(Dr. Liette Vasseur, UNESCO Chair in
Community Sustainability: from Local to Global
Brock University)
Disaster risk reduction includes diverse
practices that aim to reduce impacts on social-ecological systems. These
practices are not only linked to reducing the risks of natural hazards
occurring but they also focus on planning and acting on social and ecological
systems in order for societies to withstand hazards. The current unsustainable
planning and development in many systems have led to degraded ecosystems that
have increased vulnerabilities of communities across the world. At stated in
the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment report (2005, p. 46): “Changes
to ecosystems have contributed to a significant rise in the number of floods
and major wild fires on all continents since the 1940s”. Canada is no exception. Developed and
developing countries are all vulnerable when ecosystems are too degraded to
contribute to protection against natural disasters.
It is increasingly recognized that the
protection of natural ecosystems with appropriate ecosystem-based management
can greatly contribute to reducing disaster risks. Indeed, the 2009 and 2011
Global Assessment Reports on Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) state that one of the
major drivers of risk is the degradation of natural ecosystems. In their
reports and furthermore in the IPCC Special Report on Extreme Events (IPCC 2012),
they call for enhancing protection of natural ecosystems to improve ecosystems
regulating services.
In a coupled human-environment system,
concepts of vulnerability, resilience, and adaptation are closely linked to how
the ecosystem is working in terms of functions and services. This is also true
for DRR where healthy ecosystems can improve the capacity of a community to
respond and recover from a disaster in a short period of time (Zhou et al.
2010). What it implies is that a system where resilience is improved and
vulnerability reduced, communities are also more resilient to disasters.
The International Union for Conservation
of Nature (IUCN) has been promoting the use of ecosystem-based DRR (Eco-DRR) and
this approach can be coupled with ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA). Both
approaches have been useful to provide increased sustainable ecosystem services
through the use of appropriate ecosystem management. Such strategies have been
the promotion of protected areas (from national parks to small urban parks) to
help reduce risks. Both Eco-DRR and EbA
have been shown to reduce vulnerability of communities and enhance resilience
(Colls et al. 2009). Japan, for example, has learned from the 2011 earthquake
and tsunami by initiating the Sanriku Fukko Reconstruction Park where existing
national parks along the Pacific coast where the tsunami occurred are being
linked (Ministry of Environment, Japan 2014) as a strategy to protect for
future similar events.
Many examples can be found where
protection of natural ecosystems has been effective Eco-DRR and EbA. In
Southern Ontario, projections are the droughts may become more frequent. A
combined approach to this natural disaster and an adaptation to conditions that
farmers will have to increasingly experience has been the restoration of
pasture land into tall grass prairies. The Alternative Land Use Services (ALUS) is a group that has been
promoting such a strategy. It is a community-based, farmer-delivered program
that enhances ecosystem services that in turn ensures clean water, erosion, and
flood control among others. Such approaches demonstrate the need for
communities to better understand their natural ecosystems and define which
ecosystem management strategies can contribute to Eco-DRR and EbA. They are
generally less costly than engineered solutions and more sustainable in the
long term.
References
Colls, N. Ash, and N. Ikkala (2009)
Ecosystem-based Adaptation: a natural response to climate change. Gland,
Switzerland: IUCN. 16 pp.
IPCC (2012) Managing the Risks of
Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation. A
Special Report of Working Groups I and II of the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change [Field, C., Barros, V., Stocker T., Qin, D., Dokken, D., Ebi, K.
Mastrandrea, M., Mach, K., Plattner G-K., Allen, S., Tignor, M and Midgley, P
(eds)], Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, and New York, 582 pp.
Millenium Ecosystem Assessment. (2005)
Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Synthesis. Island Press, Washington DC. 155
pp.
Ministry of Environment, Japan
(2014)
http://www.iucn.org/knowledge/focus/asiaparkscongress/?13969/
New-park-rises-from-the-ashes-of-the-Great-Eastern-Japan-Earthquake-and-tsunami
UNISDR (2009) – Global Assessment Report
on Disaster Risk Reduction. Geneva, Switzerland: United Nations International
Strategy for Disaster Reduction. http://www.preventionweb.net/english/hyogo/gar/report/index.php?id=9413
UNISDR (2011) - Global Assessment Report
on Disaster Risk Reduction. Geneva, Switzerland: United Nations International
Strategy for Disaster Reduction. http://www.preventionweb.net/english/hyogo/gar/2011/en/home/index.html
Zhou H, Wang J, Wan J et al (2010)
Resilience to natural hazards: a geographic perspective. Nat Hazards 53: 21–41.
This blog post has been written by Dr. Liette Vasseur, who holds the UNESCO Chair in Community Sustainability: from Local to Global at Brock University.
Dr. Liette Vasseur is a panelist at CatIQ’s Canadian Catastrophe Conference (C4 2017) on the Societal Impacts session during the conference.
