microinsurance…to strengthen resilience shows that it is possible to address the underlying drivers of disaster risk.”

Ancient flood myths owe more to their civilizations’ proximity to massive rivers like the Nile, the Indus, and the Euphrates than to divine intervention. Back then technology couldn’t contain the floodwaters.

Now humanity has the technology and the expertise, but not all communities can pay for it. It is our responsibility to find ways to distribute it so that natural hazards don’t turn into natural disasters.

Safer homes, stronger communities: a handbook for reconstructing after natural disasters / GFDRR WB

Source(s): Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery, the (GFDRR); World Bank, the (WB)
Publication date: 2010
ISBN/ISSN: 9780821682684
Author(s): Jha, Abhas K.; Duyne Barenstein, Jennifer; Phelps, Priscilla M.; Pittet, Daniel; Sena, Stephen
Number of pages: 370 p.

This handbook was developed to assist policy makers and project managers engaged principally in large-scale post-disaster reconstruction programs make decisions about how to reconstruct housing and communities, a complex series of decisions that, taken together, will affect the communities involved for many years. However, the handbook should be useful to communities and professionals involved in any type of post-disaster housing and community reconstruction project.

View full document [PDF 57.91 MB]

How to stop buildings becoming killers in disasters

LONDON (AlertNet) - Measures ranging from simply attaching shutters to windows to embedding steel bars in new structures can stop buildings from killing their occupants in natural disasters and should be used more widely, experts say.

Architects and disaster specialists note that poor construction in Haiti was a major reason why so many people - probably more than 300,000 according to the president - died when a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck the impoverished nation in January.

And in quake-prone Chile where an earthquake and a subsequent tsunami killed around 500 people in February, the government is investigating to what extent rules on fortifying buildings against seismic shocks were followed.

“You don’t need to be helpless, you can build safer, you can build better to reduce both the financial cost but of course also the life (cost),” said Margareta Wahlstrom, the U.N. Secretary-General’s special representative for disaster risk reduction. “It’s not the earthquake that kills people, it’s the buildings that collapse in the earthquake.”

While some countries put great emphasis on erecting buildings that can survive tropical storms, floods or earthquakes, many others lag far behind, she said in a telephone interview.

Safe construction is not part of international development policies either, Wahlstrom noted, adding she hopes it will now be included after what happened in Haiti and Chile.

A step in that direction is a handbook for reconstruction after natural disasters released by the World Bank on Thursday.

Building well is also important because in the months and years after a disaster, reconstruction is where the biggest sums of international aid money go once emergency needs - for tents, medicines and so on - have been met.

INTELLIGENT DESIGN

Safer buildings alone will not always prevent deaths. Experts say houses should be located away from hazardous areas, where possible. Other key elements to reduce risk are an early warning system, evacuation plans and public education on what to do when a disaster strikes.

But as part of an overall strategy to minimise deaths and destruction, intelligent building design is one of the most straightforward solutions.

For example, shutters on windows will prevent a powerful wind entering the building and lifting it off the ground, and tying the roof to the walls will stop it being blown off.

To protect new buildings against earthquakes, walls can be reinforced with criss-crossing diagonal steel beams or concrete columns. Such - often life-saving - features add less than 10 percent on average to building costs, experts say.

Designs should also take account of what resources are affordable and available locally. For example, in areas where water is short, building concrete houses is not viable as making concrete requires a lot of water.

For a factbox on disaster-proof building techniques, click here.

EASIER DRAWN THAN DONE

While there is no shortage of clever building ideas, implementing them is more complicated, especially in developing countries.

For a start, most people in poor nations live in houses they have built themselves, mostly without knowledge of ways to make them safer or an understanding of structural engineering. Rolling out a nationwide campaign for safer construction of homes may have the greatest impact in the long term, development experts from engineering firm Arup say.

However, organisations involved in post-disaster reconstruction can help by building houses that can be easily replicated by local people. Those willing to build their own homes can be trained how to build with disasters in mind.

That goes for professional builders too, because “poor construction can ruin good design”, Arup wrote in a report on reconstruction in Indonesia’s Aceh province, which was devastated by the 2004 tsunami.

Training in how to build safely is one of the services to be offered by a new consulting centre in Haiti’s capital. Architecture for Humanity, a non-profit design and building group, plans to open the centre in April and hopes to run it for three years.

In countries where corruption is rife, all building work should be monitored closely to ensure no money or materials go astray and construction standards are respected.

LOCAL INVOLVEMENT

Those leading rebuilding efforts after a disaster, including aid agencies, should involve local people in the design and construction as much as possible, experts say.

“The one thing you can do in a disaster is use the reconstruction as a mechanism to create jobs,” Cameron Sinclair, co-founder of Architecture for Humanity, told AlertNet.

“Within about a year, after being in those tents so long, the community’s number one issue is not housing but jobs,” he said in a telephone interview.

Once survivors of a disaster occupy their new house, they may want to change it by knocking down a wall or adding an extension, both of which could weaken the carefully designed building. Arup says organisations should allow for this in their housing designs, and provide training so people know how to adapt or extend their homes safely.

House designs should also suit the beneficiaries’ tastes and culture.

Otherwise, as aid group Oxfam put it in a blog, “the charitable gesture by the giver becomes the hat you wouldn’t wear in a million years or, in the case of disaster survivors, the house that drives you crazy”.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Documents Project DWF in Viet Nam (DIPECHO)

Go to :  http://www.dwf.org/index.php/vietnam/downloads/

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

VIET NAM: Government leads region in climate change challenge

HANOI, 9 March 2010 (IRIN) - Serious efforts are under way to respond to the impact of climate change in Vietnam but a lack of capacity and resources remains a challenge, experts say.

Vietnam has been identified as one of 12 countries at highest risk from climate change and is the most threatened by rising sea levels, according to World Bank studies.

UN-cited data on global climate change and model studies show that Vietnam is at increased risk of floods and droughts, saline intrusion and increased health risks from heat waves, dengue fever and malaria.

However, experts say the government has acted quickly and is leading neighbouring countries such as Cambodia and Laos in trying to create policies to respond to climate change.

The National Target Programme (NTP) was approved by Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung in December 2008, and began implementation last year.

“Vietnam is to be commended for having pulled this off so quickly,” Koos Neefjes, policy adviser on climate change at the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in Vietnam, told IRIN.

Coordinated by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MONRE), the NTP is intended to help develop an overall climate change strategy, including goals for adaptation and the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions.

The document lays out responsibilities for ministries and government agencies and asks all cities and provinces to devise their own climate change action plans by the end of this year, to be implemented by 2015.

It also aims to assess climate change impacts and ensure assessments are incorporated into development and investment plans.

Challenges

Vietnam is home to two major fertile plains, the Mekong Delta and Red River Delta, key agricultural areas and home to 40 percent of the country’s 86.2 million inhabitants.

They were identified as the most vulnerable areas in a November 2009 government report supported by the UN Environment Programme, which stated that more than one-third of the Mekong Delta could be submerged if sea levels rose by 1m.

Nine of the 10 provinces in Vietnam likely to be worst hit are in the Mekong Delta, but the effects on Ho Chi Minh City could be equally devastating.

Besides hosting potential climate change “refugees” from the Mekong Delta, infrastructure and housing would be damaged in the city, energy demands would increase, as would vector-borne diseases, experts say.

Vietnam is well-versed in water management because of a history of disasters such as floods, but there are questions over its capacity to fully implement policies, they say.

“The policy frameworks are very good. [The problem is] the capacity in government agencies to pick up on policy commitments. It’s not only skills,” said Jeremy Carew-Reid, director of the Australia and Vietnam based-International Centre for Environmental Management (ICEM) consultancy. There are possible hurdles in multi-tiered government with 58 provincial administrations.

“The challenge is to do the planning of the sectors [such as agriculture] as well as the planning in provinces,” said Nguyen Van Kien, climate change adviser to the UK Department for International Development (DFID) in Vietnam.

Strong coordination between sectors and effective oversight are needed at a national level, while capacity, technical expertise and awareness of climate change varies from ministry to ministry, according to a UN discussion paper on Vietnam and climate change released in December 2009.

“Provinces and lower-level authorities must rapidly develop their action plans to respond to climate change too, which will also require large-scale awareness raising and capacity-building efforts,” it says.

Funding questions

The government said last month it needed US$3-$5 billion until 2015 to respond to climate change.

“To protect Vietnam’s deltas and coastal regions from … sea level rise and related saline water intrusion, large investments in research and design are needed, followed by investments on an unprecedented scale,” said the UN discussion paper.

For the NTP, the government is aiming for foreign and private sector capital to comprise 60 percent of the funds needed for the activities outlined.

However, experts say it will be difficult to attract private sector funding for adaptation or mitigation measures. Meanwhile, Vietnam also needs to develop the capacity to access international financing available for climate change adaptation.

“Vietnam still needs to raise the money itself,” said UNDP’s Neefjes. “The high economic growth the country is experiencing is the magic bullet. Vietnam realizes it will have to rely on itself. If you can keep the economic growth up, the money will flow in the right direction.”

Tuesday, March 09, 2010

Hanoi: halt to 11 golf course projects !

VietNamNet Bridge –Hanoi city administration has asked investors in 11 golf course projects not to continue, but rather pursue other plans.Eight other golf courses are allowed to continue.

The city requested that the investors contact the Hanoi Department of Planning and Investment to be provided with instructions on changing their plans, otherwise their projects will be denied permission to continue.

The 11 projects must be altered because they use large areas of rice fields in populated areas or they are not suitable for the city’s plans. If they go ahead, many farmers will lose land and become unemployed.

The eight golf course projects that are permitted to continue are located in Van Tri commune in Dong Anh district, Minh Tri commune in Soc Son district, Dong Mo commune in Son Tay district, Van Son commune in Chuong My district, Soc Temple in Soc Son district, Quan Son Lake in My Duc District and one in Long Bien district.

Ho Chi Minh City: Blocked drains cause flooding

VietNamNet Bridge – Some land areas in South Sai Gon as well as canals and tributaries in the outskirts of HCM City have been improperly filled, causing flooding in many areas in the city, according to the Institute of Environmental Management and Science and Technology.

Construction workers toil on a project to build a stone embankment for Tau Hu stream in HCM City. Improper urban planning causes flooding in many areas of the city.

 

In HCM City, the high demand for land to build infrastructure and new urban areas has led to the filling of these waterways, with 2,600ha already filled over the years to build the South Sai Gon urban zone in the Phu My Hung area.

In addition, more than 6,300ha of land have been used to build industrial parks and more than 10,000ha of agricultural land for new houses.

As a result, upstream river water is causing widespread floods in the inner city, according to the Institute of Environment Management and Science and Technology.

According to local authorities, from 1990 to 2009, many businesses and individuals have filled hundreds of hectares of waterways to develop real estate projects without proper planning.

Cau Son and Van Thanh waterways in Binh Thanh District, Ba Mien in Go Vap District and Nhieu Loc – Thi Nghe have been narrowed, slowing down stream flow and drainage.

Many experts also claim that increased flooding is due to global warming, which has raised temperatures and sea levels.

However, recent research shows that the sea level of Vung Tau from 1990 to 2007 has remained relatively stable, while the water level of Sai Gon River at Phu An area has risen nearly two times, or 1.45 centimetres per year, and in Nha Be District, 1.17 cm per year.

City authorities say that the number of flooding incidents as well as volume of floods and flood-prone areas have increased dramatically in recent years.

In 1980, 10 spots in the city periodically flooded, while today that number has increased to 200.

As for flood intensity, before 1999 the highest tide at Phu An station was reported at 1.36 metres and occurred twice a year.

But now, the highest tide is reported at between 1.42 m and 1.5 m.

In 2008 and 2009, the highest tide in the last 50 years, which lasted for six consecutive days, was reported at between 1.54 m and 1.56 m, causing flooding of more than 100 streets with water level from 20 to 55 cm, or even 80 cm on some streets.

Floods have affected 154 out of 322 wards or communes, leaving 11,000ha of land fallow, affecting millions of people.

At National Highway 13, the Thanh Da residential area, street D2, Van Thanh area, and An Phu, An Khanh and Hiep Binh Chanh villa areas, as well as Districts 4 and 8, thousands of houses are about one metre lower than the street level, leaving them vulnerable to flooding and pollution.

If no effective measures are taken, the volume of flooding will increase, according to Le Huy Ba, head of the institute.

The city authority has asked localities to make detailed analysis of the proper use of urban land.

Lands planned for new residential areas and public works must be strictly under supervision, it has said.

In addition, authorities should recover the natural streams, ponds and lakes within and outside the city in order to reduce the number of floods, the institute said.

Save the Children Opens First Temporary School for Quake-affected Haitian Children

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (March 5, 2010) — Classes have begun again for the children of Cejecodema School in Martissant, an area on the outskirts of Port-Au-Prince in Haiti, thanks to assistance from Save the Children. The humanitarian agency has provided classroom tents and supplies so that hundreds of children in this quake-affected area could reinitiate their studies and regain a sense of normalcy.

In Martissant, where homes and buildings were destroyed by the January 12 earthquake, the large tents ensure that children can continue their education and play and interact with each other in a safe environment. Since the temporary school opened two days ago, attendance has increased by a dozen students, from 120 students to 132 students, and, the school director estimates the number of students could climb to up to 400.

Save the Children is focusing on offering children safe, temporary classrooms across the earthquake impact area as a key measure in helping vulnerable children recover from the disaster. The agency plans to set up about 300 temporary classrooms over the coming weeks, which would include repairing some less damaged school structures.

The Ministry of Education estimates that 90 percent of schools in the affected areas have been damaged or destroyed; that over 400,000 children have been displaced; and that only 50 percent of students returned to the schools that were undamaged and which reopened 1 February.

“Children have been profoundly affected by the events they have witnessed and experienced. Hundreds of thousands of children have been displaced, which is likely to have increased their sense of anxiety and fear, especially as aftershocks continue and buildings, including schools, continue to collapse,” said Annie Foster, Save the Children’s emergency team leader in Haiti.
Foster added, “These temporary classrooms provide children with urgently needed structured activities in a safe and protective environment, to help them return to normalcy, rebuild their resilience and have hope for a better future.”

In Martissant, 10-year-old Jimmy was in class for the first time since the earthquake.

“I like to study, and I want to learn,” said Jimmy. “My school fell in the quake but I don’t want to go back to it because I am afraid to have concrete over my head. I like this space because it is outside. I feel safe here.”

In a country where only 51 percent of children attended school before the earthquake and where, on average, children only completed four years of schooling, the impact of this disaster on education is a huge challenge. To ensure that children continue to have access to schools, Save the Children will work with both government schools and with private and community schools.

“Education is too important to be put on hold, especially in the aftermath of a disaster of the magnitude of the Haiti earthquake,” said Foster. “Education is not just a right; it can help protect children from disease or death by teaching them about hygiene and health concerns that have emerged as a result of the emergency. Education supports children’s psychosocial well-being, offering structure and a place to interact with others in positive and developmental ways.”

Save the Children has been assisting children and families in Haiti for more than three decades.  In the hours and weeks following the quake, Save the Children distributed relief items, such as cooking utensils, soap, plastic sheeting, clean water, medicine and medical supplies, reaching more than 500,000 people with lifesaving relief.  The agency has more than 500 staff in Haiti responding to the crisis.

Over two phases — the initial relief period of six months and then a recovery period of between six and 24 months — Save the Children expects to achieve five results in education through the following activities:

  * 160,000 children access schooling in safe and protective learning
  * Increased capacity of teachers to provide relevant, supportive, quality education for children
  * Young children access quality early childhood development services
  * 10,000 out-of-school children access quality, accelerated learning opportunities
  * Strengthened partnership and built capacity of the Ministry of Education to provide quality education for children directly and indirectly affected by the earthquake

Saturday, March 06, 2010

Aid group shocked over lack of shelter for Haitians

* Tens of thousands in Haiti still lack shelter

* Approaching rainy season threatens more misery

* Haitians find local solutions to lack of housing

PORT-AU-PRINCE, March 5 (Reuters) - Nearly two months after Haiti’s earthquake a shocking number of people lack shelter because aid groups are slow to deliver tents and tarpaulins, the international medical relief organization Medecins Sans Frontieres said on Friday.

The result is a loss of human dignity and the potential for misery and disease will increase when the rainy season arrives in April, said Colette Gadenne, emergency coordinator in Haiti for MSF.

“I was in camps where people have had absolutely nothing. They didn’t receive tarpaulins and tents and they weren’t even on the list (for deliveries),” Gadenne told Reuters.

“It’s shocking and extremely sad,” she said, adding that MSF, also known as Doctors Without Borders, would start distributing shelters to help speed the process.

Haiti’s earthquake struck on Jan. 12 and killed as many as 300,000 people, according to the government, leaving large parts of the capital and other cities in ruins.

Since then, life for many people in Port-au-Prince has stabilized as systems for water and food distribution improve and commerce, business and government have restarted.

Camps are also becoming better established and many families live in tents or have replaced bedsheets used for roofing with waterproof blue tarpaulins strung between poles.

The United Nations aims to distribute shelters to all the 1.2 million people displaced from their homes by April, according to Kristen Knutson, spokeswoman for the U.N.‘s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

So far, 41 percent of that displaced population has received a tent of tarpaulin, she said.

“We are continuing to push things out the door as fast as possible,” Knutson said.

WHAT NEXT?

In the interim, tens of thousands of families are exposed to the weather. When it rained overnight on Wednesday many families got up to seek shelter and stood for hours, witnesses said.

At the same time, life in temporary camps is becoming less attractive as the immediate crisis and fear of aftershocks diminishes.

“Life is becoming very difficult in this camp. When the rainy season comes we will have lots of problems,” said Roselyne Lesil, 41, who was staying in a makeshift shelter in the Fort National neighborhood with two children.

The problem has pushed individuals and communities to seek their own housing solutions in the absence of guidance from the government or help from aid groups.

In Fort National, one of the worst hit by the quake, homeowners have set up a committee to explore their options and plan to secure the area’s perimeter and possibly start rehabilitation, said Ronald Lafalaise, 30.

Clearing rubble itself seems a herculean task in a neighborhood where the earthquake reduced a whole hillside of dwellings to debris and upended houses like toys.

At night many neighborhood residents stay in the Champs de Mars camp near the presidential palace for security, returning to check on their homes and do commerce during the day.

“People from the neighborhood really want to stay here (long term),” said Jean Sony Doralus, who was hacking at a shattered building with a sledgehammer near where his own house lay in ruins.

One priority for the government and United Nations is to move people from the most vulnerable camps and they advocate five possible solutions.

People should return to their homes if they are not too damaged, or set up shelters in the ruins of their houses, or move out of the city to live with relatives. Some 600,000 people have already done that, U.N. officials say.

Two other options, considered less desirable, are to improve the quality of the camps, thus making them more permanent, or to move camp dwellers to new sites.

Plans are laid for five new camps outside the city, but officials gave no details on where those sites were or how quickly people would be moved and the solution anyway might not be acceptable to displaced residents.

At the same time, the government says it wants to avoid anarchic development by residents seeking solutions for themselves.

“Certain people continue to build outside the established norms and it is the role of the government to be vigilant against this,” Justice Minister Paul Denis told Reuters, though it was unclear if the government could enforce its policy.

Friday, March 05, 2010

INDONESIA: Small-scale disasters take their toll

CIWIDEY, 3 March 2010 (IRIN) - Small-scale disasters affect thousands of Indonesians every year, yet the floods and landslides that constantly hit the country are overshadowed by more devastating events, agencies say.

One such disaster was a landslide in Bandung district in West Java province on 23 February, which buried more than 40 people and displaced about 1,000.

Three hectares of the Dewata tea plantation in Tenjolaya village, Ciwidey, gave way, creating a mudslide around 10m deep. The search and rescue operation ended on 1 March with 33 people killed and 11 still buried under the mud, according to the National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB).

More than 400 displaced people are now living in camps near the site in makeshift tents that they say are boiling during the day and cold at night. They are receiving rice, noodles and biscuits from the government and Red Crescent Indonesia.

�We need more help,� said Ajat, who has been living in a 3 sqm tent with his wife and two children since the disaster. �I don�t want my family to stay in this tent for too long, but we�re too scared to go back.�

Disaster-prone

Indonesia is the most disaster-prone country in the world, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA); in 2009 alone, it experienced 469 earthquakes with a magnitude of five or higher � more than any other nation.

Some disasters are natural, while others are the result of poor urban planning, a lacklustre enforcement of construction and pollution laws, and environmental degradation.

The most common result is flooding, which has accounted for about 40 percent of Indonesia�s disasters in the past few years, according to government data.

Impact of floods in Indonesia
            2005   2006   2007   2008   2009
Numbers killed   63   95   137   126   159
Numbers affected   23,962   394,430   361,821   4,892,578   5,030,121
Source: National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB)
Other types of disasters include landslides - often triggered by floods - earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, drought and cyclones.

Amien Widodo, an environmental geologist with the November 10 Institute of Technology in Surabaya city, said heavy rain triggered landslides each year.

�There hasn’t been a significant change in rainfall patterns over the past five years. However, floods are lingering for longer, perhaps because of bad infrastructure and clogged drainage,� he told IRIN.

Data from the BNPB since 2005 shows dozens killed every year by floods alone, and tens of thousands affected. About five million people were affected by floods, mostly because of incessant flash flooding in South Kalimantan province, in 2008 and 2009.

Limited capacity

Flooding during the wet season, which generally falls between October and March, costs Indonesia millions in aid and reconstruction.

The government�s budget for flood management this year is 957.2 billion rupiah (US$103 million). Despite this, there is limited capacity to respond to small- and medium-scale disasters.

Laksmita Noviera, an OCHA humanitarian affairs analyst, said local governments were shouldering more responsibility for disaster response because of Indonesia�s increasingly decentralized government.

There is enough effort from humanitarian actors in the emergency phase of small-scale disasters, she said, �but there is a lack of attention in the transitional and early recovery phases, which are equally important�.

Amin Kuats, a relief team coordinator with Red Crescent Indonesia, said the government and NGOs had less cash and resources for small disasters.

�Big disasters attract more money in donations. In smaller disasters, the aid is mostly provided by the government, and that�s usually not enough,� Amin said.

�Often, if the disaster happens just before local elections, the government will give more aid, but if it happens after, there generally won�t be enough,� he said.

Be prepared

The government says it will conduct an investigation into the landslide disaster in Bandung district to determine whether it was caused by nature, or decades of deforestation.

Survivors said they did not know what to do when the disaster struck, raising questions about preparedness.

�We didn�t know what to do or where to go,� said Wiwin, 30, who is living in a large tent with her husband, four children and four other families. �I looked for my children and then just ran,� she said.

Amin said NGOs were now better prepared to respond quickly to disasters after lessons learned from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that devastated Indonesia�s Aceh province, and last year�s earthquake in West Sumatra.

However, more had to be done in terms of preparedness as well as planning, he said.

�There needs to be more training for these disasters, on the government level and for the people. The government should also understand the land and not allow people to run plantations and build houses in such disaster-prone areas.�

VIETNAM: Record drought threatens livelihoods

HANOI, 5 March 2010 (IRIN) - As temperatures rise in Vietnam, a nationwide drought has dried up riverbeds, sparked forest fires and now threatens one of the world’s richest agricultural regions, upon which millions depend for their livelihoods.

“The Mekong Delta is facing a serious drought,” Nguyen Minh Giam, deputy director of the National Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting Centre for the southern region, told IRIN.

Water levels on the Mekong River are at an almost 20-year low, largely as a result of the rainy season ending early and a precipitous drop in water flow upstream, he said.

With virtually no rainfall in the north since September, fires have burned through the northern provinces of Lao Cai and Lai Chau. In central Vietnam, sustained temperatures of about 38 degrees Celsius have sent hundreds to local hospitals.

According to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, the heat and humidity have sparked a plague of insects and worms, which have eaten through thousands of hectares of rice paddies.

The drought conditions in the delta are also being felt in other Mekong countries because of the early end to the 2009 wet season, as well as low monsoon rainfall.

The Mekong River Commission, a regional monitoring body, on 26 February [http://www.mrcmekong.org/MRC_news/press10/drought-condition26-2-10.htm] warned of significantly lower than average water levels on the Mekong River in Laos and Thailand, which it says will affect the economic development of already impoverished people there.

Red River low

The Red River, upon which millions of Vietnamese in the north depend for fishing and irrigation, is at its lowest in more than 100 years, according to records beginning in 1902. The drought has turned sections of the normally bustling river into sand dunes, bringing river traffic to a halt.

“Never before has the water been so low that most ships cannot move,” said Nguyen Manh Khoa, from Phu Tho province, whose debts are piling up as his new boat sits idle.

Each day Khoa does not work hauling cargo on the Red River he loses about US$80. But after getting his boat stuck on the sandbars several times, it has become too risky to venture out.

With the spring rice crops already in, frantic farmers living along the Red River have had no choice but to pay out large sums to private entrepreneurs armed with pumps to extract dwindling amounts of water for their fields.

As an emergency measure, the government has released water from its reservoirs, which are at critical lows. But the seedlings are competing with the state-owned hydroelectric firm, which says it will need the water to meet record-breaking power demands as temperatures are set to soar this summer.

Mekong Delta worst affected

The region under greatest threat, however, remains the southern Mekong Delta, known as the nation’s rice bowl, where the Mekong River flows into the sea.

During the dry season, salt water from the South China Sea can push 30km inland. This year, communities as far as 60km up-river are reporting salt contamination.

“Salinization has been a pattern in the Mekong Delta the last 30 to 50 years, but things are getting worse every year due to climate change,” said Pham Van Du, deputy director at the Department of Planting in the agricultural ministry. He estimates that 100,000ha of rice in the Mekong Delta are under threat.

Some blame China, where the Mekong begins, for Vietnam’s water woes. According to the Mekong River Commission, China has built or is planning to build eight dams on its side of the border.

But meteorologists say the return of El Ni�o, a cyclical warming pattern, is the real culprit.

Ian Wilderspin, senior technical adviser for disaster risk management at the UN Development Programme in Hanoi, said climate change meant Vietnam would experience droughts that arrived sooner and lasted longer.

The government has moved to assist farmers by releasing water from the reservoirs and installing pumps. But considering the magnitude of the problem, “more needs to be done”, he said.

“We have to look at the ways and means to build resilience of local communities,” said Wilderspin, whether by providing drought-resistant seeds, planting different crops or protecting fresh water sources. “Climate change is only going to make these cycles worse.”

Tuesday, March 02, 2010

WMO experts issue updtae on the impacts of climate change on tropical cyclones

GENEVA – 23 February 2010 (WMO) – The World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) Expert Team on Climate Change Impacts on Tropical Cyclones (i.e. hurricanes, typhoons) concluded that, if twenty-first century warming occurs as projected, there will likely be an increase, on average worldwide, in the maximum wind speed of tropical cyclones of +2 to +11 % and in rainfall rates of approximately 20% within 100 km of the storm centre. The experts concluded that the total number of tropical cyclones worldwide will likely either decrease or remain unchanged. However, a likely increase in tropical cyclone intensity means that the frequency of the strongest tropical cyclones will more likely than not increase under the projected warming scenarios.

Substantial scientific progress has led the Expert Team to raise their confidence levels on several aspects of how tropical cyclone activity may change under projected climate scenarios. An update of possible consequences of climate change on tropical cyclones has been completed and published in the March 2010 issue of the peer-reviewed journal Nature Geoscience by the WMO Expert Team on Climate Change Impacts on Tropical Cyclones. The Expert Team is composed of leading international researchers, from five WMO Member countries, in the field of tropical cyclones.

Significant uncertainty still exists in the projected changes in tropical cyclone characteristics for any single ocean basin. Therefore, given the societal and economic impacts of tropical cyclones, additional research and observations is strongly recommended to further reduce the uncertainties in detection of changes and projections of tropical cyclone characteristics in relation to climate change.  The Expert Team concluded that it remains uncertain whether any past changes in tropical cyclone characteristics exceed the natural variability.

For more information:The Nature Geoscience article is an update of their 2006 assessment. The past statement is available at http://www.wmo.int/wwrp/2006Stmt

Monday, March 01, 2010

More on What Haiti and Chile (Don’t) Have In Common

On Saturday I pointed out that the Chilean quake would likely claim far fewer lives than the one that struck Haiti in early January, and offered some of the reasons for that (better building codes, a more earthquake cognizant country, etc.). I want to add a few important technical points to that list.

First, although the Chilean quake was significantly stronger than the Haitian one, it also occurred 22 miles below the earth’s surface – twice as deep as the Haitian quake. That means there was twice as much earth to absorb the shock before it reached building foundations. It’s also worth pointing out that the epicenter of Saturday’s quake was about 70 miles from the nearest big city (Concepcion), compared with 10 miles between city and epicenter in the Haitian quake. On top of that, Concepcion has less than half the population of Port-Au-Prince (900,000 vs. 2 million).

Even so, the Chilean quake and its aftermath are proof positive that, as many experts have been saying since the 2004 quake in Banda Aceh, preparedness matters. A lot. So far Chilean officials – who are accustomed to dealing with big quakes - have declined offers of assistance and seem to be managing the crisis well enough on their own; in some affected regions, telephone service has already been restored.

Of course, as many will undoubtedly point out, Chile and Haiti are sort of apples and oranges.  Yes, both countries sit atop active fault lines. But compared to Haiti, Chile is rich. Chile has the money to buy decent concrete, and the institutional power to enforce its use. Chile can purchase and store heavy equipment and other tools to respond quickly in the wake of a potentially city-leveling disaster. Haiti is too poor to do any of those things. So, even if the country had a better sense of its own geology before the quake, what could its citizens really have done with that information?

It’s a fair question, but I think it misses the point. The same things which enable a country to police its construction industry and implement basic disaster preparedness plans, can also lift that country out of poverty and help its people thrive – namely, law enforcement, education and some semblance of accountability. After the 1960 tremblor, Chile started getting serious about building codes and earthquake resistant engineering; The attention ultimately bolstered the construction industry, which now factor’s heavily in the country’s economic fortunes. (By 1970, construction was responsible for roughly 8 percent of Chile’s GDP, up from just a few percent in 1960). More economic development meant more money and further improvements. It may be a bit of a chicken-and-egg tangent, but I think it’s worth considering.

Incidentally, for a great piece on how some cities are heeding the lessons of Haiti and trying to get out in front of their earthquake susceptibility, check out Andrew Revkin’s article from early last week.

Posted Sunday, February 28, 2010 2:38 PM
Kate Dailey, NewsWeek

Mekong provinces take action against salt water intrusion

Provinces in the Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta are strengthening measures to mitigate salt water intrusion as the region faces severe drought this dry season, according to local officials. Many residents in the region are already struggling with a lack of fresh water for daily use and for irrigation purposes.

Saline water with a salt content of 0.4 per cent and above, which can damage crops, has entered 30km inland in Tien Giang, Ben Tre, Tra Vinh, Soc Trang, Ca Mau, Kien Giang and Hau Giang provinces, according to the Southern Institute of Water Resources Research. The drought had caused deeper encroachment by salt water via river mouths as water levels in the Delta’s rivers fell rapidly, said the institute.

Nguyen Thien Phap, head of Tien Giang’s sub-department of Irrigation, said salt water had encroached 30-35km inland in the province, threatening 6,000ha of winter-spring rice crop in Go Cong District. The province has closed it Vam Giong sluice gates early in order to protect the crop. In Ca Mau Province, the provincial People’s Committee is mobilising local residents to build more than 40 dykes to protect crops.

Nguyen Van Khang, deputy chairman of the Tien Giang People’s Committee and director of the provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, said his department was looking at ways to restructure crop cultivation schedule to avoid damage caused by salt water. Meanwhile, agriculture officials in Ben Tre Province have instructed farmers in coastal districts not to use river water to irrigate their crops during high tide because of the high salinity.

Salt water can encroach on more than 60km inland in Ben Tre Province during peak drought periods in April and May, the provincial Hydro-Meteorological Bureau has warned. In fact, salt water intrusion will worsen all over the delta during peak drought times, according to the Central Hydro-Meteorological Bureau.

Phan Van Khong, director of the Ben Tre Agriculture and Aquaculture Extension Centre, said besides damaging crops, salt water intrusion also had its good side as it was beneficial to shrimp and oyster breeding as well as salt production. There was a need to strictly monitor the situation of salt water intrusion and carefully research measures to prevent its impacts and exploit its benefits, Khong said.

It is necessary for the Delta provinces to redesign cultivation schedules of crops and aquaculture for suitable with the annual intrusion of salt water to mitigate its damage and exploit its benefits, according to experts.

Dam Hoa Binh, deputy head of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development’s Irrigation Department, said his department would next week inspect the situation of salt water intrusion in every Delta province in order to come up with measures to reduce its impacts.

The ministry’s Cultivation Department has also warned Delta’s provinces to close sluice gates to prevent further salt water intrusion, and to preserve fresh water in reservoirs and canals for farming. Salt water intrusion will affect about 800,000ha of rice in the Delta in March when the plants need a lot of water.

Living with disasters and climate change from a children’s perspective

‘Living in the World of Disasters and Changing Climate’, published by Save the Children, is about children, disaster risk reduction, and climate change. It is a collection of children’s stories and statements about their views on disasters and climate change and their impact on the children’s lives, and how they can do something about it.

” Children should not be seen as victims, but actors in addressing the impacts of natural disasters and climate change on their lives and the life of their community. Policy makers and local authorities need to listen to children and see them as part of the future solutions. Children need to be involved in initiatives to build up their knowledge and resiliency thereby reducing the impacts of disasters and climate change, especially on the most vulnerable. “

Stories were collected from both primary and secondary sources. Interviews and focused-group discussions were conducted with children and adults in five communities in Thailand and four communities in Indonesia. Case studies were also collected from Vietnam and the Philippines. Programme documents and reports were used as secondary resources.

Children interviewed for this book have experienced different levels and frequencies of disasters and effects of climate change. While their voices do not represent the voices of all children in the Southeast Asia region, the book attempts to highlight common concerns amongst children who have experienced disasters and climate change. The fact is that children want and can take action to reduce the risks of disasters and climate change on themselves and their communities.

Download

Save the Children

Japan agency ‘sorry’ after tsunami less than feared

TOKYO, March 1 (Reuters) - Japan’s weather agency apologised on Monday for “crying wolf” when it urged some 1.5 million people to evacuate ahead of a possible major tsunami, only to find the waves that finally hit were far smaller than feared.

Experts defended the agency’s decision to warn that waves of 3 metres (9 ft 10 in) or more might strike Japan’s Pacific coast after a huge earthquake hit Chile, but acknowledged the risk of making residents blase about the danger next time.

“In the end, (the warning) was a bit excessive. I would like to apologise for the fact that the warning lasted so long,” Jiji news agency quoted Japan Meteorological Agency official Yasuo Sekita as telling a news conference after all warnings and advisories had been lifted, some 25 hours after the first alert.

Tsunami warnings are common in Japan, one of the world’s most earthquake-prone countries, but Sunday’s alert was the first for a major tsunami in 17 years and only the fourth since 1952.

The alert came after the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) had issued a Pacific-wide warning that included Hawaii and stretched across the ocean from South America to the Pacific Rim.

“I don’t question the wisdom of their warning. The key thing to remember is that they cannot underwarn. That is not an option,” Dailin Wang, an oceanographer at the PTWC, told Reuters.

Predicting the height of a tsunami is a complex task that requires not only knowing the quake’s magnitude but harder-to-grasp information about the impact on the sea floor and detailed data about the coastal areas that could be hit, Wang said.

Still, warnings of impending disaster that don’t pan out could encourage people to ignore future alerts, he said.

“If we do that all the time, we cry wolf and lose credibility,” Wang said. “We have to improve.”

Japanese are already fairly immured to tsunami warnings, despite past tragedies, including one that killed 140 people 50 years ago after a massive quake struck Chile.

On Sunday, only about 6 percent of residents in areas warned of waves of 3 metres or more evacuated, a Yomiuri newspaper survey showed.

“Citizens were not sufficiently aware of the danger of tsunami,” said Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano.

“We don’t know when a tsunami will occur again, so together with local authorities we must review this problem,” he said.