Report Pathways to earthquake resilience in China October 2015 Overseas Development Institute 203 Blackfriars Road London SE1 8NJ Tel. +44 (0) 20 7922 0300 Fax. +44 (0) 20 7922 0399 E-mail: [email protected] www.odi.org www.odi.org/facebook www.odi.org/twitter Readers are encouraged to reproduce material from ODI Reports for their own publications, as long as they are not being sold commercially. As copyright holder, ODI requests due acknowledgement and a copy of the publication. For online use, we ask readers to link to the original resource on the ODI website. The views presented in this paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of ODI. © Overseas Development Institute 2015. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial Licence (CC BY-NC 3.0). ISSN: 2052-7209 Cover photo: Photo by GDS, Children receiving the GDS disaster risk reduction kit, Shaanxi Province, China Contents Acknowledgements 9 About the authors 9 Glossary of terms 11 Acronyms 11 1. Introduction 13 John Young 2. Earthquake disaster risk reduction policies and programmes in China 16 Cui Ke, Timothy Sim and Lena Dominelli 3. Current knowledge on seismic hazards in Shaanxi Province 23 By Feng Xijie, Richard Walker and Philip England 4. Community-based approaches to disaster risk reduction in China 30 Lena Dominelli, Timothy Sim and Cui Ke 5. Case study: World Vision’s community disaster response plan in Ranjia village 42 William Weizhong Chen, Ning Li and Ling Zhang 6. Case study: Gender Development Solution’s disaster risk reduction in primary education 46 Zhao Bin 7. Recent earthquakes in China: the case of Yingxiu Town in Sichuan Province 51 Timothy Sim, Cui Ke and Yunxi Yang 8. Global experiences and lessons for NGOs to promote earthquake disaster risk reduction 59 Brian Tucker 9. Conclusions 64 John Young Pathways to earthquake resilience in China 3 10. Interpreting and applying lessons learned 66 Gender Development Solution: A town-based disaster risk reduction pilot project in Shaanxi Province 66 Tony Zhang Jun 66 World Vision: Establishing a disaster risk reduction community school project in Yaozhou District, Shaanxi Province 69 Patrick Zhang Jun 69 List of tables, figures and boxes Tables Table 1: Funding sources for DRR projects 33 Table 2: Involvement of professionals 33 Table 3: Interdisciplinary collaboration 34 Table 4: Referral to other professionals 34 Table 5: Post held by respondents 34 Table 6: Cooperation with other NGOs 34 Table 7: Project involvement in the disaster phases 35 Table 8: Disaster addressed 35 Table 9: Source of information about disasters 35 Table 11: The duration of DRR projects 36 Table 12: DRR project outputs 37 Table 13: The main location of DRR projects 37 Table 14: Beneficiaries of the project 38 Table 15: Evaluating project effectiveness 38 Table 16: Participants in project evaluations 38 Table 17: Person in charge of DRR project research 39 Table 18: The main challenges facing DRR projects 39 Table 19: Comparison of knowledge acquired on major disasters, between the project and control class (%) 48 4 ODI Report Table 20: Comparison of main sources for natural disaster information (%) 48 Table 21. Breakdown of types of information and percentage of survey respondents with access to the information 60 Figures Figure 1: Organisational structure of China’s disaster prevention and reduction system 17 Figure 2. Faults, historical earthquakes and population centres of the Weihe Basin region, Shaanxi Province. 24 Figure 3. A sketch to illustrate the formation of a basin and its bordering mountains as a result of repeated slip on a normal fault 24 Figure 4. Distortion of the crust (and a fence built on top of it) during a cycle of build-up of strain, and its release in an earthquake on a strike-slip fault 25 Figure 5. Relationship between earthquake magnitude and length of the fault break 25 Figure 6. Ground shaking in the 1556 Huaxian earthquake 26 Figure 7. Map of intensity of shaking for the 23 October 1815 earthquake and two synthetic calculations of shaking 27 Figure 8. Distances of places within the Weihe Basin from faults that are thought to be capable of producing damaging earthquakes 28 Boxes Box 1. The World Vision DRR framework 43 Box 2 Top nine challenges facing EDRR professionals, ranked in order of most important to least important 60 Pathways to earthquake resilience in China 5 Acknowledgements The Overseas Development Institute and Earthquakes We express gratitude to the government of the People’s without Frontiers would like to thank all contributing Republic of China and in particular the National China authors and associated institutions: Lena Dominelli, Earthquake Administration and National Commission for Durham University, UK; Tony Zhang Jun and Zhao Disaster Reduction. Bin, Gender Development Solution, China; Brian Tucker, We would like to acknowledge and thank Tongli Geohazards International, US; Cui Ke, Timonthy Sim and International College, Shaanxi Province, China. Tongli Yunxi Yang, Hong Kong Polytechnic-University, Hong International College is a valued partner of the Earthqaukes Kong; John Young, Overseas Development Institute, UK; without Frontiers project and host of the Writeshop from Philip England and Richard Walker, Oxford University, which this publication was produced, April 2015. UK; and Ning Li, Patrick Zhang Jun, Ling Zhang and Finally, we thank Anna Brown, Louise Ball, Cormac William Weizhong Chen, World Vision, China. In addition, O’Brien and Sophie Hall for their editorial work and we thank other members of the World Vision and Gender design. Development Solution who participated in the Writeshop in Xian, China in April 2015. About the authors Brian Tucker is President of Geohazards International, and Geological Engineering from Changchun Geological a non-profit organisation working to reduce the risk College (1983), and received his Master’s degree (1986) of natural hazards in the world’s most vulnerable and PHD (1989) from Xi’an Geological College in 1986. communities through preparedness, mitigation and John Young is head of the Research and Policy in advocacy. In 2000, Brian was honoured for his service to Development programme (RAPID) at the Overseas the people of Nepal by the King of Nepal, and in 2002 was Development Institute (ODI). John works on maximising named a MacArthur Fellow. In 2007, he received the US research and evaluation use, especially in large complex Civilian Research and Development Foundation’s George projects. He spent five years in Indonesia managing the Brown Award for International Science and Technology DFID Decentralised Livestock Services in the Eastern Cooperation and was elected a Fellow of the California Regions of Indonesia Project. Prior to that, he was Academy of Sciences. the Country Director in Kenya for the Intermediate Cui Ke is a postdoctoral Research Associate at the Technology Development Group. John developed the School of Applied Social Sciences, Hong Kong Polytechnic RAPID programme to become a global leader at the University. Since 2013, she has worked in Yingxiu, the research–policy interface and developed its key approaches epicentre of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in China, and on policy influence. has been developing a post-disaster psychosocial needs Lena Dominelli is a professor in Applied Social Sciences assessment toolkit. Her research now focuses on disaster at Durham University, Associate Director for the Institute risk reduction (DRR) policy and practice. of Hazard, Risk and Resilience, and Head of the Disaster Xijie Feng has worked at the Earthquake Administration Intervention Committee of the International Association of Shaanxi Province since 1990, focusing on seismic of Schools of Social Work (IASSW). She has been engaged geology, earthquake engineering, earthquake hazard in responses to recent earthquakes in China, Chile and assessment and scientific investigation. He is currently Haiti. She is currently also the Chair of the International professor and vice-head of the Department of Earthquake Association of Schools of Social Work’s (IASSW’s) Committee Prediction at the Shaanxi Seismological Bureau. He is a on Disaster Interventions, Climate Change and Sustainability. committee member of the Earthquake Seismology Society Patrick Zhang Jun manages the World Vision’s Yaozhou of China, the Disaster Reduction Association of Shaanxi Area Development Programme. He graduated from Xian Province, and the Seismological Society of Shaanxi Aircraft Industry College in 1998, majoring in auditing, Province. In addition, he is a member of the editorial and received a Masters in Public Administration (MPA) board of the Journal of Catastrophe, the Northwestern from Peking University in 2006. He joined World Vision Seismological Journal and Technology for Earthquake China in 2000, working on auditing, project management Disaster Prevention. He has received five Science and and disaster management. Prior to that, Patrick worked in Technology Awards and published over 30 academic commercial enterprise. papers. He received his Bachelor degree in Hydrogeology 6 ODI Report Philip England is Professor of Geology in the Tony Zhang Jun is Associate Professor at Shaanxi Department of Earth Sciences, Oxford University. He Xueqian Normal University, and Executive Director works on several aspects of tectonics, including continental of Shaanxi Gender Development Solution (GDS). GDS deformation, metamorphism, and the thermal and focuses on child poverty, non-governmental organisation