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INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND WORLD BANK GROUP 2018 ANNUAL MEETINGS CIVIL SOCIETY POLICY FORUM ARE WE BUILDING BACK BETTER? LESSONS FROM SOUTH ASIA DISASTER REPORT (2016) Surabaya, Bali, Indonesia Wednesday, October 10, 2018 3:30 p.m. LIST OF PARTICIPANTS MIHIR R. BHATT Director All India Disaster Mitigation Institute & Chairperson, Duryog Nivaran SUNITA KAYASTHA Emergency Specialist, UNICEF – Nepal DENIS NKALA Regional Coordinator – Asia Pacific United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) * * * * * Are We Building Back Better? Lessons from South Asia Disaster Report (2016) (3:30 a.m.) MR. BHATT: This particular panel has been especially put together to look at this whole idea of build back better and, you know, who does it, how it is done, who matters, why it is far more important now than it has been before, so on and so forth. And keeping that in mind, we have drawn from a very important report that came out last year, which was called Build Back Better, and it reviewed what has happened in South Asia in the last 10 years and all the disasters that took place that attracted international financing or international relief. And from that study which was done by various countries in South Asia and the report itself was done by Duryog Nivaran, which is alternative network of individuals and institutions which look at disasters differently and exactly the point being that when there is talk about disasters and finance, there are World Bank President and Indonesia Finance Minister and two other ministers actually gather up and when there is talk about build back better in terms of people, not money, and there is very little interest and that's what Duryog Nivaran has been actually saying that what really matters is, you know, who builds it, how the extra money reaches the poor, what is the accountability, what happens to women especially with all that finance; does it actually reach them, women, children, so and so forth; and also what is the role of actually countries learning from each other, that is India from Bangladesh, Bangladesh from Nepal, Nepal sort of south-south if you will. So that is the focus of Duryog Nivaran, and therefore we requested for a panel in the World Bank annual meeting, and they quickly granted us the panel and here we are. So I'm going to draw from this particular report that we have. I have a copy of that if people want to -- anybody wants to see that subsequently and I can also e- mail that if you would leave your name and address with me. The report is done every two years, and 2016 the report was, as I said, on build back better, lessons from South Asia and 2018 a report is coming out, which will be '19, which will be about South Asia disaster report on transboundary early warning system, so that the focus is. And Nepal and India and India and Bangladesh, of course Bhutan included. There's a lot of transboundary early warning system for floods, but also for other disasters as well. So that's what it's going to focus on. As you can see -- so let me start and as you know, South Asia is highly prone to disasters and we have learned to build resilience in South Asia, especially last 10 years, 2008 to '17, eight and a half to nine years, we looked at and so 426 events were reported and based on that the studies were made in respective countries to see that what is the nature of build back better that is taking place. And two or three things came out very clearly. One was that the build back better was build back better to the original position which meant that inequality of people's role in building back better, that is men and women, for example, not focused on child protection for example which meant that you went back to the jobs that you have lost, but not finding a job which will be even more useful in the coming years so on and so forth. So that was the background from which this particular report was put together. Build back better is a critical part of disaster recovery that has to -- there is the structural improvement, how the society is actually constructed as well as the underlying drivers of causes that lead to the risk at the onset itself. So Duryog Nivaran builds that we shouldn't be building up the society of the past, but also – but actually building society of the future retaining the good parts of the past society, but also claiming to the new areas which are fast emerging so that the people who are poor, people who are vulnerable actually benefit from that. To give you a concrete example only from today, there was a lot of discussions on social protection for example and build back better includes that we should not only rebuild the existing social protection measures for children, women, workers, but also build back better the social protection measures that we will need in the future especially. The build back better is very well defining Sendai framework, those who are aware, which was in Japan and it's called Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, SFDRR, shortly called Sendai, which has four action areas and seven guiding principles. So this report particularly addresses that. The aim of the SADR, South Asia Disaster Report, 2016 was that how the build back better recommendation of Sendai framework hold up against actual institutional resource capacity in the country in context of South Asia. So a lot of global work happens and which is important. But that's never enough to actually see what's happening on the ground, I mean, how things actually perform on the ground and that is what the South Asia Disaster Report has done. The capacity, intent and interest of the existing mechanisms and systems of recovery and reconstruction to deliver on build back better principles is also addressed in the report. And the role of capital, development agents and other interest groups in operationalizing build back better. Capital is very clear as we have seen in the recent past, what is not clear is the role of the labor or the workers in the build back better and especially if you see the build back better efforts, large number of casual labor unorganized sector, labor, many of them, 80 percent, 70 percent, 90 percent of them are women who are actually building back better, but it's always assumed that build back better is so to speak of the existing structure. And we also look at the ecology or the role of, for example, water harvesting, tree plantation for example, plantation of forestry et cetera which are not seen as infrastructure. When we talk about infrastructure, it is always seen as large bridges, roads, ports. Of course they are important, but that's not the only infrastructure we need for a good life, for a good economy. What we need is economy and ecology as well so that both work in harmony to reduce the vulnerability and that is something missing. So these are the aims of the – the approach was to draw from country experience. So we wanted to not look at the macro data because most reports on disasters look at the macro data. So we thought we would look at the micro data, what happens actually on the ground and then build it up and the reason being that there is macro data anyway available, what is not available is what actually happens on the ground because it is disaggregated and because it is all scattered, it's never put together and added. To give you an example, what happens on the ground, as far as Kerala floods are concerned, recent floods in Kerala, in India. The large number of people, large number of people actually managed their camps on the road, but the only reports that we hear about is outside agencies, government and non-government agencies helping them setup camps and actually manage it, which is less than 3 to 4 percent of the outside agency job, but because it is not reported, we believe that large number of agencies from outside helped the local people manage their camps and set up. This was an excellent example that people themselves managed their own camps with their resources, their skills and mostly local procurement of rice and other food items together. So main examples are the earthquake in Nepal in 2015, which was also very recent. Also looking at the landslide in Sri Lanka of 2014, Meeriyabedda, then Uttarakhand floods, Cyclone Phailin and Cyclone Hudhud in India, three cyclones and one flood; Cyclone Sidr and Aila in Bangladesh, and monsoon floods in Pakistan. So these were the highlights, which were included in the last 10 years trend as well. The lessons for planning and community participation is one of the things, which came out very clearly that though in 10 years several disasters has actually taken place, there was hardly any learning either from one community to another or from community to the local officials or national officials or from one community in one country where the cyclone took place to one community in another country where the same or similar cyclone took place. So that kind of lateral learning as well as vertical learning as far as disaster response, recovery and rehabilitation is concerned is very weak across South Asia, and which is where academies such as South-South Academy could be very useful for us and about which there will be more that Denis bhai will be talking about later.