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Renforcer les outils de la prise de décision en matière de réduction des risques - Une étude de cas au Pakistan du nord

Small Grant

Mots-clés

Pakistan - Réduction des risques - Tremblement de terre

Description

Ce texte n'existe qu'en anglais.

Risks due to natural hazards and exposed populations are increasing, especially in coastal areas, and mountainous regions, where more people continue to live. Natural disasters create humanitarian crises and seriously impact poverty alleviation goals. Earthquakes and tsunamis continue to cause the highest number of deaths but more common hazards, especially flooding, landslides and debris flow – affect great numbers of people and their livelihoods. Nonetheless, natural resources management and natural barriers are often not included in disaster risk reduction strategies and local awareness about their protective role varies.

Effective disaster risk reduction depends on sound land management practices and institutions that support livelihoods.  For mountainous areas, evidence points to the correlation between man-induced practices and landslides. Proper natural resources management, especially forested slopes, or natural barriers, can significantly reduce the impact of landslides and flooding. The importance of sound natural resources management is rarely included in mitigation handbooks or foreign aid packages aimed at disaster risk reduction.  With limited budgets for disaster risk reduction, agencies have not always considered investing in natural barriers as cost-effective insurance against natural disasters.  There are few estimates of the value of forests as protective barriers in mountainous regions.

Unfortunately, awareness of risk and risk reduction actions do not always correspond.  Poor governance, lack of resources, and effective institutions are often the main culprits for land degradation and vulnerability.  If struggling to meet basic needs, many people may have few options but to continue living in hazardous areas - and possibly unaware of the risk incurred by unsustainable land use practices. In all cases, effective disaster risk reduction strategies should include local capacity building to prevent and respond to natural disasters. For Northern Pakistan, there are few hazard maps and few vulnerability studies.

The goal of this interdisciplinary study is to better understand the land use factors that increase vulnerability of mountain areas in northern Pakistan. The study will identify and analyse the damages and losses caused by the October 2005 earthquake in two areas of the same valley: one "low-risk" watershed with sound natural resources management, the other, "high-risk" in an ecologically degraded watershed. Secondly, the study will examine natural and man-made causes of secondary hazards in the study area, especially landslides; and third it will evaluate the cost of the earthquake damage in the study areas on the livelihoods of local communities and the sub-regional economy.

There are few interdisciplinary studies to have correlated community land use practices, resources management, and disaster risk reduction in high-risk mountain areas.  By better understanding these linkages, development- humanitarian- and donor agencies focused on disaster reduction can improve their risk reduction programs for mountainous regions.

The expected outcomes of the project include: understanding possible links between management of natural resources and the aggravation of impacts due to natural hazards in mountainous areas; a comparative cost-estimate of earthquake damage in the two study areas; and possibly estimates of the protective role of forest as natural barriers to landslide. An additional outcome will be the training of a GIDS/UNIL-GSE student in disaster risk analysis under the guidance of UNEP/GRID-Europe. This student will have access to experts in the field, state-of-the art technology and will create links between academia and Geneva-based international organizations.

La contribution du RUIG pour ce projet s'élève à CHF 48'900

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Equipe de recherche

Dr. Ronald Jaubert , Membre principal, Institut universitaire d'études du développement (IUED) .

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