ABOUT A month ago, I was watching on television the devastating images of the flooding in Pakistan.  I remember them repeatedly playing the shot of the two or three men struggling heroically to save a woman from being washed away in the floods, and then the constantly updated information on how devastating the flooding was becoming. At its peak, it was estimated that roughly 14 per cent of Pakistan’s agricultural land was covered in water.  We in Guyana have some idea how damaging, how disruptive to everyday life flooding can be, and even our 2005 inundation was nowhere in comparison to what was happening. 

Like everyone who was part of the global audience watching that disaster unfold, one of the first things I felt was this powerlessness, the inability to do anything in the face of such overwhelming tragedy.  What compounded this sense of hopelessness was watching, shortly after, a story on UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon going out, more or less cap in hand, and begging for money to aid in rebuilding the water-logged country.

I was briefly out of the country when the flood was at its worst, but I know from the reports of friends that Guyanese responded creditably to the Pakistan cause with a telethon raising some $20 million from ordinary citizens, and the Government of Guyana committing some US $30,000 to the Guyana Relief Fund for Pakistan.  I’m sure other countries around the world would have been equally generous in their contributions to the recovery of a country that had been struck by what Ban referred to as the worst natural disaster that the UN has had to deal with in its 65-year history.

That said, I have to point out the Secretary-General’s tenure has been preceded by, and has encompassed, extremes of natural disasters, from the tsunami that swept over Asia, to Hurricane Ivan, to Katrina, the Haiti and Chile earthquakes and now the flooding in Pakistan.  Whereas the chief concerns of his predecessors — Boutros Boutros-Ghali and Kofi Annan — were man-made conflicts — Iraq, the Balkans, Rwanda, Afghanistan and Iraq, again — it is clear that the greatest threat to the UN fulfilling its mandate, particularly the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, is the increasing prevalence of environmental/natural catastrophes.

Imagine the setbacks, for example, caused by the flood in relation to Pakistan’s achieving of Goal 1, which is to ‘Eradicate Extreme Hunger and Poverty’, or Goal 2, which is to ‘Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Other Diseases’.  Indeed, the very unpredictability of nature within the past decade calls into question the feasibility of the commitment to Goal 7, which is to ‘Ensure Environmental Sustainability’; and this is without bringing into the equation issues like the international gridlock on environmental policy, and multinational corporate irresponsibility as evidenced most clearly in the case of the recent BP oil spill.

The only option, in my view, is the mitigation of the effects of natural disasters, and it boggles my mind why the international community in particular, as encompassed by the UN, has not been retooling to put a more proactive mechanism in place to deal with the after-effects phenomena like earthquakes, flood, tidal waves and hurricanes.  As it is now, the approach is reactive, a strategy, or lack thereof, that is appearing more and more absurd when contrasted to the incidence of natural disasters; how many more catastrophes have to occur before Mr. Ban Ki- moon or his successor begins to look insincere in their expression of disbelief at the scale of the human tragedy?

Quote: ‘Put plainly, the natural disasters that have been buffeting, and rocking, and flooding, this planet have an ultimate effect on every issue that is of concern to the UN – security, economic stability, women’s development, child welfare, disease control. Reprioritizing its mandates to reflect the fact that its natural disaster and emergency response policy has a bearing upon virtually every other mandate area , therefore, should really be something that the UN needs to be engaging in at present’

My take on it is that the UN’s perspective remains artificially skewed towards the narrow interests of its most powerful members, particularly the permanent membership of the Security Council, as opposed to the greater good.  For example, in 2005, its 60th anniversary year, the organization started a process to review its mandate, with the ultimate aim being to “strengthen and update the programme of work of the United Nations so that it responds to the contemporary requirements of Member States.”  While this process was undertaken during the last decade, one which — as I’ve noted earlier — has been plagued by natural disasters, the issue of “maintenance of international peace and security” appears at the top of the list of mandate areas in the published Review report.  The document addresses the question of disaster response as the 5th  mandate area (euphemistically listed as Mandate E) of a total of ten.  Let me quote the Executive Summary:

“Effective coordination of humanitarian assistance – The scale and magnitude of recent emergencies and disasters clearly demonstrate the need for a timely and coordinated humanitarian response. While some overlap in mandates among implementing entities exists, the main concern here is that the principal organs often approach humanitarian assistance in a fragmented manner, which can result in implementation gaps. Addressing those gaps is necessary to ensure that emergency needs are met.”

Several things are clear from this wording.  The first is that there has been a studious avoidance of the words ‘natural’ or ‘environmental’, even though they have been part of the definition of exactly what has been taking place over the years.  I would say that over 90 per cent of the disasters and emergencies over the past decade have been classifiable as natural and/or environmental.  An interesting thing to note is that disarmament — something that primarily affects the interests of Security Council members, since they are the most heavily armed nations in the world and which has direct bearing on international peace and security — ranks closer to the bottom of the list of UN Mandates.

It is amazing for me that the when it comes to the UN responding to natural disasters, the Security Council membership isn’t even taking an enlightened self-interest in prioritizing this.  Natural disasters have severe implications as they affect people resulting in death, yes, but also in disease, poverty and the degradation of the general social order.  History has shown us that these very conditions together form a crucial breeding ground for human security issues, from insurrectionist forces rising up against governments to the recruitment of terrorists. 

Pakistan represents a textbook example of how an environmental disaster can influence security issues.  Even pre-flood Pakistan has been alleged to be a safe haven and training ground for the Taliban and other terrorist organisations: now with the widespread humanitarian crisis caused by the flood, the West’s lackluster response, and the lure of terrorist financing which has now acquired a premium value against the backdrop of the economic devastation that has hit that country, no one can convince me that Pakistan is not now more of a security threat than it was say six months ago. 

Put plainly, the natural disasters that have been buffeting, and rocking, and flooding, this planet have an ultimate effect on every issue that is of concern to the UN – security, economic stability, women’s development, child welfare, disease control. Reprioritizing its mandates to reflect the fact that its natural disaster and emergency response policy has a bearing upon virtually every other mandate area , therefore, should really be something that the UN needs to be engaging in at present.  

That said, providing that UN realistically reforms its mandates at a policy level, there is still the arduous task left of reforming the way the organization executes its work programme, something the organization is acutely aware of.  According to the very mandate review noted above, the UN recognizes certain problems which are “common to issue areas, departments and entities throughout the Organization”: burdensome reporting requirements; overlap between and within organs; an unwieldy and duplicative architecture for implementation; and gap between mandates and resources.”  In plain terms, the UN’s main operation problem is that it is, by its own definition, a textbook bureaucracy.

The best bet in the interim may be some sort of emergency fund in which the UN plays a lead partnership role, but which exists outside of its organizational structure in which a substantial amount of easily accessible money is placed to deal with extreme natural disasters, with eligibility defined by a pre-established set of criteria.  The difficulty of course, is achieving consensus to get the international community, particularly richer countries, to commit their financial resources to something that may or may not happen, with consequences that are thus difficult to project.  It’s hard enough to get them to commit funding at adequate levels to existing causes, like poverty reduction and HIV/AIDS.

Failing this, or as an alternative, is the establishment of an international disaster insurance fund.  Of course, the issues which plague regular insurance arrangements will rise like the question of ‘risk’, for example, which relates to the establishment of premiums; as well as problems that might by unique to that arrangement, such as the issue of reinsurance, for example. 
The thing with natural disasters is that, so far, they are mostly relegated to national effects, but nature has no concept of geopolitical boundaries, as the 2004 Tsunami clearly indicated.  And even if the disaster is confined to one place, the effects can still resound globally – the drought that severely affected Russia’s wheat production earlier this year was threatening to disrupt the entire international grain market.  The response at mitigation therefore has to be a global one.

Whatever the solution, and this column with its limited space and expertise in such matters is not in a position to offer one, I don’t believe that the next disaster should find us scrambling to find funds to support the affected – the international community has to do better than sending out its chief diplomat with a beggar’s cup every time there is some environmental upheaval.  We need to find a way to keep one step ahead of nature’s tantrums, and reforming the UN’s mandate and operational structure to suit the contemporary natural disaster crisis situation  is a crucial to this.