In continuation with my earlier mail on NAPSIPAG’s Tenth International Conference, I’m pasting here the concept note.
Call for papers for the NAPSIPAG’s Tenth International Conference hosted by the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi 7th to 9th December 2013 on “Locked in Growth Patterns: Rethinking land, water and disasters for the post-2015 Development Agenda” Concept note: Disasters have a definite connection to developmental planning over land which includes forests, mountains, river catchments and coastal zones. Disaster mitigation and prevention ‘at-source’ strategies begins with land management. The world is rapidly moving into a direction of development in which sustainable resources of land and water are being traded for cash, creating disparities, degradation and disintegration of human prosperity. Unsustainable development beyond the carrying capacity of land and water triggers disasters which have a long term effect on development and the processes of income generation. As nature strikes back, human beings have no-one else but themselves to blame. The present conference cum workshop would look into land governance and management in a manner that the long term sustainability of natural resources, developmental gains and human well being does not get lost in disasters, and when disasters strike then there is a definite plan of action to mitigate and minimize the losses in terms of life and property. This would look into the role of governance in preventing disasters and also providing human security to reduce the risk of death and destruction. Ban Ki-moon, Secretary General of the United Nations passionately remarked, “What we do not realize is that disasters can have long-term impacts that impede development. We must look at challenges posed by disasters through a development lens as we accelerate efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and discuss post-2015 priorities.” The core concerns of this conference/workshop are; list of 6 items • Land management and infrastructural development has a direct relationship to most environmental disasters. • Sustainable human development is threatened due to increasing frequency of environmental disasters. • Knowledge based land and water management and planning can reduce many disasters at their sources. • Governance should embody a knowledge based long term agenda for land development in every country. • The focus of governance in any country should be knowledge generation, skill development and participatory management of land and local resources. • Land acquisition for any mega project should calculate costs in terms of resources which are geo-physical such as water table, topography, underground aquifers,indigenous wisdom, ecosystem damages, displacement, loss of livelihood, rehabilitation cost, genetic losses of flora and fauna list end list of 3 items and ethics of the nature of development. Compensation packages should include concerns which come as knowledge about land sharpens and deepens. • Judiciary can contribute to better land management by entertaining not just geo-physical evidences but also communitarian, symbolic and emotive evidences which lie behind human adaptability and emotional strength as a citizen of a country. • Communities need training in disaster mitigation and prevention as much as in being important stakeholders in appropriate land management. list end Increasing vulnerability of the Asia Pacific region: The Asia Pacific region is becoming increasingly vulnerable to a rising ferocity and frequency of disasters of many types, including floods, cyclones, storm surges, earthquakes,drought, hurricanes and tsunamis. Despite the warnings coming through the studies related to climate change impacts, the management of land has remained unaffected by the demands of carrying capacity, inter and intra-generational equity and justice concerns. During the past decade, on average, more than 200 million people were affected and more than 70,000 people were killed by natural disasters annually. With unsustainable changes being made in patterns of land use, catchment and coastal zones, increasing density of population and concrete structures occupying high-risk areas over mountains, migration patterns, consumer culture even in wilderness virgin ecosystem zones , the impact of disasters has increased manifold. The Statistical Yearbook for Asia and the Pacific 2011, EM-DAT: Emergency Events Database and UN Ecosystem Assessment Reports highlight the impending dangers embedded in the growth journey of today. Its high time that decision makers sincerely revisit the developmental agenda which has brought growth and prosperity at the cost of human security and sustainable development. Development over land affects water table as it affects the flow of river water, its natural direction and catchments economics. This in turn disturbs the internal balance of rocks, triggering earthquakes,floods and tsunamis. The world has been caught unawares with the magnitude of devastation that followed the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004.The cause was the earthquake at the bottom of the Indian Ocean when the Indian Plate and the Burma Plate collided to trigger a series of devastating tsunamis along the coasts of Indonesia (with Sumatra as its epicenter), Sri Lanka, India and Thailand. It was one of the deadliest natural disasters ever recorded in environmental history of this world killing 230,000 people in more than fourteen countries and inundating coastal communities with more than 30 meters high waves. The region was yet to recover from this spectre of death , destruction and decay when a series of disasters struck the region one after the other with earthquakes in Pakistan (2005), Java (2006), Sichuan in China (2008) and deadly tropical cyclones and floods in Australia(Yasi 2011, 2006),Sichuan(2006), Pakistan (2010). The world clock of development came to a halt when in 2011 the Pacific Coast of Tohoku in Japan was struck by an undersea megathrust earthquake triggering powerful tsunamis travelling upto many kilometers and shifting the Earth on its axis by estimates of between 10 cms (4”) and 25cms(10”).It was not just loss of human lives but also a complete collapse of growth, development, power stations, roads, buildings, railways and drinking water. The worst which followed was the nuclear accident in Daiichi and Daini nuclear power plants which were the symbols of economic power and prosperity. To normalize whatever could be possible the total bank led recovery cost was USD 183 billion by the Bank of japan and USD 235 billion from the World Bank. This was over and above the insured losses at USD 14.5 to USD 34.6 billion.However, disasters still did not stop as cloudburst in the upper regions of Himalayas of Uttarakhand in India washed away thousands of clueless pilgrims, visitors and villages downstream the river Ganges in June 2013 this year. Post-disaster reconstruction and rehabilitation led governance strategies:The rehabilitation is a challenge for even the best of governance systems.The process of reconstruction, uniting lost and disrupted people and families, building homes and restoring administration and citizens services is obstructed ,diverted and delayed due to the spread of diseases, epidemics such as SARS,H1N1 Influenza(Swine Flu), Malaria, Ebola heaorrhagic fever and XDR TB which continue to make life equally vulnerable even after the disasters.Countries have applied various models of reconstruction and rehabilitation on short term basis but a sustainable strategy has to move alongside and beyond the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA) and serve as the coordinating mechanism for mainstreaming disaster risk reduction into development policies, planning and programmes. As UNISDR suggests, “ A single 'blueprint' approach for National Platforms is neither possible nor desirable since disaster risk reduction is a country-specific long-term process”. General principles on how to form, run and sustain National Platforms are outlined in the UNISDR document Guidelines for National Platforms for Disaster Risk Reduction, but National Platforms essentially decide on how to organize and run themselves according to local needs.Thus disaster risk reduction strategies are community , region and country specific requiring a highly decentralized approach. Success would demand community empowerment, information systems and a participatory team oriented administration. Weber’s model of pyramidical,hierarchies bordered by departmental regulations may have to change to an administrative system which is open and constantly resonating to the ecosystem signals and community preparedness. Disaster Control administrators have a 24/7 and 365 days of work and their efficiency depends upon their ability to manage and adapt to this demand. Mitigating impact of disasters through preparedness: The Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan warned that climate change is only going to make it worse, country governance and institutions be strengthened to encounter this increasing risk to communities, economic growth and the process of development. As disasters do not respect boundaries or distinguish between incomes of growth thus common platforms of partnerships are indispensable. However, statistics from the Asia Pacific suggests that the impact of disasters is much less in high-income countries due to their better preparedness in technology for early warning systems, administrative training and institutional functioning.In Asia-Pacific high income countries, about 1 person in every 1,000 people was affected by disasters and 1 in 1 million died during the 10 years from 2001 to 2010; in low-income countries nearly 30 in 1,000 people were affected and 52 in 1 million people killed. More people in the lower-middle income group were affected than people in the low-income countries, although the mortality ratio in the lower-middle group was lower. Interrogating legal frameworks for ‘land and Ecosystem Conservation’ in Disaster Risk Reduction Strategies: Logically, healthy ecosystems help protect people from disasters which suggests that development should be habitat specific which grows in relationship to its ecosystem. Mountains cannot have high rise buildings or urbanization as it is in the plains. They cannot sustain their ecology in the midst of too much concrete, deforestation, blocked river beds or chocked streams to give space to increasing density of population and tourist settlers. Similarly embankments on rivers, coastal zone refineries of mining and oil, unplanned infrastructural growth and destruction of ecological and wilderness areas, pristine forest zones, effluent discharge over coral and mangroves regions sustaining fishing industry is a policy which invites disasters. A study of comparative law across countries in the Asia Pacific suggests that much less has come out of these conservation frameworks of environmental ministries and agencies towards increasing resilience levels and sustaining developmental gains. The Priority 4 of the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA), the first international plan to substantially reduce disaster losses by 2015, suggests “Sustainable ecosystems and environmental management” to “reduce the underlying risk factors”. This is the priority where least progress has been made so far, according to the HFA’s mid-term review. Despite its direct impact on each of the HFA’s priority areas, ecosystems are also not officially recognised as a crosscutting issue. Besides the governments, even universities are hesitant to adopt them for fear of displacing vested interests in the teaching of politics and economics of cash to ecological economics frameworks. Professor Nick Brown of Oxford University’s Department of Plant Sciences highlights that there are not enough studies in establishing links between ecosystems, resilience and DRR due to the diversity of ecosystems, geophysical conditions and hazards. Politics of each country looks for short term gains and are so locked up in current growth patterns that ecosystem based DRR approaches which have a long gestation period is generally ignored. Similarly, Professor Wadid Erian, a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that “the most effective adaptation and disaster risk reduction programmes are those that offer development benefits in the short term and reduce vulnerability in the long term”. In conclusion, the challenge for public administration in each country is to pause and look backwards and redesign the philosophy and strategies of development over land and other resources which hold life together when disasters strike. A: Papers are invited on the following themes: list of 9 items 1. Evidence based studies on the relationship of land management and disasters. 2. Policies and innovations in the management of land, rivers and coastal zones. 3. Critical analysis of ‘Country specific strategies’ in land management, disaster risk reduction and in building community resilience. 4. Administrative preparedness and political response to disasters. 5. Best Practices in land management, rehabilitation and reconstruction especially in a comparative framework. 6. Adopting technology support in disaster risk reduction and providing human security. 7. Role of Environment Impact Analysis before land acquisition for a mega project 8. Models of ‘Ecosystem regeneration’ and strengthening community resilience. 9. Role of laws and judicial responses in conservation, rehabilitation and regeneration of vulnerability areas or high risk zones. list end B: Last date for receiving abstracts: 1st September 2013 list of 4 items • Abstract should be around 500-600 words, explaining in crisp notes the following sections: a) The central theme of the paper in 50-80 words b) Hypothesis in 50 words. c) Research questions not more than two which would be studied in the paper. list end list of 2 items d) A brief baseline of literature(books, reports, narratives and government experience) on which your paper would be based upon in 150 -200 words. e) Methodology and theoretical foundations in 150 words list end C: Authors of selected abstracts would be informed by the 15th September 2013 to write a paper with suggested revisions if any. D: Last date for receiving papers: 1st November 2013 @ email: [email protected] Country Coordinator: Dr. Sylvia Yambem Conference Coordinator: Ajay Arora and Ms. Manika Kamthan Secretariat Research Group: Dr. Suman Sharma, Prof. Mondira Dutta, Prof. Sachidanand Sinha, Prof. Shashi Prabha Kumar, Prof. Vaishna Narang, Prof. B.N.Chattoraj(NICFS), Dr. Girish Kumar (IIPA), Dr. Milap Punia, Mr. Chetan Sharma(Datamation Foundation),Dr. Rajkumar Prasad(Commonwealth e- Governance) and Dr. Manveen Kaur (HIPA). Student Research Group: Binod, Adnan, Nishu -- Ajay Arora PHD Research Scholar centre for the study of law and governance JNU, new delhi India Mail to: [email protected] skype ID: speakajay Register at the dedicated AccessIndia list for discussing accessibility of mobile phones / Tabs on: http://mail.accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/mobile.accessindia_accessindia.org.in Search for old postings at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ To unsubscribe send a message to [email protected] with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in Disclaimer: 1. Contents of the mails, factual, or otherwise, reflect the thinking of the person sending the mail and AI in no way relates itself to its veracity; 2. AI cannot be held liable for any commission/omission based on the mails sent through this mailing list..
