How To Mainstream Large-scale Disasters?

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Why? Michel ODIKA

War in Brazzaville (Congo) (1).

War Philosophy: Cogito ergo… boom (Susan SONTAG) Before else, there is no waste of time in life like that of making explanations. However, it is no waste of time to remember some things of crucial importance. Especially noteworthy is the fact that “forgotten is forgiven”, according to Scott FITZGERALD.

WARNING – It is not catastrophes, murders or diseases that kill – it is the way people believe and think (Virginia WOOLF, novelist).

NO MORE WAR War has become a luxury only small nations can afford (Hannah ARENDT, philosopher). Not only does war settles nothing, but to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one (Agatha CHRISTIE, novelist).

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War is never a solution – it is always an aggravation (Benjamin DISRAELI, statesman). It is by no means self-evident that human beings are most real when violently excited. Violent physical passions do not in themselves differentiate men from each other, but tend to reduce them to the same state (Thomas ELIOT, poet and dramatist). Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime (Ernest HEMINGWAY, novelist). Force and fraud are in war two cardinal virtues (Thomas HOBBES, philosopher). War must never be praised as ennobling mankind, for war is bad in that it begets more evil than it kills (KANT, philosopher). War is only a cowardly escape from peace-induced problems (Thomas MANN, novelist). War does not determine who is right – only who is wrong (Bertrand RUSSELL, mathematician and philosopher). Peace is not mere absence of war, but a virtue that springs from a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice (SPINOZA, philosopher).

HOPE MESSAGE – Believe in life! Always human beings will live and progress to greater, broader and fuller life (William DUBOIS, novelist). 1.

Photograph by David LUTTENBERGER (American photographer, Associated Press) – Cover illustration of a French-written book I published a few years ago: Michel ODIKA, Au plus près de Brazza, éditions Harmattan (2004), Paris.

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Mainstreaming Large-scale Disasters Michel ODIKA

Mainstreaming disasters basically means addressing the causes and effects associated with emergency and crisis situations, so as to mitigate, rather than to exacerbate, their environmental and medical impact. For the most part, it consists in combining and coordinating three approaches, that is: facing the facts, building a critical mass of capacity for safety, and keeping up momentum on prevention. What needs to be done in terms of mainstreaming disasters, ultimately, is to grasp things at the root, with a constant view to securing the future. Building a critical mass of capacity for safety…

What needs to be done to go beyond a paper exercise? When dealing with emergency situations, the best we can do is to think about things as they are, not as they are said to be. In practical terms, only those who are acquainted with facts can make a continual addition to their stock of knowledge and experience. That’s in the last resort the price to pay for preparing the ground and thereby breaking some potentially dangerous and poisonous myths. Prior to all crisis management, please let us have no illusion that, one fine day, the world will be permanently preserved from disasters. No, disasters simply rewrite the rules. And to prevail we too must rewrite these rules. However, the foundations exist to mount responses commensurate with the challenge of better controlling adverse events facing the world.

Keeping up momentum on prevention…

Each plan and programme established must become the building block for sustainable strategies to free us, not of disasters as such, but of the damaging consequences resulting from disasters. At the same time, we have to make this conceptual leap in our actions and interventions in order to move from the reactive to the preventive. Success is in sight, but securing it will require that we have the will, means and knowledge needed to make real headway. In matter of large-scale disasters, prevention may be best defined as the ability and willingness to envision the future, so that we can unite connecting and converging elements to make the years to come as safe as possible. Thus, the global response to acute environmental disorders must be transformed from an episodic and “crisis-management approach” to a thoughtful and long-term response that emphasizes the use of evidence-based principles.

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Facing the facts…

What does it mean to “mainstream” large-scale disasters? In short, mainstreaming disasters is “the process that enables free individuals and responsible citizens to address the causes and effects of acute environmental disorders in an efficient and sustained manner, so as to mitigate, rather than to exacerbate, their impact as much as possible”. The point, then, is to demonstrate a strong sense of preparedness for what can possibly lie ahead. Why? In many respects, both little anticipation and slow reaction contribute to exacerbate the impact of catastrophes. Besides being damaging to individuals’ health and destructive to human lives, large-scale catastrophes radically differ from what most people believe. In concrete terms, acute environmental disorders basically stand as a continuum – instead of emerging from somewhat a vacuum – of latent preexisting background problems. In other words, evident and violent growing difficulties of the moment must be dealt with anyway. But permanent underlying difficulties are originally difficulties of every moment… Clearly difficulties must be divided in as many parts as is necessary and useful to overcome them. As a result of lessons learned from major catastrophes across the world, greater emphasis is now placed on lack, or simply absence, of any appropriate prevention policy when required. Another fact to be aware of is that humanitarian emergencies do not in themselves generate problems. We should rather assume exactly this: as well as revealing and/or worsening background problems, major emergencies degenerate in exacerbated troubles, since they are no more than amplified and intensified reflects of the global environment in which human beings live. Still, their magnitude tend to increase in inverse proportion to the quality of prevention strategies implemented in “normal” time. What else? What we call health, whether in “normal condition” or in “exceptional situation”, is nothing else than the precarious attainment of balance and relevance in intensely mobile flux to which things human are permanently subject. Such is, in summary, the key message to promote in order to better control violent environmental fluctuations once they happen… Doctor Michel ODIKA Contact e-mail: [email protected]