SAFEGUARDING ENVIRONMENT BY DISASTER RISK REDUCTION

“SAFEGUARDING ENVIRONMENT BY DISASTER RISK REDUCTION”

“We won’t have a society if we destroy the environment” quoted Margaret Mead. Environment is undoubtedly the most beautiful and resplendent creation of God which has from the very commencement of life, nurtured the whole humanity without any selfishness or personal gain. Sans environment we can’t even fancy a situation without our mother environment, the mother which has never demanded anything from us, the mother which without any vested interest made us have all the beauties of life that anyone can dream of. The mother who has made us experience the scenery of Himalaya to the greenery of Amazon, the height of Mount Everest to low of Marina Trench.

      But it’s very much heartrending that the cruel mankind didn’t even restrain him even for the sake of his adorable mother. The mother which never asked for anything has been left with nothing. We humans, have become so much replete with cupidity that we just went on to devastate and annihilate the heart of the mother Environment. We the humans just for to sake of convenience made our mother earth cry by destroying its beautiful treasure, its pleasantness.

 When our Mother Earth gave us this wonderful life and blessed us with mankind, she knew that a day will come when we would need to change, change not just for change’s sake but change to endure the demands of mankind, change to halt the avarice of humanity, she knew that to survive ourselves we would need to bring about a radical change and today the time has come when we need to implement that life-saving change and therefore today to safeguard the environment we need to change.

On 14^th of June, the whole world witnessed a huge disaster and unfortunately our country was the victim of the same. When the clouds busted over the city of Gods, Uttarakhand and rain tore off the whole of Kedarnath leaving around 10,000 people dead and thousands of homes, sentiments and life shattered into pieces. The whole Uttarakhand disaster was a cue to the humanity to learn from its mistakes and heed to the mistakes made by it and today therefore we need to mend our ways.

A great soul once proclaimed,

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”

 The same condition applies to the nature also. Let’s for instance cite Uttarakhand Disaster. According to Maharaj Pandit, professor with the Department of Environmental Sciences in Delhi University, “the valleys of Yamuna, the Ganga and the Alaknanda, witness heavy traffic of tourists. For this, the government has to construct new roads and widen the existing ones and this ultimately leads to destabilization of the mountains resulting in complete destruction”. Dams in the area, over the Ganga River have also played a significant role in exacerbating the severity of the condition and finally all this arrived just due to the lust of mankind like some wider roads, more electricity through dams etc. and finally at last the whole world saw its worst nightmare, the Uttarakhand Disaster.

From 1970 to 2012 around 8835 weather, climate and hydrological hazards have been reported globally. Together they caused the loss of around 1.94 million causing economic damages worth US $2.4 Trillion dollars.

      Today in order to save the environment we need the tamper the way we perceive the whole situation. Today to safeguard the environment we need to effect some disaster risk reduction planning to safeguard the environment. Many techniques can be used to spearhead the attack against disasters. Many disasters like landslide, volcano eruptions, floods, tsunami etc. can be curbed up to a large extent if we use some simple techniques. 

Three simple techniques can be implemented in the system in order to reduce the risk caused by the disaster. It consists of around three phases.

1.    Disaster Precaution

2.    Disaster Response

3.    Rehabilitation and Recovery.

“Prevention is better than cure”

The priority area on disaster prevention must be disaster prevention. Disaster prevention is the most important area to be focussed on. To prevent the disaster we need to enforce some strategies. These strategies include

1.       Sustainable development = “We have not inherited this nature from our fathers but we have borrowed it from our children”. Sustainable development means development taking in accordance the future of coming generations and this is what we need to do today. If we enforce sustainable development like using less fuel and energy efficient methods to consume less energy, we can limit the consumption of fossil fuels like coal leading to less mining, less pollution and less environmental degradation. This can be used in other sectors also in order to safeguard the environment.

2.       Better construction techniques- Better construct techniques can be used to minimise the harm to the environment. For e.g. one of the most important cause behind the happening of the Uttarakhand Disaster was due to illegitimate widening of roads and making of new roads but if we promulgate better construction facilities taking in mind the environment, then we would be able to stop the environment hazards. We can learn this very well from Japan. People of Japan have well acclimatised themselves to protect themselves from disasters like earthquake, volcanic eruption etc. to minimize the damage in the nation and we can also implement it in India to reduce the impact of disasters.

3.       Awareness Programs- Many awareness programs can be used in order to prepare people for disaster preparedness. Many programs like street plays, school activities can be used to edify people on how to safeguard themselves at the time of disaster.

Second phase of the strategy includes disaster response. Disasters should be tackled with a proactive and agile approach in order to tackle the impact of disaster. This phase include proper rescue of the people, providing immediate assistance and the immediate restoration of infrastructure. The main aim behind the good response is to support the affected people with better techniques. Many techniques can be used in order to salvage people from the disaster. Assistance can range from providing specific help to the affected people, like shifting them to safe regions from disaster prone areas, semi-permanent camps for the residence of the affected population and also medical facility in order to help the people. Rescuing operation teams should be made for tackling the problems. Special rescue teams should be designated and trained in order to rescue to people out of debris etc. and to reduce the loss of life.

Next comes the third phase. The third phase includes rehabilitation and recovery from disaster. Rehabilitation is a very important phase that needs to be kept in mind. It’s the duty of the government as well as other authorities to rehabilitate the people who have been affected by the disaster. Nowadays the functioning in the rehabilitation system has been very dismal and unappreciable but now something needs to be done in this issue. Many people who are victimised by the disasters are not rehabilitated due to red tapes in the whole system. Post disaster rehabilitation and recovery techniques need to be geared up in order to provide better recovery to the people affected. Various programs like setting up houses for the affected population, community managed drinking water supply for the whole affected population, education centres etc. with other supplies should be given to the people affected in order to assist them and increase their morale.

If we implement all the three phases of disaster reduction properly, then we people would surely be able to limit the impact of disasters to a great extent and also prevent the loss of life and property.

Today we need to change our mind set on how we perceive the disaster, we can definitely limit their impact to a great extent for our mother earth while keeping in mind the words of Mahatma Gandhi :

“What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another”

JAI HIND JAI BHARAT
JAI MA BHARTI