(Published In MTimes 29 03 2019)
A devastating cyclone has caused widespread destruction in Southern Africa, across the city of Beira, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi. Some 1.7 million of our African brothers and sisters are said to be affected, with no electricity or running water in areas where homes have been swept away and roads destroyed by the floods.
“We are living an unprecedented natural disaster. A disaster that only matches major disasters," said Mozambique’s Environment minister Celso Correia. "Unfortunately, no one in the region and in the world could predict a disaster of this size." Intense tropical cyclone Joaninha caused significant damage in Rodrigues Island on Tuesday, March 26 and gusts of up to 184 km per hr were recorded.
In an age of advanced meteorology, when hurricanes and cyclones are named in advance and warnings go out as storms approach, it's troubling to imagine how damaging was Cyclone Idai. It has hit knocked Beira, a port city on the coast of Mozambique, back into a pre-digital world. Everything that modern Africa has come to rely upon has been snatched away. Telecommunication masts, satellite feeds and the internet bowed down to the cyclone's force.
This disaster is a reminder that the world’s preparations to deal with disasters are not keeping pace with the growing threats to people and societies. We need to think through future contingency plans for if the current trends for worsening extreme weather conditions, together with expanding populations and cities, were to continue in the next 50 years. The economic costs of disasters are likely to increase in the future. Every country has an interest in improving the economic effectiveness of decision‐making for disaster risk reduction.
Estimates of the likely impact on the economy under different climatic conditions were carried out by a World Bank team. They found out that “Mauritius over a 40-year period, the high-end climate change scenario greatly increases the chance of large GDP losses; and the probability increases as we look at impacts of increasingly larger magnitude. For example, the risk of losing 5 percent of GDP would go from a 30 percent probability in the current climate scenario to more than a 70 percent probability in the climate change scenario… For the 10 percent most damaging years, losses are expected to increase by an additional 3.7 percent of GDP.”
The World Bank’s analysis supports the important conclusions from work undertaken earlier which shows that storms associated with the current climate have led and will lead to significant damage in Mauritius; it however emphasizes the fact that climate change will make those losses much worse.
Philippe Boullé, expert in the mitigation of natural disaster risks, reminds us that -
“…le danger demeure cependant pour toutes les îles, grandes ou petites de la région. À l’instar de la puissance destructrice des vagues et de la houle pendant les périodes cycloniques, qui menace les zones côtières.Mais il faut constamment s’assurer de la résilience de ce parc immobilier qui ne cesse de grandir. Toutnouvelimmeublepeutdevenir un risque nouveau de vulnérabilité. …Mais le pays se développe et le développement équivaut à de nouvelles vulnérabilités qu’il faut donc constamment s’efforcer de réduire.”
The WB team had recommended that we regularly update our full island-scale risk assessments to reflect the latest climate science, including projections of cyclone and non-cyclone precipitation and flood events as well as the impact of rising sea levels. WIn addition, we should add climate/environment impact analyses on coastal erosion, encroachment of public beaches and our wetlands a. Wend also should consider disaster risk financing options to mitigate the social and economic impacts of low-probability, high-impact climate shocks. Examples of such options include the Sovereign Insurance Scheme developed by Africa Risk Capacity and the World Bank’s Catastrophe Deferred Drawdown Option (or CAT DDO), a contingent credit line that provides immediate liquidity to World Bank member countries in the aftermath of a natural disaster.
This would come as an additional support to the suggestion of Resistans ek Alternativ of a new law to better respond to the disasters caused by climate change. Against a backdrop of worsening land, environment and social issues, a Climate Change Bill, according to the ReA, will usher in new ecological, social and economic policies with the public interest in mind as opposed to private and corporate interests.
