“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them” – Albert Einstein.

The Philippines’ witnessed a lobbying disaster in the last week of 2011. This is (unexpectedly) a good thing because it offers insights into what could lie ahead for the ‘disaster risk reduction’ agenda, worldwide.

After years of persistent lobbying and collaboration at the highest levels, the country has been lauded for attempting to comprehensively address disaster prevention measures through the adoption of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Act in 2010.  

A milestone, and yet, stymied by political interpretations.

The President recently ‘cautioned’ against using the national Calamity Fund for pre-disaster activities such as “preparation of relocation sites/facilities, and training of personnel engaged in direct disaster management”. This has been justified because it is believed that funds for pre-disaster activities have been “effectively integrated in various agency budgets”.

This ‘caution’ goes contrary to the spirit and text of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Act of 2010, which specifies up to 70 per cent of national and local Calamity Funds for pre-disaster preparedness and risk reduction activities. The ‘caution’ also goes contrary to the on-the-ground reality of underprepared local governance capacities and resources for the implementation of comprehensive disaster risk reduction measures.

Have we witnessed the two steps forward and five steps backward symptom again? What are some of the lessons to be learnt by other progressive efforts worldwide?

Importantly, does this symptom tell us that the ‘disaster risk reduction’ agenda needs a more compelling story-based strategy? A story that can counter the dominant political narrative, i.e. - sound disaster response and recovery amounts to good politics, but sound disaster prevention amounts to invisible economics? A story that can provide a consistent narrative of what a successful adoption of disaster risk reduction measures would look like? A story that can both, mobilize and persuade?

Borrowing from the Smartmeme narrative analysis, the disaster risk reduction agenda could adopt a story-based strategy with a dual attempt to:

1.     ‘Mobilize the choir’, the believers/ the converted, who understand the ‘story of the battle’ and can act in decisive unity to attain common disaster risk reduction goals.

2.     ‘Persuade the congregation’, the power holders/ the public, who still need to be convinced of the merits of the risk reduction narrative, through a ‘battle of the story’.

Whether through stratagem or strategy, the ‘battle’ has to be opportunistically and consistently waged on both fronts.

As we step into 2012, the disaster risk reduction agenda will have to work towards framing a ‘story’ (with the choir and for the congregation), to be able to counter dominant narratives that manufacture disaster risks, instead of reducing them.

“Truth and power belong to those who tell a better story” – Stephen Duncombe

I just watched an interesting TED talk by Martin Hanczyc on ‘The line between life and non-life’. He asks, what are the characteristics of a living system? Below is a screen shot summarizing the flow of ‘life stuff'. 

In essence, Hanczyc says life is the ability to reproduce and evolve. To achieve these 2 functions, 3 characteristics are critical to living systems:

1. Body (or form)
2. Metabolism (or sustaining functions)
3. Inheritable information (or DNA)

A living system has to inherit a body to distinguish the self from the environment. It has to have metabolic abilities that help it to convert resources from the environment to building blocks for its own sustenance. It has to possess inheritable information - an attribute of all adaptive and evolutionary systems.

Listening to this presentation, I was struck by how these characteristics offer an excellent framework to think about our cities as living systems.

I often hear, “our cities are dying.” Or, that “they are crumbling, dysfunctional hubs of humanity”. Most often, “our cities are unable to expand and grow efficiently.”

Now imagine if we were to apply the living systems characterization to understanding what a ‘living’ city would be characterized by? Here’s a simplified attempt:

1. Body or form: City land use development plans and by laws define the ‘body’ of the city, efficiently identify its usable, unusable and reserve organs (read, spaces) and enable it to relate to its constantly changing environment as a distinguishable, self-generating system.

2. Metabolism or sustaining functions: City institutions extend a ‘metabolic function’ by enabling the city, through tools and capacities, to efficiently convert resources from the environment into building blocks for its sustenance, growth and replication.

3. Inheritable information or DNA: City residents encode ‘inheritable information’ in public symbols by sharing information and experiences that constitute the collective cultural memory of the city, thereby enabling it to constantly evolve and adapt even in times of acute stress.

Can this simple 3-fold characterization help us understand how we could rescue our dying cities, and how they can in fact, emerge as living systems if only we view them as such?

Perhaps art (and humor) really does make life bearable.

Last night, with about a hundred other people, I sat before a line-up of five stellar female comedians in San Francisco. (Aptly, they performed at the ‘Punch Line’ club.) The comedians poked away at people, places and attitudes - San Francisco and Mumbai featured high on the ‘crack’ list.

Though most of us turned up to laugh our Monday blues away, we were also there to contribute our bit(-es) for an un-laughable cause.

Nyna Caputi, a debutante director, organized the comedian line up to raise money for her soon to be made ‘Petals in the Dust’. The film hopes to lay bare some facts about the soaring rate of female feticide/ infanticide across India’s poorest and wealthiest communities.

From primary research I had conducted about 7 years ago in New Delhi for the Lawyers Collective, I can attest, that it is an issue everyone knows about but don’t really want to talk about. Sounds much like the ‘inconvenient truth’ of increasing disaster risk trends?

Which gets me interested in: how or when, do people develop empathy towards an issue and adopt it as a 'cause'? And, at what point do people start talking about a cause in their daily conversations to influence others? 

Thinking back over the last couple of years, worldwide efforts to raise awareness about disaster prevention measures have achieved never-before success among school children, teachers and families, irrespective of cultural contexts or socio-political leaning. Why is that?

Perhaps because issues are easier to connect with and commit to, when they are emotive. That is, they are brought home to our most vulnerable moments and involve our most vulnerable members, as in this case, children and their wellbeing. 

Also, lasting connections are most easily forged in an everyday, informal space – at home, at school, in the cinema, street or playground. This is where 'causes' germinate in our minds and hearts, through everyday experience, learning and practice. 

Conducting school projects, art shows, street theatre, films or comic-relief, make for engaging ways to start an emotive  conversation about issues that otherwise have a habit of staring you in the face, but not talking.

While we pray for those affected by the Sikkim quake, the Japan typhoon and other recent disasters, here’s hoping that we learn how to leverage our diverse informal spaces to get disaster prevention messages out faster, wider and better. Our daily conversations and practices can indeed, help save lives.

Picture this conversation (reproduced from a recent New York Times article):

The White Rabbit says “Its terrible, just terrible! We’re running out of energy, Alice”. Soon after, a Dodo robot declares to Alice, “There is an ‘ace’ form of energy called nuclear power. It is clean, safe and renewable”. Alice concludes in awe, “it would be optimal for a resource-poor Japan!”

(The Dodo makes no mention of the risk of earthquakes or tsunamis to Alice.)

This conversation is enacted for the benefit of daily visitors, including young mothers and children, in one of the many scores of public relation buildings attached to nuclear plants across Japan.

The Alice-Dodo-White Rabbit act neatly summarizes Japan’s nuclear ‘safety myth’ – the belief that Japan’s nuclear power plants are absolutely safe. Over the decades, school textbooks, TV commercials, street banners, technologists and scientists have affirmed this myth through a medley of cultural, political and economic symbols.

But, in a country like Japan, how does a nuclear safety myth rise to the status of a dominant narrative? Isn’t this a country where ancient traditions of knowing and foretelling disasters through legend and folklore account for a diversity of local narratives? Isn’t this a country where populations have historically, been deemed better prepared than their neighbors, due to their incessant exposure to natural hazards coupled with their historical experience of building disaster-prepared communities?

Perhaps, a partial explanation lies in the fact that over the past six decades, Japanese society has had little chance to debate the construction of its establishment myths. Primarily because avenues that would democratize public debate around the issue of nuclear safety (among other issues) have remained stunted.

The 2011 Fukushima disaster has certainly changed some things. An otherwise politically apathetic nation has responded vociferously to this year’s mega-disaster. Thousands of young Japanese have used social media and forms of cultural expression (particularly the now famous song, It was always a lie) to protest against nuclear power. The protests are gaining ground in principle, but their demands remain largely ignored by nuclear lobbyists. One might ask, for how long?

Disasters are inevitable in a mono-logical, mono-conversational society where there are no easy avenues for dialogue, debate and participation. No society - developed or developing - is immune from this tendency. The less we talk about an issue of public safety and concern, the less we understand it and the more we come to trust the perpetuation of establishment myths, with little room for instituting accountability and transparency mechanisms.

Democratizing public debate on acceptable risk, through modern forms of legend and folklore – the social media, news media and public forums - is more important than ever.

Kyrgyzstan’s ethnic riots in June 2010 left 470 people dead and 300,000 displaced. A year on, parts of Osh and Jalal-Abad - the scenes of the macabre, still look ravaged. Recent news coverage of Kyrgyzstan seems to focus on the remnants of ethnic mistrust. 

While the country limps towards political and economic recovery in 2011, it is worth asking - was it indeed ethnic conflict that led to the humanitarian crisis, or was it systemic development failure that led to the conflict and the ongoing humanitarian crisis?

Landlocked, mountainous and ruggedly beautiful, Kyrgyzstan has essentially been in socio-economic crises since 2005. A third of the population lives below the poverty line, the state of energy infrastructure is weak, the cost of food, energy and water is high and domestic governance concerns plague work force productivity.

Kyrgyzstan is primarily agrarian but more than 88% of its agricultural lands are degraded and affected by desertification. Rural poverty is pronounced and in places like Osh (46.6% poor) and Jalal-Abad (53% poor), rampant. People live in areas that are at high-risk from flood (2005), earthquake (2006, 2008), drought (2009) and landslide (2010), with no access to safe housing, social protection or state sponsored welfare assistance. The severe winters of 2007-2008 and 2009 exacerbated people’s vulnerability – across urban and rural areas alike. Between 2007 and 2010, the country has sought much international aid and humanitarian assistance.

The deteriorating energy infrastructure in Kyrgyzstan, which is solely dependent on its dams to generate electricity, led to a nation-wide crisis during the severe winter of 2007-2008. While temperatures plunged to a minimum of -20 degrees Celsius in Bishkek, there were sharp reductions of electricity and heating supplies for households, schools, hospitals and commercial enterprises all over the country. 

An already emaciated population was pushed to the brink when the government attempted to raise energy tariffs in April 2010. What resulted was more than an uprising against the government’s decision – it was an uprising against the systemic failure of development. President Kumranbek Bakiyev’s Government was overthrown in April 2010. Soon after, ethnic conflict in the south of Kyrgyzstan erupted, leading to a new humanitarian crisis and large-scale involvement of the international community in June 2010.

Though this conflict assumed an ethnic character, it had little to do with ethnic strife. Like most conflicts, it had a lot more to do with unequal access to basic resources, absence of public infrastructure and a governance vacuum.

Kyrgyzstan does not have abundant uranium, oil or natural gas - resources that neighbors such as Kazakhstan have enough of. But, with its abundant water resources, enormous tourism potential and a population of 5.5 million (of which 63% is a productive workforce), Kyrgyzstan has no excuses from hereon.

With constitutional reforms, peaceful country-wide elections in 2010 and Presidential elections scheduled for October 2011, Kyrgyzstan could be on its way to becoming a democratic oasis in Central Asia.

There are many caveats. Kyrgyzstan is still dependent on its neighbors – the geo-politics of the region demand resource dependency. It is also largely dependent on international assistance to deal with the ongoing humanitarian crises, including many unaddressed civil, human and economic right issues. 

The story of Kyrgyzstan is a strong reminder that compounded humanitarian crises - a result of severe socio-economic inequality, unrelenting exposure to natural hazards, and conflict - need to be explicitly recognized as being rooted in weak governance structures and vulnerable economies that are easily played to geo-political interests.

Risk cannot be reduced without understanding it, and nuclear disaster risk is no exception. However, understanding nuclear disaster risk is perhaps more difficult because it is shrouded in scientific, expert driven and official/secret procedures. As a result, citizens are often left in the dark.

In this light, or darkness shall we say, Indian citizens should welcome the news that the Prime Minister has called for an audit of nuclear facilities on their resilience to disasters. Learning from the losses of others is cost effective and this audit is certainly a response to the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan that damaged the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

The Indian Government should work to release some basic information on the safety of our nuclear facilities into the public domain. 

Public access to information will help alleviate the general doubt among members of Parliament and citizens. It will also help better inform the decisions made on this vitally important subject. 

To help frame the discussion, let me offer six sets of basic questions:

First, what kinds of planning and operational processes are used when auditing the safety of nuclear facilities against a natural disaster? Though full details may not be needed at this stage, basic facts and figures on the processes will help citizens better understand the efforts made in the past by the authorities to make these facilities safer.

Second, what is the accountability and participation structure for the facilities? If preparedness is lacking, who is responsible?  What is the past record of incentives and disincentives for performance on this count? Who has been punished or promoted on this count in the past twenty years? At what level? What actions are or can be taken in future? To what extent? At the moment it is not clear to the citizens who is accountable to whom, and an impression is created that expertise equals accountability.

Third, how are assessment teams selected and how is their performance measured? What qualifications do they hold? Nuclear power is relatively new in India and thus, the field of nuclear and natural disaster risk overlaps in people’s minds. However, it will be very important to understand this more fully as India moves forward with its nuclear power expansion plans. Human resources and understanding on this issue will be more and more in demand.

Fourth, what baseline data will be used for this audit? Who collected that data and how? Who verified the data? Is baseline data India specific or global in nature? Citizens know very little about the status of safety in this sector and such information will build their confidence.

Fifth, what indicators are being used to measure the safety levels of these nuclear assets from the impact of a natural disaster? How have these indicators evolved? Who selected them and why? These indicators may be used to prioritize certain stakeholders such as liability experts, local communities, insurance agencies and authorities. An all round audit must have an agreed set of indicators.

Sixth, what has caused unsafe conditions in our nuclear facilities in the past and what was the effect of the resulting remedial measures? This information is important, as it demonstrates the care that the authorities took to fix even smallest emergencies in the past.

What is being asked in the above six sets of questions is nothing new and must be in the existing records of the central safety official to start with. Say three days time, this could be ready to give to the citizens and the Members of Parliament.

Understanding nuclear risk is the first step towards making India safe from the possible catastrophic impact of a natural disaster on its nuclear facilities. And public understanding depends on public access to information on risk.

In past weeks, I have been dedicating some think-time to the largely untapped role of civil society and volunteerism in disaster prevention. If so many of us volunteer in the aftermath of a disaster, why don’t we do so before a disaster? Why do few volunteer groups and networks flourish in ‘ordinary’ times? Are there particular kinds of societies that support more active civil society participation? How do institutions working with the public mind factor this into their disaster policies and communication strategies?

And so, I was pleasantly surprised when I came across Rebecca Solnit’s ‘A paradise built in hell’. The book is about the ‘extraordinary communities that arise in disasters’. Below, paraphrased, are some soulful excerpts from her book’s epilogue, where she does justice to the spirit of risk reduction efforts worldwide:

“Disasters are a crack in the walls that ordinarily hem us in, and what floods in can be enormously destructive – or creative. Two things matter most in these moments. First, disasters demonstrate what is possible or, perhaps latent: the resilience and generosity of those around us, and their ability to improvise another kind of society. Second, disasters demonstrate how deeply most of us desire connection, participation, altruism and purposefulness. The joy in disasters comes, when it comes, from that purposefulness, the immersion in service and survival, and from an affection that is not private and personal - but civic. …

Disasters may offer us a glimpse but the challenge is to make something of it, before or beyond the disaster: to recognize and realize these possibilities in ordinary times. If there are ordinary times ahead. We are entering an era where sudden and slow onset disaster will become far more powerful and far more common. What we know about the history of disaster and the plethora of disasters coming, calls for obvious infrastructure and systemic changes and specific disaster preparedness. But it also calls for more metaphysical changes – first, to acknowledge how people respond in disasters and to reduce the institutional fear and hostility to the public, then to incorporate what the disaster sociologists call ‘prosocial’ behavior into disaster planning. …

Better preparation for disasters must make a society more flexible and improvisational, more egalitarian and less hierarchical, with more room for meaningful roles and contributions from all members – and with a sense of membership. Civil society is what saves people and creates the immediate conditions for survival – rescue teams, field kitchens, concerned neighbors – and it is a preventive too, as the Chicago heat wave, Cuban hurricanes and many other disasters have demonstrated.

Disaster sometimes knocks down institutions and structures and suspends private life, leaving a broader view of what lies beyond. The task before us is to recognize the possibilities visible through that gateway and endeavor to bring them into the realm of the everyday.”

Previously a bastion of disaster preparedness, in the post-March 2011 world, Japan will stand for something more. Its tragedy will define how the notion of ‘acceptable risk’ comes to be debated in the public domain.

This debate will be significant for two reasons:

One, we are inching towards a global moral consensus that will consider death and damage from disasters in the 21st century as unacceptable. Disasters have long been treated as a disruption to business as usual, as a spectacle from the developing world and as an industry for reconstruction, aid and investment. 

But today, we know that deaths and most damage from disasters are in fact preventable – and hence, unacceptable. In the emerging context, it is very likely (and desirable) that disasters will be governed by the same kind of moral consensus that governs our present international response to war, famine, slavery, genocide or extreme poverty.

Two, its now recognized that risk science, its application and management have inherent limitations. Risk science is probabilistic - it scopes out the ‘unknowns’ to varying degrees. But, its interpretation, application and enforcement are deterministic because such actions are based on human perceptions of risk. These perceptions are rooted in a social, economic and political context. What is the margin of error? - Quite significant, it turns out. 

In the aftermath of recent disasters, the oft-repeated sentiment from affected communities has been: we thought we were safe. Risks from a nearby nuclear plant or a levee or a city bridge were underestimated and/or not clearly communicated. 

As our environments get more ‘built’ over the next decade and climate variability increases, risk management will become more and more complex. Our environments will experience more uncertainties, the range of risk probabilities will grow wider and our chances of error in interpreting risk will be multifold. These emerging scenarios will daunt our current risk management practices. Are we prepared? How prepared? To deal with what kind of risks?

The Japan tragedy begs us to make space for public conversations on what kinds of risk can be deemed acceptable by societies in the 21st century.

But such shifts in public discourse do not just happen – people and ideas are instrumental in ushering them. Most of all, we have to enable a more democratic and public understanding of disaster risk. 

In past months, there has been an outpouring of information on the billion-dollar costs of the Australian floods and the Japanese earthquake-tsunami disaster, among others. This has raised the obvious question: can increased investments in disaster prevention and climate adaptation reduce such costs in the future? 

I am struggling to explore why, commonsense does not inspire such investments in the first place?

Clearly, increased investments in disaster prevention, mitigation and adaptation will increase safety, reduce loss of lives and protect livelihoods. Seeking such investments from earmarks within development budgets become difficult because these requests are 'disaster related' and get redirected to 'humanitarian' budgets. But prevention and mitigation activities are not designated as ‘relief and recovery’ and therefore can’t be justified from humanitarian budgets. A cyclical problem no doubt.

Also, we do not have well developed ideas on the elements and ingredients of what good disaster prevention measures across various sectors constitute and so we have not been able to estimate the cost of exactly what level of investments are needed by sector. If we don’t work out the numbers, we can’t make a convincing argument of how much, when and where must be invested.

As a priority, we need to get better at thinking through the incremental cost of resilience, i.e. the additional cost of making a development investment (school, hospital, rural livelihood asset) disaster proof. 

This would help demonstrate that if included in original development projects, plans and budgets, the initial costs of disaster prevention, mitigation and adaptation would ensure that large investments do not get washed away in the next flood or mudslide, or worse, collapse and kill students or patients in a poorly built school or hospital - which in a further ignominy is then not available to perform its normal function, in the aftermath of a disaster.