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Editor’s Note: The view reflected in the article reflects the views of the writer.
Yohannes Aberra, Phd
October 18, 2020
Managing the risk of natural disasters for almost fifty years in Ethiopia is like the Amharic saying “ከርሞ ጥጃ” or “አድሮ ቃርያ” (almost means perpetually childish). The same thing happens over and over again, like it’s the first time a disaster has happened. It is always a surprise and always a crisis management. The lessons of past disasters are never learned in exactly the same way that the lessons of past political mistakes are never learned. Ethiopians have a short memory? Absolutely not! It is the civil servants who have little memory. Ordinary people lose their livelihood and the lives of their loved ones. They cannot afford to have a short memory! The past has never been merciful to them; neither has the future given them hope. Civil servants are the least affected by disasters and it is no wonder they can afford to have a short memory, intentionally or not. Nothing personal happens to them that can become a constant reminder of past disasters. “The nail of the shoe pinches the user.” The memories of common victims of natural disasters are so fresh that they use the occurrence of disasters to calculate their dates of birth: year of drought; year of the invasion of locusts; year of the floods. The locust invasion of the city of Mekelle 60 years ago is still fresh in my mind. A huge swarm of locusts spent the night on the branches of a large and beautiful “ፀሊም በርበረ” tree in my backyard. In the morning, I was horrified to see, as a child, that the tree I loved was almost completely defoliated. I saw with my own eyes numerous animal carcasses on the Kobo Plains during the drought of 1973.
The fact that ordinary people have a long memory of the ill effects of past natural disasters is of no use. They are the victims of problems, not the problem solvers. From past experiences with disasters, they know what the solutions are; but they do not have the tools and methods for that. The latter are in the hands of the often reluctant and often insensitive officials of the relevant sectoral institutions. It is a logical and proven fact that natural hazards do not turn into disasters if exposed communities and ecosystems are resilient. Droughts and forest fires in Australia and the United States; Floods in Europe are natural hazards that do not turn into natural disasters like Ethiopia. In the first, there is an inherent resilience of communities to natural hazards through many years of state intervention in preparedness and mitigation. The magic rule here is “Prevention is better than cure”. Preventing a natural hazard from becoming a natural disaster requires advanced early warning systems; reduction of the vulnerabilities of communities, in places of frequent exposure, to impacts; rehabilitation of livelihoods and ecosystems for those impacts that were not avoidable.
In Ethiopia, the tacitly agreed rule seems to be “cure is better than prevention.” The health system in Ethiopia has made its policy clear from the start that priority is given to prevention. It is not the choice of the easiest or cheapest. In many cases, prevention requires more effort and funding than cure. The main reason prevention is preferred is that the cure always has side effects that could cause permanent health problems. When one problem is cured another, it may be, it may create worse. The chemicals in drugs are intrusive and alien to the chemistry of the human body. They can wreak havoc on the healthy and long life of the patient. In managing the risk of natural disasters, prevention is healthier for both human communities and the natural ecosystem, which is the basic life support system. When drought hits, it kills crops and animals and causes famine if an adequate financial and asset base is not built in all households. Plants in ecosystems can dry out by exposing the soil to erosion when normal rainfall resumes. Worse still, a local hydrological imbalance will be created that will lead to gradual aridity and thus to the total loss of livelihoods. The locust invasion does much the same to ecosystems and livelihoods.
Drought cannot be prevented. It is an integral part of the natural global air circulation. One can only be prepared to prevent its adverse effects. Construction of water storage, ecosystem restoration and hydrology facilities; transform agriculture into drought-resistant systems; introduce alternative livelihood strategies that are less affected by the vagaries of the weather. Lobster, flooding, and water hyacinth are preventable. It’s about effectively addressing hazards at their sources. For locust detection, breeding areas and for flooding, slope management with potentially high runoff productivity. It is fruitless to buy one machine after another to destroy the water hyacinth above Lake Tana, while the lake’s 15,000-square-kilometer basin pumps tons of silt and fertilizer waste every day of the year into the lake. While land degradation and urban impervious surface are expanding in the upper part of Awash, the flood-ravaged “unfortunate” Afars are not worth mourning and providing emergency aid to them. With such reactive measures, your livelihoods will never go back, much less move on.
For the last 50 years the same question has been asked and the same answer given. After the horrors of the 1973 drought famine, journalists asked officials, “Didn’t they warn you about the danger?” They answered “Yes, but …”; they were busy with the cakes. After the tragic famine of 1984, journalists asked officials: “Didn’t they warn you about the danger?” They answered “Yes, but …”; they were busy with the 10th anniversary of the revolution, the formation of the WPE, and the launch of color television. The irony is that the 1974 revolution was aimed at making hunger history. It was funny and sad at the same time that the “revolutionaries” celebrated the anniversary by making the hunger live the history. The EPRDF, which handled the 1984 famine reactively as it could only do while in armed struggle, its actions continued to be more reactive and less proactive after it assumed political power in Ethiopia. The EPRDF years have been (or had they been?) Years of political and institutional dynamics related to disaster risk management. Unfortunately, it was more about noise than action when it came to building true resilience in communities and ecosystems to enable them to effectively combat natural disasters.
The treatment of natural disasters in Ethiopia began with the Relief and Rehabilitation Commission (CRR), a reactive response to the danger of drought, in the mid-1970s. RRC depended on the “tears” of Commissioner Shimeles and the kindness of West to survive and function. Since the RRC had put a “donor skeleton” in place of a local capacity to help it stand, it was no match for the devastating famine triggered by the 1984 drought. The transition period was the adoption of the first disaster risk management policy. Although the absolute number (not necessarily the proportion) of victims of natural hazards has multiplied several times during the years of implementation of the EPRDF policy; there was no repetition of past tragedies. Reactive (relief) measures were more effective despite the overwhelming numbers of those in need. However, with little systematic preparation and resilience building for the next unavoidable natural hazard, the cumulative vulnerability of communities resulted in increased casualties and an expanded geographic reach in each subsequent cycle. In Ethiopia, when it comes to making something more durable, there are more sticks than you use to hit. A policy already existed that was “updated” to the 2013 Disaster Risk Management Policy. The institutional arrangement has also been experiencing instability due to changes from Commission to Vice Ministry and back to Commission. Policies do not have pairs of hands. Changing them every time your implementation fails does not add any value. It only creates confusion and kills employee morale. If policies fail, it is the hands of policymakers and implementers that may have weakened. This can arise from a lack of resources, but mainly from a lack of willpower to devote time and energy to it. In addition to the elaborate institutional arrangement for disaster risk management, which is networked with sectoral ministries, agencies, national and international NGOs and donors, the development of human resources at the postgraduate level on disaster risk management has been launched. in some universities in Ethiopia.
Policies, institutions, and high-level expertise become a paper tiger if real action remains primitive. It is the mindset of those involved that matters most for successful disaster risk management. Disaster management is not a lucrative activity; neither is it a political weapon. It requires the devotion of a missionary and the tender heart of an angel. If there is a satanic feeling that a natural hazard is striking what is considered an enemy and the heart leaps for joy or turns a blind eye, then this is silent genocide, not disaster management. Reporters asked the authorities the third question about the ongoing locust invasion in northern Ethiopia: “Weren’t you warned about the danger of locusts?” They answered “Yes, but …”; they were busy with the political chess game and it was after the disaster struck that threat response tools were ordered; “A port after the storm!” Disaster risk management in Ethiopia is more experienced, and quite addicted, to taking the comparatively easier reactive actions to combat the impacts of natural hazards. It is easier for officials to call in relief aid and distribute 15 kilograms of grain and a tiny drum of oil to victims rather than taking proactive measures that keep victims in their homes and farms, which are much more difficult to do and they require patience and self-sacrifice. Ethiopia’s Disaster Risk Management System did not act proactively using the “locate and destroy” method at the breeding sites, although it was given sufficient warning before the disaster struck. It did not even act reactively by using effective technologies to scare away the locust swarms. It seems to be hoping to do what it can best do: distribute relief to the victims once the locust has finished the job of devastating farmland. The limited reactive response to relief aid is like taking pain relievers. The pain returns and you need stronger medications. The more you take, the more you need until you die! Eliminating the source of pain should be the most effective remedy.
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