Avoiding "Disease donations"
The Forum for Urban Disaster Resiliency is a public forum involving a wide range of stakeholders which aims to put the spotlight on the challenges in local urban governments and water supply utilities by the growing frequency of extreme natural disasters in vulnerable regions and less developed and emerging countries.
The first forum was held at the 1st IWA Development Congress in Mexico City, on the 15th November 2009. There, representatives from practitioners and governance from Gaza, Mexico City and Maputo spoke of their perception on the ground of risk in face of disasters. In Gaza, mayors are working together to help the disaster caused by the discharge of untreated waste water into the sea where many base their livelihoods on fishing. Maputo participants addressed the issue of disease donations, where a lot of funds are invested in water, without matching contributions to sanitation, in reality creating "disease donations". Maputo experiences real challenges of sanitation, especially during floods. Participants from Jamaica, Gambia, Zambia, etc were also sharing their views and experiences.
Twinning to address creeping disasters
Much attention were giving by the participants to creeping disasters in terms of water and sanitation, which if not addressed will lead to more problems, for example in terms of cholera outbreaks triggered especially after extreme events. The intervention presented, is a concept of twinning between cities to build resilient societies, based on the willingness of mayors to do what is right for their citizens, including different ways of building capacity and involving the utilities and other parts of the community. Corporate experiences by water utilities such as EPAL in Lisbon, Portugal and Suez Environnement were presented along side community health clubs making a difference in Zimbabwe. The forum consulted the participants of the planned way forward of facilitating linkages to members of the network wanting to build their capacity and members wanting to help in doing so. A representative from Japan Water Association said that peer to peer twinning is a good system for mutual assistance, where water utilities can help each other when an event happens. Language and country borders are however sometimes a barrier in international assistance.
An important way of handling uncertainty and future impacts from extreme events will be to find these types of local platforms to involve local stakeholders for collective solutions said a representative from UNESCO-IHE.
IWA and WSMART will help to start a few pilots and future fora will be keeping track of their implementation. Gaza - Ashkelon and Maputo – Lisbon will be the first. Other pilots are being called for, and members asked to submit their cases to IWA HQ or WSMART. More information about this event is found on the IWA website.
Related Articles
Launch of the forum for Urban Disaster Resiliency
IWA disaster risk management programme
Links
www.iwahq.org browse to Disaster risk management
