Bali’s Mount Agung spewing smoke while school children look on, Nov 2017. AP photo in Wikimedia Commons
Southeast Asia is no stranger to natural disasters that affect up to hundreds of thousands of people. Just in 2018, major natural disasters—earthquakes, floods, landslides, tsunamis, typhoons and tropical storms, volcanic eruptions—have struck Indonesia, the Philippines, Laos, and Vietnam and resulted in hundreds of deaths and thousands more temporarily displaced. Moreover, climate change will not only lead to rising sea levels, a threat to Indonesia and the Philippines with their hundreds of islands at risk of disappearing, but also increase the likelihood of weather-related natural disasters.
Yet, governments in Southeast Asia that face the highest risks of natural disasters are tragically among the slowest to bring about changes that could temper their worst effects. Over a decade after the Aceh tsunami in the mid-2000s, as videos documenting the earthquakes and the tsunami in Lombok and Greater Palu show, few in Indonesia immediately know what to do at times of emergency, while quake-proof building codes still go unheeded. Likewise, after years laboring through typhoons like Bopha, Haiyan and Mangkhut, the Philippines is only now getting around to establishing a disaster resilience department that should strengthen its disaster risk reduction and management efforts.
While disaster relief and aid arrive within days of natural disasters and reconstruction begins in the weeks after, this is no evidence that countries like Indonesia and the Philippines manage disasters as they should. In fact, post-disaster response and recovery only account for the latter half of proper disaster management; the first half is mitigation and preparedness. Mitigation reduces or eliminates future risks, while preparedness refers to a practiced state of readiness to respond. After all, it is better, and cheaper, to prepare for natural disasters than to deal with their aftermaths.
In the case of the Palu earthquake and tsunami, mitigation should have led to more resilient buildings and tsunami buoys that work, while preparedness would have meant locals knew they should head to higher grounds at once. These are just a few, easy examples of the investment that this week’s first Spotlight article by Mami Mizutori and Patricia Espinosa calls governments around the world to make in anticipation of natural disasters. With climate change threatening to worsen extreme weather events, the costs, both financial and human, of mitigation and preparedness will grow ever smaller as a fraction of post-disaster response and recovery outlays.
Meanwhile, this week’s second Spotlight article by Dr. Dhiman Ranjan Mondal focuses on the importance of being ready for natural disasters. While we never know when natural disasters may hit, we do know where they could occur. The dangers of the Palu-Koro seismic fault were known for years, but the Indonesian government did nothing—perhaps because of its distant location from Jakarta. Would a more widely spread knowledge of elevated seismic risks in Jakarta and Manila serve as a better impetus for national disaster mitigation?
