2019 Cyclones Idai and Kenneth | Published 15 March 2020

Learning from Cyclone Idai and to Inform Long-term Disaster Risk Reduction Programming in Mozambique

Damages from Cyclone Idai in Mozambique © IFRC

Introduction This brief is based on a Zurich Flood Resilience The impacts of Cyclones Idai and Kenneth Alliance Post Event Review Capability (PERC) highlighted the need for far greater investment in study analyzing the 2019 Cyclone Idai and Cyclone Kenneth impacts in Mozambique. This Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) in Mozambique. In brief presents a series of resilience lessons from March and April of 2019, the two cyclones made Cyclone Idai and Cyclone Kenneth based on key landfall in central and northern Mozambique causing informant interviews and background research, widespread destruction, damage, and loss of life and highlights opportunities to inform long-term from strong winds, rainfall, and ensuing flooding. Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) programming in Cyclone Idai, a category 2 cyclone when it made Mozambique. This product is accompanied by landfall, was the deadliest storm ever to hit several other similar break out products as well as a longer report. An electronic copy of this brief and the largest humanitarian disaster of 2019, and other materials from the study are available at: causing 1,300 deaths across southeastern Africa1. www.i-s-e-t.org/perc-cyclone-idai-2019. Additional Cyclone Kenneth, which made landfall a month information about the PERC can be found at www. later as a category 4 cyclone with wind gusts of floodresilience.net/perc and additional information about flood resilience at www.floodresilience.net*

*We define (disaster) resilience as the ability of a system, community, or society to pursue its social, ecological, 1 Aon. (2019). Weather, Climate & Catastrophe Insight 2019 and economic development and growth objectives, Annual Report. https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/ while managing its (disaster) risk over time, in a files/resources/20200122-if-natcat2020.pdf mutually reinforcing way, outlining the multi-faceted and interdisciplinary approach to resilience.

1 Learning from Cyclone Idai and Cyclone Kenneth to Inform Long-term Disaster Risk Reduction Programming in Mozambique1 2019 Cyclones Idai and Kenneth | Mozambique Published 15 March 2020

FIGURE 1 The impacts of Cyclone Idai and Cyclone Kenneth in Mozambique

Mozambique (1) 2019 pril ETH 45 18,000 374,000 A KENN ONE deaths displaced impacted YCL L C ICA OP TR (2) $ $100 million damages $

(3) I 603 400,000 1.8 million A ID deaths displaced impacted NE CLO AL CY (4) TROPIC 019 ch 2 Mar 700,000 ha $ $773 million agricultural land impacted damages

Zimbabwe (5) Mozambique $ $258 million 2,165 km2 (6) in crops destroyed inundated area

Note: (1) OCHA. (2019). Cyclones Idai and Kenneth. https://www.unocha.org/southern-and-eastern-africa-rosea/cyclones-idai-and-kenneth (2) Aon. (2019). Weather, Climate & Catastrophe Insight 2019 Annual Report. https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/20200122-if-natcat2020.pdf (3) Government of Mozambique. (May 2019). Mozambique Cyclone Idai Post Disaster Needs Assessment. (4) World Vision. (2019). 2019 Cyclone Idai: Facts, FAQs, and how to help. https://www.worldvision.org/disaster-relief-news-stories/2019-cyclone-idai-facts (5) Gulland, Anne. (7 August 2019). Floods and drought: the challenges facing Mozambique’s farmers after cyclone Idai. The Telegraph. https://www.telegraph. co.uk/global-health/climate-and-people/floods-drought-challenges-facing--farmers-cyclone/ (6) Institute for Training and Research. (20 March 2019). UNOSAT MOZAMBIQUE Imagery analysis: 19 and 20 March 2019. https:// reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/UNOSAT_A3_Natural_Portrait_TC20190312MOZ_SofalaProvince_20190320.pdf

220 km/h, was the strongest cyclone to ever make rapidly intensified and then returned to land as landfall in Africa2. Cyclone Idai, making landfall near the port city of Beira on March 15. Wind speeds of 180 km/h Tropical Depression 11, the precursor to Cyclone tore roofs off homes and buildings and pushed Idai, brought heavy rains to Mozambique, causing a of up to 6 meters3 into low-lying flooding in the Zambezi Valley (Tete and Zambezia residential and agricultural areas. Over the next Provinces) in early March. The storm however, didn’t several days, Idai moved inland and into , stop there. Following an unusual path, it moved back out into the Mozambique Channel, where it 3 Idai’s landfall was around the same time as high tide, though fortunately, it was not a new or full moon where 2 Government of Mozambique. (May 2019). Mozambique tides are at their highest. The Earth Observatory. (2019). Cyclone Idai Post Disaster Needs Assessment. Devastation in Mozambique.

2 Learning from Cyclone Idai and Cyclone Kenneth to Inform Long-term Disaster Risk Reduction Programming in Mozambique2 2019 Cyclones Idai and Kenneth | Mozambique Published 15 March 2020 where it released torrential rains that caused Recommendations for downstream rivers in Manica and Sofala provinces in Strengthening Disaster Risk Mozambique to overflow forming an ‘inland ocean.’ While windspeed and landfall were accurately Reduction in Mozambique forecasted and warnings disseminated several Though the breadth and depth of the impacts days ahead of the storm, there was very limited from Cyclones Idai and Kenneth were severe, warning about the floods. As a result, the impacts there were clear successes that prevented even to communities from floodwaters were severe, with worse devastation. The forecasting of the cyclones sudden flooding forcing people into trees and onto themselves was largely accurate, in part due to rooftops to escape floodwaters. cross-country and international collaboration in forecasting. Additionally, interviewees relayed that On April 25, Cyclone Kenneth made landfall in the since the establishment of the National Institute northern province of Cabo Delgado, hitting an area of Disaster Management (Instituto Nacional de already suffering from protracted conflict. While Gestão de Calamidades, INGC) in 1999, the INGC’s Kenneth weakened as it moved inland, the storm collaboration with key governmental agencies and brought high winds, storm surge, heavy rains, and humanitarian and non-governmental organizations flooding that damaged or destroyed homes, caused (NGOs) has led to clear delineation and knowledge power outages, and damaged key transportation of roles and responsibilities, which has facilitated routes and bridges across the province. preparing for and immediately responding to The government and their partners have focused on disasters. There were also clear successes in water, development and disaster response with significant sanitation, and hygiene (WASH). The city of Beira, successes. However, in the face of growing climate for example, quickly got their water treatment and risk, DRR is critical for safeguarding those wins by distribution system running again following Cyclone assuring they aren’t lost to the next extreme event. Idai, and strong pre-disaster WASH programming in rural areas contributed to limiting the spread of disease.

Nonetheless, interviews and background research The recent southeastern Africa droughts for this study revealed several key points that and the intensity and destructiveness should be addressed to limit similar impacts and “of cyclones Idai and Kenneth are destruction in future events. representative of the types of increasing • Improve end-to-end early warning systems. weather challenges expected with While cyclone forecasting was accurate, climate change. Shifting rainfall patterns, dissemination of early warning messaging variable temperatures, sea level rise, the to the community level was inadequate in intensification of extreme events, and the regards to comprehension and uptake for Idai. emergence of new weather hazards in People received warnings, but failed to realize places that were previously safe are the the intensity of winds they would experience expected consequences of climate change. and the impact those winds would have, and These impacts are likely to lead to an therefore failed (or were lacking the ability) to take appropriate preventative actions. increase in disaster risk, food insecurity and Early warning regarding flooding, according water shortages, further exacerbating pre- to community residents, was practically non- existing vulnerabilities.

3 Learning from Cyclone Idai and Cyclone Kenneth to Inform Long-term Disaster Risk Reduction Programming in Mozambique3 2019 Cyclones Idai and Kenneth | Mozambique Published 15 March 2020

Damages from Cyclone Kenneth in Mozambique © IFRC

existent. Lack of preventative action was in • Protect successes in WASH programs by part due to the extreme nature and scale of the incorporating DRR thinking in their siting and events; Idai’s windspeeds and the rainfall were construction. Boreholes, wells, and sanitation record-breaking. Nonetheless, such events are systems were inundated across the Idai impact being intensified by climate change and are area, leading to a outbreak that was likely to occur again. The far more proactive suppressed only through rapid humanitarian evacuation of 30,000 residents in advance of mobilization and heavy investment in Kenneth’s landfall shows the alacrity with which emergency response. Hand pumps were also the government and their partners are willing damaged compromising people’s access to to learn and adapt to their new reality. clean water.

• Identify safe evacuation routes and shelters • Support risk-informed livelihood development. in communities, and where to construct Idai floodwaters inundated acres of agricultural them if none exist. Thousands of people were fields, ruining harvests and leaving subsistence trapped by floodwaters with no knowledge of, farmers facing dire food shortages. There is or access to, safe locations to evacuate to. At a critical need in Mozambique and regionally the same time, many buildings that did serve for diversification of income strategies, as inadvertent shelters lost roofs from intense improvement in farming techniques, winds. Given the less resistant construction diversification of crops, and training in creating standards and building materials available to higher value end products so that residents poorer residents in Mozambique, identifying have a broader range of options and strategies existing resistant shelters and reinforcing, to build their own resilience. equipping, or constructing new emergency • Support the localization of knowledge, shelters if none exist, is critical. technical skills, capacities, and equipment

4 Learning from Cyclone Idai and Cyclone Kenneth to Inform Long-term Disaster Risk Reduction Programming in Mozambique4 2019 Cyclones Idai and Kenneth | Mozambique Published 15 March 2020

and its maintenance to support disaster or programs, to reduce harm from future events. In preparedness, response, and recovery. Many particular, they highlight the need for increased ex- disaster response volunteers reported lacking ante and resilience building actions. Unfortunately, access to functioning boats and the protective current funding trends tend to favor programs equipment they needed to respond safely. that focus largely on short-term and response Where boats and other minimal equipment was versus programs that focus on longer-term DRR present prior to the Idai floods, they were either initiatives, even though the global community has inappropriate to the scenario (no engine or not acknowledged a need to shift these practices. For strong enough), or not maintained well enough example, in spite of recent global commitment to perform its task. to increase funding and focus on recovery and resilience within humanitarian responses, the • Make sure investment of time and money in Mozambique Humanitarian Response Plan has recovery is used to maximum benefit. Post- identified far greater need and raised far more Idai, some people are adapting their homes money for the logistics and WASH sectors than for to be more resistant to the next cyclone by early recovery and resilience. Funding needs for improving the quality of sand in foundations logistics and WASH have been identified as US$15.3 or roof fixtures. Many others, however, are million and US$34 million respectively, and slightly rebuilding in the same way as before, putting over 50% of that money has been raised. In contrast, their household at risk again from the impacts not only have resilience and early recovery needs of winds and rain. The difference in response is been assessed at only US$8.3 million, a mere 4.3% often not a lack of resources, but simply a lack of that total has been raised4. of knowledge. Households are unaware there are locally accessible and affordable materials they could utilize to bolster the resistance of Global Implications for Disaster their homes. Where institutional reconstruction Risk Reduction Efforts programs are being discussed, the release Integrating DRR and resilience building efforts into of funds lags behind the time realities on the existing development programming can help to ground. Needing housing now, people are ensure that development investments aren’t lost investing their own funds and acting, but when the next extreme event happens. Failing to rebuilding to less resistant standards. The do so will support the currently increasing trend delays in reconstruction programs means in disaster losses. However, increasing DRR and opportunities for reconstructing to more resilience efforts will require donors to commit to resistant standards are being lost. longer-term funding that supports lasting change • Identify and work with difficult to reach and reduces underlying vulnerabilities. communities in remote areas prior to, during, Further, both humanitarian and development and following a disaster to increase critical donors need to begin collaborating on how they systems access. This need was particularly fund response and programming. Rather than evident in Buzi district, where the hospital was seeing humanitarian response and development damaged and floods washed out the main as separate domains, the global community must road to Beira, compromising people’s access to recognize that humanitarian response is required external markets and health care.

These challenges highlight areas that can be 4 UNOCHA. (2019). Mozambique Humanitarian Response strengthened now, via specific interventions and/ Plan 2019. https://fts.unocha.org/appeals/761/clus- ters?order=coverage&sort=desc

5 Learning from Cyclone Idai and Cyclone Kenneth to Inform Long-term Disaster Risk Reduction Programming in Mozambique5 2019 Cyclones Idai and Kenneth | Mozambique Published 15 March 2020

in areas where development and DRR have been be increasingly balanced with longer-term insufficient and where, consequently, delivering aid climate-smart risk reduction, preparedness, alone will be a never-ending effort. Stakeholders and development programming. An integral must begin to think creatively about where part of humanitarian response should thus development and DRR can be integrated into or include not only supporting people for a efficiently sequenced with humanitarian response, period of time post-disaster but also efforts and donors should commit to and follow through to mitigate the issues that contributed to an on funding both. While ultimately, this may mean event becoming a disaster in the first place. spending more upfront, the outcomes over the This includes building back better, adaptation, longer term should reduce the need for future and reducing underlying risk. For example, one investment. opportunity to address emergency needs in a way that raises communities to a better place This PERC study highlights several avenues than they started is to train people in impacted for strengthening DRR in Mozambique and communities in psycho-social support as some for integrating a stronger DRR element into organizations did following the cyclones. This humanitarian response to begin resolving underlying allows community members to support one chronic vulnerabilities: another in recovery, on the timeframe they • Donors should base aid on need, and program need, rather than be dependent on external durations on outcomes. Current humanitarian help. In turn, this helps move community response funding remains too focused on members from being the victim to being part of timelines instead of centering on outcomes the solution, and reduces post-traumatic stress and needs such as returning households to that if left unaddressed can push individuals acceptable levels of food security or permanent further into vulnerability. housing. Regardless of the need, all too often • Use a systems-thinking approach to donor focus and funding moves to other humanitarian relief and DRR. Humanitarian disasters and other priorities. Due to time responders, governments, and development constrained funding, interviewees reported that practitioners should work together to many humanitarian organizations began pulling address underlying disaster risk, poverty, and out of Mozambique, regardless of communities’ inequality through a coherent, comprehensive needs, towards the end of 2019. This is leaving portfolio of sectoral investments combined communities in tenuous positions that may well with climate change action and disaster risk result in them needing humanitarian aid again reduction. Humanitarian aid should not be in the next few years. thought of as separate from this, but instead • Make DRR an integral part of humanitarian as an opportunity to temporarily increase response planning and funding. Particularly the available focus and funding. By thinking as climate change contributes to the critically in advance about how humanitarian intensification of existing hazards and the response in a given country or area could emergence of new ones, focusing solely be integrated with ongoing efforts around on responding to disasters will result in development, risk reduction, and climate humanitarian actors and governments falling change adaptation (CCA), stakeholders will be ever further behind. Responding to ongoing better positioned to respond in an emergency and pressing humanitarian needs should in ways that leverage co-benefits from disaster response.

6 Learning from Cyclone Idai and Cyclone Kenneth to Inform Long-term Disaster Risk Reduction Programming in Mozambique6 2019 Cyclones Idai and Kenneth | Mozambique Published 15 March 2020

Damages in Mozambique © IFRC

• Increase spaces for community participation • Actively engage with and provide space and capacity building. Community participation for local leadership. Most humanitarian is critically important for efficiently and organizations that responded post-Idai did not effectively guiding public investment priorities. incorporate local leadership in key decision- This is a place where the Mozambique making processes. For example, in many of government, donors, and NGOs are focused, the humanitarian coordination meetings, there but findings from this study indicate further were no local (Mozambican) participants. This effort is still needed. Community members led to the response being primarily driven by are best positioned to identify and manage foreigners who had limited understanding of their needs, risks, and the resources or the local context. After a short engagement, access needed to enable their development experts often leave or change, leaving behind and growth. Too often, governments invest weak systems to carry on the recovery work. significant resources in projects or services Local representation should be proactively that fail to measurably improve the lives of engaged early on in humanitarian responses to their citizens simply because they failed to maintain the impact of response beyond the fully understand the needs of those citizens. initial engagement. Increasing the engagement and involvement • Interventions and investments must be risk- of communities in planning processes is the informed, evidence based, and tailored to fastest way forward. The Post-Cyclone Idai local circumstances. In many areas in both Reconstruction Office (GREPOC), for example, Mozambique and around the globe, high is working with communities as they develop disaster risk is compounded by high levels of resistant housing typologies to ensure that the poverty and inequality. It is always important homes they construct fit local needs.

7 Learning from Cyclone Idai and Cyclone Kenneth to Inform Long-term Disaster Risk Reduction Programming in Mozambique7 2019 Cyclones Idai and Kenneth | Mozambique Published 15 March 2020

to tailor interventions to local contexts, but it resilience and reduce disaster risk. This study found is particularly important in highly vulnerable clear opportunity for this change across multiple areas and for highly vulnerable populations. areas including early warning, resistant housing, Interventions that work for the general sheltering, localization efforts, WASH programming, population may not work for the poor, near- etc. Vitally, this calls on donors to shift their poor, and most vulnerable groups. Indeed, practices to using a systems-thinking approach, interventions will have to be specifically basing aid on need and program durations on tailored for each of these different groups to outcomes, and making DRR an integral part of accommodate significantly different needs, humanitarian response planning and funding. capacities, available resources, and access. Now is the time to act. Failing to act will leave Conclusion communities around the world at the mercy of climate change and its attendant increase in the The landfalls of Tropical Cyclones Idai and Kenneth frequency and severity of disasters, and will leave in Mozambique impacted a country already communities and their countries incrementally more suffering from drought, food insecurity, conflicts, vulnerable to hazards and shocks. This in turn will the lingering effects of a debt crisis, and ongoing result in governments and donors continuing to socioeconomic vulnerabilities. These underlying provide humanitarian aid year after year, event after challenges amplified the storms’ impacts and event. Instead, humanitarian actors need to seize underscore the urgency with which the global the opportunity to stabilize communities during community needs to move beyond business the response phase while also building resilient as usual. Instead of continuing to focus solely societies that can stand on their own in the face of on ex-post actions, stakeholders must instead imminent changes. dramatically increase our ex-ante efforts to build

FOR MORE INFORMATION PERC TEAM CONTRIBUTORS

IFRC Mozambique ISET-International Leon Prop [email protected] Karen MacClune & Rachel Norton

Rui Oliveira [email protected] Zurich Insurance Company Ltd Michael Szoenyi IFRC Geneva Francisco Ianni [email protected] IFRC Felicitas Ledergerber & Francisco Ianni IFRC Nairobi Phoebe Wafubwa Shikuku [email protected]

The Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance PERC provides research and independent review of large flood events. It seeks to answer questions related to aspects of flood resilience, flood risk management, and catastrophe intervention. It looks at what has worked well (identifying best practice) and opportunities for further improvements. Prepared by the Institute for Social and Environmental Transition – International (ISET), together with other members of the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance - the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and Zurich Insurance Company Ltd. - and in collaboration with the Mozambique Red Cross (CVM) and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), this publication is intended solely for informational purposes. All information has been compiled from reliable and credible sources; however, the opinions expressed are those of the authors. — March 2020

8 Learning from Cyclone Idai and Cyclone Kenneth to Inform Long-term Disaster Risk Reduction Programming in Mozambique8