Japan
Here’s an interesting point to consider: Although Japan’s earthquake last week was a whopping two magnitudes larger than Haiti’s (approximately 100 times more intense), there were very few injuries or deaths reported in the capital city or anywhere else affected by flood waters. Thanks to strict building codes, land use regulations, and enforcement, Japan was able to keep the death toll down to just a fraction of the casualties from Haiti’s quake last year.
Poor countries simply can’t afford to develop and enforce the kind of complex regulations — like building earthquake-proof buildings — that were set by Japan’s government, and because enforcement agents (when they do exist in poor countries) are paid so little, they are particularly prone to corruption.
Charles Kenny from the Center for Global Development argues that because earthquakes are rare and unpredictable, retrofitting existing buildings and investing in expensive construction techniques might not actually be money well spent in places where preventable disease and malnutrition kill widely and reliably. He points out in a piece for Foreign Policy magazine that there are “a range of interventions that cost less than $2 per healthy year of life saved in the developing world,” meanwhile the costs of retrofitting public buildings in Istanbul was estimated to be around $280,000 per building.
However, early warning systems (EWS) play a huge role in alerting residents to evacuate — but countries have been slow to understand its value…or pass the message along. Although EWS wasn’t much help in Japan’s case (water was rushing “faster than a jet plane” toward its shores), it could have helped save the lives of more than 225,000 people from 14 countries during the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami.
As a result of the 2004 disaster, UNESCO set up a global tsunami program to help assess tsunami risk and make sure that tsunami-prone coastal communities are prepared. Unfortunately, the program hasn’t made much headway, and UNESCO’s funding is at risk of being cut by government agencies like the UK’s DfID.
More broadly, efforts to reduce disaster risk have been estimated by the World Bank to return 7 to 1 on investment, meaning that for each dollar invested in emergency preparedness, building codes or resilience building in disaster-prone areas, $7 in emergency response is saved.
Disasters can be traumatic and deadly, as can preventable disease. But at least we know that we can spare lives with better planning, strict guidelines and enforcement for construction in earthquake zones, investment in early warning systems, and efforts to bring adequate health systems, vaccines and nutrition to poor countries. As G.I. Joe used to tell us, knowing is half the battle. The other half, for poor countries, seems to be a serious lack of funding…
US search and rescue teams assist in aid efforts to Japan.
On Friday, Japan experienced the most devastating earthquake to ever hit the country, topping the Richter scale at 8.9. Soon after, a massive tsunami struck as a result of the quake, ravaging cities and farmland in northern Japan and even setting off warnings on the west coasts of the US and South America. According to the New York Times, officials have stated that the death toll for one Japanese seaside town alone has reached well over 10,000 people.
As Japan finds itself scrambling with a rescue effort, it now has a nuclear disaster to add to the list: six reactors have faced serious cooling problems, two of which have suffered partial meltdowns and are now dealing with explosions and leaks of radioactive gas.
Humanitarian organizations are currently in the process of reaching out and bringing relief to those affected in Japan, as countless are left without food, water, shelter and medical assistance while searching for missing loved ones.
Many of our partners have responded to the crises in Japan and affected areas. Take a look at some of their efforts in terms of providing shelter and supplies and assisting in search and rescue missions.
Saddleback Church: Saddleback Church’s Peace Relief initiative is a ministry of men and women who have been trained in disaster relief and chaplaincy. They rally small groups to engage local churches as relief centers, link with public and private partners to help provide various relief services, include physical, emotional and spiritual support, empower survivors and fund what’s overlooked.
Save the Children: Save the Children has sent emergency response teams to assess the needs of children and their families in the hardest hit areas between Miyagi Prefecture and Tokyo in Japan. The teams are within 80 miles of the nuclear reactor at Fukushima, where there has been an explosion. More than 170,000 people have been evacuated, and Save the Children is currently establishing evacuation centers in the area and along the tsunami-affected coast, where they will see that children’s needs are met while parents register for help and assistance.
International Medical Corps: An International Medical Corps emergency response team is on the ground in Japan and is assessing post-disaster conditions and prepping critical supplies for delivery to the earthquake zone. Their focus will be on affected communities that have not yet been reached. They will also offer logistical support as needed to local authorities.
American Red Cross: The American Red Cross provided shelter for those forced to evacuate in California, Oregon and Washington. On Sunday, the American Red Cross deployed a disaster management expert to Japan for a week-long mission, where she will work with the Japanese Red Cross (who dispatched 62 response teams within the first 24 hours and have housed more than 300,000 evacuated people) in an effort to best bring relief to affected communities.
USAID: USAID has deployed their Urban Search and Rescue teams to assist in the rescue effort in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami. The teams are comprised of 150 personnel and 12 canines trained to detect live victims, and arrived yesterday morning in Misawa, Japan, where they immediately began the search along Japanese and international search and rescue teams. USAID’s Disaster Assistance Response Team is also in Japan and working to coordinate the overall US Government response effort.
We are hopeful for Japan’s recovery and are glad to see the quick responses from so many humanitarian and aid organizations. Our thoughts are with Japan at this time.
Mikiko Imai, ONE’s policy analyst from Japan, writes on the recent Japanese general election:
This past weekend, the Democratic Party of Japan won the Lower House election by a landslide. This historic victory by the main opposition party will end more than half a century of almost uninterrupted rule by the Liberal Democratic Party. The president of the Democratic Party, Yukio Hatoyama, will be appointed as Japan’s new prime minister by mid-September.
Many in Japan are predicting that this unprecedented political upheaval will change the way Japan is run. Before the election, the Democratic Party pledged that once in power, it would scrutinise the government’s budget.
So what will this mean for Japan’s international development policies? Despite concerted lobbying efforts by our Japanese NGO friends, international development was not a major focus of any of the parties in this election. Politicians were mainly concerned with Japan’s domestic problems, specifically the dire state of the economy. But in today’s interconnected world, no long term solution for Japan’s revival will be viable unless the poorest parts of the world are fully considered – their economic growth can be part of the long term solution for Japan.
Japan can’t afford to decrease its development assistance budget, which funds programmes that are truly working. I hope that Mr. Hatoyama and his new coalition government will take this into consideration when he goes over Japan’s government budgets!
-Mikiko Imai
African development was again the subject of G8 discussions as world leaders gathered in Toyako, Hokkaido in northern Japan from July 7-9 for the 2008 G8 Summit. While the G8 was confronted with multiple global challenges, including climate change and a weakening global economy, the 2008 Hokkaido Summit marked an important “mid point” moment in the fight against poverty. The Hokkaido Summit came at the critical halfway point to both the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the G8 Gleneagles promises to Africa. The G8 are dangerously behind on their landmark commitments to the region, having delivered only $3 billion of the promised $25 billion in additional assistance to Africa by 2010, according to the 2008 DATA Report.
After difficult negotiations, the G8 summit yielded small gains for the poorest. The bulk of G8 agreements on development and Africa and food security reiterated previous pledges rather than outlining new measures to get the group back on track. The G8 did announce plans for a new effort to tackle the global food crisis, though more details are needed to ensure its effectiveness and delivery. They highlighted the UN High-level meeting on the MDGs in September as an important opportunity to review progress and identify actions needed to overcome remaining challenges.
At a time when G8 credibility is at risk due to slow progress in delivering on commitments, there was a strong call for greater accountability in the G8 Communique. The G8 agreed to track progress against previous commitments in health, education, water and agriculture, as well as its compliance with anti-corruption measures.
Overall, the US, UK and Germany provided strong leadership in negotiations and have significantly increased their funding for Africa in recent years.
After the jump, the following brief overview of outcomes for Africa from the 2008 G8 Summit.
-Ben Hubbard
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The G8 Summit closed yesterday and I’m already back in Tokyo which feels a bit strange. The final day was once again busy but interesting… The G8 Chair’s summary was released by Prime Minister Fukuda of Japan, and leaders of the G8 held their press conferences. Meanwhile, we delivered our final verdict on the Summit – Bob Geldof was our unofficial ‘spokesperson’ for the day and he really worked hard to get the message out, being interviewed by journalists from as far afield as Russia and the Middle East as well as the more usual suspects.
The media centre thinned out early evening – leaders had headed back home, and many journalists and organisations followed suit. Others were headed for beers, including us! The NGOs had a small get-together at the canteen nearby – it was such a relief to stop for a moment and bond over drinks and food with our friends and colleagues.
Some were celebrating victories, while others were outraged by the result. We can however all claim at least one important albeit small victory – the media coverage of civil society opinions and activities at the G8 this year has been very high, which we didn’t really anticipate. Especially in Japan, where advocacy is still a new concept and NGOs have struggled to be recognized as a credible voice. Hokkaido has been different in this respect – major media outlets have all carried stories and news articles on these ‘outside’ opinions daily. It’s not without problems of course – the Japanese government has refused entry of at least 19 activists into the country – but this year highlighted that NGOs are now established as an integral part of the G8 Summit process and that our voices really do matter.
ONE’s final verdict was that the “G8 post small gains to the poorest, but little that’s new.” While there was some progress, much more needs to be done if the G8 countries are serious about achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), an internationally agreed set of goals that if delivered could save millions of lives.
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Day 2 of the G8 Summit, and it was a key day for the G8 as well as for ONE. A very early start saw, our friend Bob Geldof and a couple of my ONE colleagues meet Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the UK, President George W. Bush of the U.S., Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, as well as top level government officials from other G8 countries to give a last push to agree something big and meaningful for the problems in African and other developing countries. This was our last chance – an agreement on it was due to be reached by the afternoon.
In the afternoon, the ONE team, other NGOs, media, and Bob (in between his busy afternoon of media interviews) all waited with great anticipation for the G8 Summit statements to start coming forward. Apparently, this year was unusual in that the statements were being released to us topic by topic. The first came in the early afternoon, and it was an agreement on the World Economy, followed by a statement on the Environment.
Then, at around 5pm, the agreement on Development and Africa and the statement on Global Food Security were finally released. It was war against time after that – a number of possible outcomes had already been anticipated, and we had been sharing our positions according to different scenarios with our NGO colleagues by then. So when the agreement was finally out, our team all went silent for a few minutes to read the agreements – word by word, then a quick chat with our NGO colleagues, followed by a relatively brief but meaningful conference call with our colleagues in London and in (very early) Washington to finalise our position. We had to get the press release on our reaction out quickly to the media, so that they could include it with their news article on the agreement.
An hour later, when I finished going around the media centre handing out the press release, I finally took a deep breath. As a first timer to the G8 Summit, the whole intensity of it was very new to me.
The outcomes were mixed. A few countries are showing genuine commitment and leadership – the US, UK and Germany, but others are letting the side down. There were a few new stepping stones that we hope will make it even more likely they will deliver on their important promises – a commitment to provide critically needed health workers; 100 million anti-malaria bednets which should save hundreds of thousand of lives; and acceptance that as a group they must be more accountable, highlighting education and water as focus areas. (You can read our press release on the G8 outcomes here).
I have to say, it was personally one of the most interesting days that I’ve had. I felt a real buzz in me to be at the core of where the information of today’s global news was being gathered and honored to represent ONE. It’s just such a shame that none of us felt a true buzz regarding the G8 summit agreement itself…
-Mikiko Imai
On the second day of the Japan summit, G8 leaders promised to pursue targeted sanctions against members of the Zimbabwean government.
G8 leaders pledged, in an official statement to “take further steps…introducing financial and other measures against those individuals responsible for violence.” They also called for a special UN Security Council envoy to report on the situation in Zimbabwe and help mediate.
For the past week, the US and UK have been pushing for the UN Security Council to tighten targeted sanctions. The BBC reports that a sanctions package is expected to be presented to the UN by the weekend and that Russia, which has traditionally been against such sanctions, will not oppose it.
African leaders have expressed reservations against sanctions, favoring some sort of power-sharing unity government, which they called for last week at a two-day African Union Summit in Egypt.
Zimbabwe’s state media reported today that interparty-talks were to resume under the mediation of South African President Thabo Mbeki.
Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai maintains that his party will not resume talks until the current Zimbabwe government halts all political violence and accepts that Tsvangirai won the first round of elections on March 29.
-Nora Coghlan
