Disaster Prevention, Disaster Preparedness and Local Community Resilience Within the Context of Disaster Risk Management in Cameroon
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Disaster prevention, disaster preparedness and local community resilience within the context of disaster risk management in Cameroon Festus Tongwa Aka, Gaston Wung Buh, Wilson Yatoh Fantong, Issa, Isabella Tem Zouh, Serges Laurent Bopda Djomou, Richard Tanwi Ghogomu, et al. Natural Hazards Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards ISSN 0921-030X Nat Hazards DOI 10.1007/s11069-016-2674-5 1 23 Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Science +Business Media Dordrecht. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be self- archived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. 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The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com”. 1 23 Author's personal copy Nat Hazards DOI 10.1007/s11069-016-2674-5 ORIGINAL PAPER Disaster prevention, disaster preparedness and local community resilience within the context of disaster risk management in Cameroon 1,2 2 Festus Tongwa Aka • Gaston Wung Buh • 1 1 3 Wilson Yatoh Fantong • Issa • Isabella Tem Zouh • 1 4 Serges Laurent Bopda Djomou • Richard Tanwi Ghogomu • 5 6 7 Terry Gibson • Mary-Ann Marmol del • Luc Nkamdjou Sigha • 8 9 10 Takeshi Ohba • Minoru Kusakabe • Yutaka Yoshida • 1 1 Gregory Tanyileke • Joseph Metuk Nnange • Joseph Victor Hell1 Received: 15 May 2015 / Accepted: 2 November 2016 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016 Abstract Cameroon was one of the 57 countries that participated in the Global Network of Civil Society Organizations for Disaster Reduction (GNDR) Views from the Frontline (VFL) 2013 project on everyday disasters, community resilience and disaster preparedness. Working with 6 other civil society organizations, Geotechnology, Environmental Assessment and Disaster Risk Reduction administered 400 questionnaires to frontliners in 7 administrative regions of the country on 14 disaster indicators that assessed the under- lying causes of disasters and the level of preparedness and resilience of the communities. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s11069-016-2674-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. & Festus Tongwa Aka [email protected] 1 Institute of Geological and Mining Research (IRGM) Ministry of Scientific Research and Innovation (MINRESI), P.O. Box 4110, Yaounde´, Cameroon 2 Geotechnology, Environmental Assessment and Disaster Risk Reduction (GEADIRR), P.O. Box 437, Limbe, Cameroon 3 Ministry of Environment and Nature Protection, Yaounde´, Cameroon 4 Geo-Environmental Management and Disaster Awareness (GEMDA), P.O. Box 7003, Yaounde´, Cameroon 5 Global Network of Civil Society Organizations for Disaster Reduction, 8 Waldegrave Road, Teddington, London TW11 8HT, UK 6 Department of Geology and Soil Science, Ghent University, Krijgslaan 281/S8, 9000 Ghent, Belgium 7 International Commission of Congo-Oubangui-Sangha Basin (CICOS), Building Kilou, 24 Av. Wagenia, Kinshasa/Gombo, Democratic Republic of Congo 8 Department of Chemistry, School of Science, Tokai University, 4-1-1 Kitakaname, Hiratsuka, Kanagawa 259-1292, Japan 123 Author's personal copy Nat Hazards Scores from the 89% of informants who responded show that Cameroon occupied the 43rd position globally, was 15th out of the 23 African countries, and was 7th out of the 9 West African countries surveyed. Cameroon average scores for all 14 indicators were lower (poorer) than the West African average, suggesting that a lot more effort is needed in managing disaster risks in the country, i.e., reducing vulnerabilities and increasing pre- paredness and resilience. At the national level, the Center and Adamaoua Regions recorded the lowest scores of the survey. Above-average scores recorded for some indicators in the Southwest, Northwest and Far North Regions are interpreted to be due to disaster pre- vention activities like monitoring via early warning systems, resilience building and out- reach exercises carried out for disasters like landslides, floods, gas explosions from lakes, and volcanic eruptions, in these areas. Cameroon presently has many laws relating to disaster risk management matters, but an analysis of how the laws are applied shows that the expected results have not been attained, mainly because of over-centralization and a reactive, rather than a proactive approach to disaster risk management. Given her current disaster risk profile, Cameroon has to increase research, better manage, and make disaster risks a central tenet in her development project decision-making, if the goal earmarked in her development vision to become a newly industrialized country by 2035 has to be realized. We propose the creation of an autonomous statutory National Disaster Risk Management Agency which will have a local community-driven bottom-top approach to disaster risk management, and disseminate appropriately tailored disaster risk information to promote a proactive community-based resilience and disaster prevention framework. This will fulfill the post-2015 Sendai framework priority of action No. 2 (strengthening disaster risk governance to manage disaster risk) and appropriately prepare Cameroon to face the challenges of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Keywords Hyogo Framework of Action (HFA) Á Disaster risk reduction Á Views from the Frontline (VFL) 2013 Á GEADIRR Á Cameroon national scores Á Department of Civil Protection (DPC) Á National Disaster Risk Management Agency (NADRIMA) 1 Introduction Of the 8 Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets, eradicating extreme poverty and hunger (MDG target No 1) and ensuring environmental sustainability (MDG target No 7) are important entry points for disaster risk reduction because extreme poverty cannot be eradicated, and sustainable development cannot be attained unless disaster risk reduction is mainstreamed into development policies, plans and implementation. Disasters undermine the results of development and impoverish the community and the state (SFA 2015). Cameroon was among the 168 countries that signed the Hyogo Framework of Action (HFA) in 2005, committing to take action within 10 years (up to 2015) to reduce human and socioeconomic disaster losses as a means to attaining the MDGs. Cameroon also signed, as one of the 187 countries, the Sendai framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 (MINATD 2015). The HFA emphasized that disaster risk reduction is central to development policy and a concern of multidisciplinary knowledge about humanity and the 9 Department of Biology and Environmental Chemistry, University of Toyama, 3190 Gofuku, Toyama-shi 980-8555, Japan 10 Yoshida Consulting Engineering Office, 3-46-10,Tsukigaoka, Morioka, Iwate-ken 020-0121, Japan 123 Author's personal copy Nat Hazards environment. From the civil society perspective, the Global Network of Civil Society Organizations for Disaster Reduction (GNDR) monitored national, regional and global progress toward attainment of the five ‘priorities for action’ of the HFA that were: (1) prioritizing disaster risk reduction by providing high-profile leadership, establishing rele- vant policies and programs, and allocating resources to implement them; (2) identifying, assessing and monitoring disaster risks and improving early warning systems; (3) creating awareness at all levels of society about risks and providing information about how to reduce them; (4) reducing social, economic and environmental vulnerabilities and those related to land use through improved development planning and post-disaster recon- struction by all sectors; and (5) ‘strengthening disaster preparedness for effective response at all levels’ (UNISDR 2005, p6). The GNDR carried out the monitoring from a bottom-up perspective via a program called Views from the Frontline (VFL), the main goal of which was to support effective frontline implementation of the HFA to build the resilience of vulnerable people and communities at risk to disasters. Views from the Frontline imple- mented 3 projects to measure the level of progress in the implementation of HFA. The first VFL project in 2009 (‘clouds but little rain…’) was carried out in 48 countries in Africa, Asia and the Americas, by 400 Civil Society Organizations (CSOs). It sampled the views of 7000 respondents and provided proof that even though some governments had made progress (4 years after the start of HFA) in their national policies and legislations in establishing disaster risk reduction policies, these had yet to be translated into changes in the livelihoods of their people on the frontlines (VFL 2009). The second survey in 2011 (‘if we do not join hands…’) was on the role of local governance on disaster risk reduction, i.e., the significance of state and non-state actors working together to ensure the safety and well-being of their communities. It was carried out by 511 civil society organizations in 69 countries and had 20,290 respondents with 57 video case studies (including one from Limbe, Cameroon). Using 21 local risk governance indicators, VFL (2011) found that significant barriers to the implementation of plans and