Estate Living Magazine Design for living - Issue 42 June 2019 | Page 28

P R O P E R T Y
&
Way forward from Idai’s aftermath
In the short term, governments and humanitarian organisations
must respond quickly and robustly to Cyclone Idai. They must
address both the immediate crisis and minimise the long-term
adverse effects on livelihoods and development prospects
of those directly affected and those impacted indirectly.
Many tools now exist to identify where the poorest and most
affected communities are in such disasters. Needs location
and assessment combined with infrastructure restoration can
generate swift responses. Social protection programmes that
can be flexibly adjusted in times of disasters are also important
and can dramatically improve the outlook and the futures of the
people affected by such disasters, especially the rural poor.
Effective disaster response is particularly important for young
children. If young children suffer persistent under-nutrition in the
cyclone’s wake, the resulting lower cognitive skills will reduce
lifetime earnings. In this case, the effects of Cyclone Idai would
linger for generations, shaping the lives of the children and
grandchildren of those who lost everything during Idai.
In the longer term, societies everywhere need to grapple with a
warmer, more volatile, and less predictable climate, along with
sea level rises that will substantially magnify the risks associated
with cyclone strikes such as Idai. This means:
I N V E S T M E N T
• recognition of the role of extreme events as drivers of
strongly negative outcomes (in, for example, infrastructure
planning)
• planning for flexibility (we don’t want to fixate on coping with
a drier future when a wetter one is also quite possible or vice
versa)
• increased investment in win-win solutions, such as soil
erosion control measures that enhance agricultural
productivity while reducing river siltation.
Finally, it calls for education, information, access to improved
technologies and other resources so that an empowered
citizenry is better prepared to confront development challenges
in a context of climate change.
Channing Arndt & Claudia Ringler of the International
Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)
This article is republished from The Conversation under
a Creative Commons license. Read the original article at
https://theconversation.com/cyclone-idai-shows-why-
long-term-disaster-resilience-is-so-crucial-114762