Scenes from an apocalyptic nightmare have become quite common in India.
Sometimes there are visuals of large-scale flooding, gushing waters breaching bunds and inundating everything in sight --- from schools to offices and homes to hospitals; at other times, there are heart-rending images of crumbled houses and cities razed to the ground by earthquakes.
Cyclones, floods, droughts, earthquakes and other natural disasters are occurring with alarming regularity in India. Be it the Kashmir floods of 2014 or the devastating Uttarakhand earthquake a few decades ago, devastation seems par for the course as human population increases exponentially and resources are drained like never before in history.
And although we like to term them ‘natural’ disasters, the fact is most of these calamities are caused due to and exacerbated by human activities. As far back as October 2001, a study by the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington D.C.-based environmental research organisation had found, “More people worldwide are now displaced by natural disasters than by conflict. In the 1990s, natural catastrophes like hurricanes, floods, and fires affected more than two billion people and caused in excess of $608 billion in economic losses worldwide -- a loss greater than during the previous four decades combined. But more and more of the devastation wrought by such natural disasters is “unnatural” in origin, caused by ecologically destructive practices and an increasing number of people living in harm's way.”
According to National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) statistics, in June 2013, there were 4,094 fatalities in the mountainous states of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh due to landslides and floods. Similarly, in 2008, the state of Bihar recorded 527 deaths, with 19,323 livestock perishing, and 2,23,000 houses suffering damage, leaving a total number of 3.3 million persons affected. Data on the NDMA website goes back to 1977, when in the coastal state of Andhra Pradesh, a cyclone left in its wake 10,000 humans fatalities, 40,000 livestock dead and thousands of people homeless.
All this leaves us wondering if preventive action can reduce the impact of disaster events (not limited to ‘natural’ disasters). The main reasons why natural calamities turn into large-scale disasters are unchecked and unplanned construction activity, blocked drainage vents (both along rivers and in residential areas), unawareness about impending calamitous events, faulty public warning systems and sometimes, plain callousness in giving advance warning of potential disaster situations.
Sunita Narain of the Centre for Science and Environment had termed the 2013 Uttarakhand flooding a ‘man-made disaster’. Contending that development must account for terrain and ecological-sensitivity, Narain had told The Hindu newspaper, “We cannot have roads on the Himalayas like the ones on the Alps. The Himalayas are young mountains… we need to look at ways of development without destroying natural resources.”
Consequently, the most comprehensive effort at disaster mitigation will, logically, have to begin at the educational level. When knowledge of the catastrophic impact of human activities is ingrained into young citizens from an early age, its effects pass over to their families and from there to entire communities in a kind of positive ‘domino effect’.
The Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report, 2016, published under the aegis of UNESCO, states much the same with its enhanced focus on the inter-relation between climate change--natural disasters--education systems.
The GEM Report states: “Climate change and natural disasters severely affect education systems and outcomes. The growing frequency of natural disasters and extreme weather increases the vulnerability of many low income countries, and such events have multiple direct and indirect effects on education systems and outcomes.”
The report mentions how the challenge of climate change demonstrates the complexity of, and urgent need for, using education to address environmental crises. “All three approaches...are required: learning at schools, in communities and through lifelong learning, along with integration between types of education and collaboration between education and other sectors. Thus deployed, education can contribute to actions to address climate change, including prevention, mitigation and disaster preparedness.”
By conservative estimates, between 1995 and 2014, 15,000 extreme weather events caused more than 5,25,000 deaths worldwide and losses of nearly US$3 trillion. A 2012 report by the Washington D.C.-based Brookings Institution has highlighted how the effects of climate change have serious implications for the functioning of education systems, and require adaptive strategies.
In September 2012, the Global Partnership for Education, the United Nations Children’s Fund and Save the Children put forward a proposition for better aid for education in emergencies. “The Global Partnership for Education, the United Nations Children’s Fund and Save the Children put forward a proposition for better aid for education in emergencies,” reads the Brookings Institution report. “The Call to Action, endorsed by leaders from governments, international organisations and civil society at the U.N. General Assembly, calls for education to be integrated into Humanitarian Action Plans, and for education systems everywhere to incorporate emergency prevention, preparedness, response and recovery,” the report states further.
With the average number of natural disasters expected to increase by 320 percent over the course of the next 20 years, schools could become avenues to provide knowledge and skills that the next generation will need to respond to disaster. It would not be an exaggeration to say that better education, leading to greater knowledge of occurrence and prevention of disaster events, could potentially reduce the fatalities and losses incurred from such events.
