ANALYSIS
Disasters and Faulty Governance
"Development aggression" and
"globalization" have contributed to the destruction of the country's
ecosystem (considered one of the richest in the world), traditional
protective barriers and once self-sustaining economies that used to enable
the people to withstand even the most destructive calamities. Today, they
spread horror, despair and hopelessness to high-risk communities across
the country.
BY THE POLICY STUDY,
PUBLICATION AND ADVOCACY (PSPA) PROGRAM
CENTER FOR PEOPLE EMPOWERMENT IN GOVERNANCE (CENPEG)
Posted by Bulatlat
The devastation to people's lives and the
economy wrought by the two recent major disasters should no longer be seen
as a problem best left to government's disaster coordinating officials
alone. Serious flaws in government's economic development priorities and
faulty public governance have only led to the increase in the
vulnerability of people and communities to calamities and, worse, in
bigger number of lives lost and hopes for a better life shattered.
Question is, has the government been
jolted out of complacency or gone beyond merely declaring affected
provinces as "calamity areas" by undertaking bold policy reform? Is there
really nothing that can be done to protect people's lives and their
livelihood from future disasters?
In just a month, the Philippines was
struck by two major calamities: The Guimaras oil slick, which hit several
western Visayas coastal provinces third week of August, and Typhoon
Milenyo, which devastated Luzon provinces including Metro Manila on Sept.
28. Being the world's fourth most disaster-prone country (after China,
India and Iran) and also fourth in the number of persons killed or injured
by calamities, such disasters, whether natural as in the case of Typhoon
Milenyo, or man-made in the Guimaras tragedy, are often taken as nothing
new.
Some alarming trends cry for attention,
however. The impact of disasters, including typhoons, floods, monsoon
rains, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and landslides has worsened in
recent years. The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies
report that some 5.9 million Filipinos were killed or injured as a result
of natural or man-made calamities in 10 years (1992-2001). That's already
about 5 percent of the country's current population.
The rising toll on human lives can also be
attributed to the increase in the reported number of disaster incidents in
the country: From 199 in 2001 it leaped to 313 in 2002 and 384 in 2005.
The non-government Citizens' Disaster Response Center (CDRC) reports that
the number of persons affected by disasters or calamities in 2005 was
528,151 families or 2.6 million individuals. In January-September this
year alone, however, the total has reached 584,607 families or 3 million
persons.
The CDRC report does not include the
recent damage caused by Typhoon Milenyo: 200 deaths as of Oct. 3, 1.3
million people displaced including 171,000 evacuees and about 43 million
kept in the dark by widespread power blackouts.
Flashfloods
Flashfloods account for the biggest number
of persons uprooted: In 2005, the total reached 344,378 families or 1.8
million individuals or half the total number directly displaced by all
disasters that year, based on CDRC monitoring.
The CDRC adds drought, fires, red tide,
fish kill, epidemic outbreak, infestation, tornado and armed conflicts in
its disaster monitoring. Not included are other man-made disasters such as
sea, air and road mishaps as well as oil spills.
Normally, government reports measure the
impact of disasters based on economic losses, the number of persons killed
or uprooted and damage to infrastructure, among others. Over-attention to
quantifiable effects, however, tends to gloss over other indicators of
impact that are often far-reaching and which are lost in the bureaucratic
maze of government intervention – or lack of it. These include long-term
effects on livelihood and employment, health, nutrition, education and
other social and psychological impact that only the keen and compassionate
policy maker is able to detect.
For instance, Central Luzon still reels
from the impact of the Mt. Pinatubo volcanic eruption 15 years ago notably
due to mudflows that inundate farms, fishponds and whole villages. Among
other reasons, income losses and destruction to farms have made the region
one of the leading generators of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs). This
only shows that the more disasters strike every year the bigger the army
of OFWs will leave the country that, in turn, will result in a bigger
number of families torn apart or suffering long separation with
breadwinners aside from other unimaginable social costs.
And yet all these and other problems can
be stopped or at least prevented or mitigated.
Rise in people's vulnerability
The reason why the number of families,
communities, lands and other productive resources affected by calamities,
whether natural or man-made, has increased at alarming rates lately is
because of the rise in their level of vulnerability. Contributing to the
increase of vulnerability to disasters are poverty and unemployment, lack
of land and shelter, lack of food security, poor access to health and
other social services, and so on.
Big populations who face higher risks
during disasters owing to their dire social and economic conditions are in
the rural provinces especially those living near or on uplands, near
logging and mining areas, coastal areas and other farm communities. In the
cities, they are the urban poor who are forced to live by the riverbanks
and coasts, under the bridges or beside waste dumps. And all these are
high-risk disaster zones.
In fact the whole Philippine archipelago
including its seas and marine grounds is a potential disaster area. This
explains why of late whenever a major disaster happens – like the Guimaras
oil slick - whole regions or one of the country's three major islands are
declared "calamity areas." Natural disasters such as typhoons are
obviously unavoidable but the hazards they as well as man-made calamities
pose to populations and communities have been aggravated by flawed
"economic development" policies and laws that have also become,
coincidentally speaking, the culprit behind man-made disasters.
Except for a few small zones, for
instance, the whole country has been stripped of its forests due to
unmitigated logging and mining operations that, for several decades, have
only benefited a few families and transnational corporations.
Foreign-funded dams that were built purportedly to provide power for
industries and irrigation for large farm estates now disgorge flashfloods
that submerge whole provinces and ruin their economies.
The Mining Act of 1995, which the Arroyo
government implemented last year in full swing, will subject 13 million
hectares or 45 percent of the country's land area to mining exploration
and extraction. Justified by Mrs. Arroyo as urgent in order to address the
government's fiscal crisis, the Act will result in the large-scale
displacement of communities and in the destruction of lands, deforestation
and the flattening of mountains, erosions, siltations, desertification,
pollution of rivers and marine life, and other ecological damages. In
areas where new mining operations have started, disaster incidents have
taken place including the spread of toxic pollutants and flashfloods.
Definitely, something is wrong when
government economic programs are crafted principally to address the fiscal
crisis and debt servicing regardless of their grim effects on people and
their livelihood. State policies are aligned to international credit
institutions' impositions and preferences for extractive production and
commercial exportation while prying the domestic market wider for cheap
imports at the expense of the country's farmers and other small producers.
All these contribute to the further marginalization of the people and,
consequently, to their exposure to disasters.
There are so-called
"safety nets" that claim to minimize the adverse effects of corporate
greed, development and infrastructure projects but the series of
moratoriums on logging and mining, environment impact assessments,
sustainable resource management, building codes, transportation safety
measures and, not to forget, billboard advertising codes are followed more
in breach.
"Development
aggression" and "globalization," based on UNDP and World Bank reports, has
only aggravated the country's poverty and widened the income gaps between
the poor and rich. What these reports forget, however, is the destruction
to the livelihood, property, lands and water resources, nay, the future of
generations of Filipinos that such policies and laws have wrought making
the nation's poor in worse shape and unable to shield themselves anymore
from natural and man-made disasters. "Development aggression" and
"globalization" have contributed to the destruction of the country's
ecosystem (considered one of the richest in the world), traditional
protective barriers and once self-sustaining economies that used to enable
the people to withstand even the most destructive calamities. Today, they
spread horror, despair and hopelessness to high-risk communities across
the country. Posted by Bulatlat
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