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EAST TIMOR: UN Helps to Mitigate Disaster Risk
By Matt Crook
DILI, Jun 24 (IPS) - Disasters happen regularly in East Timor, but until now, the institutions called
on to deal with them have struggled to effectively react to seasonal events that
impact thousands of Timorese lives every year.
"We are yet to be truly prepared to act together as one to plan for the
consequences of disasters, as well as to develop strategies for reducing the
risks faced by our brothers and sisters who live in vulnerable locations," said
Francisco do Rosario, director of the National Disaster Management
Directorate (NDMD) - part of the Ministry of Social Solidarity (MSS).
With more than 40 percent of the population of 1.1 million below the poverty
line and the majority of the nation’s poor living in rural areas, when disasters
hit, they can be devastating, especially as about 80 percent of households
rely on subsistence agriculture to survive.
"The general definition of disasters we promote is that a disaster is
something that takes a community beyond its coping capacities. So you
might have a village of 20 households, and if there’s a localised windstorm
that flattens half of their crops and it’s beyond their capacity to recover, then
that’s a disaster," said James Hardman, a project manager for the United
Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Crisis Prevention and Recovery
Unit.
East Timor is prone to an impressive ensemble of disasters: drought, erratic
rains, flooding, landslides, windstorm erosion, monsoons, deforestation and
crop infestation.
Responding to the need to have an effective system in place to deal with
disasters, UNDP is collaborating with the NDMD on an one-year project
called Disaster Risk Management Institutional and Operational Systems
Development in East Timor.
The 468,000-dollar project, launched in April and funded by the European
Commission and UNDP, focuses on supporting the NDMD so that it can
prepare for and respond to disasters in all 13 districts.
"The role of the NDMD in emergency response is basically to coordinate, not
so much to do. It’s the job of the NDMD to provide coordination and support
to the other ministries, whether it’s the police or part of the MSS providing
social assistance," said Hardman.
"That’s difficult in this sort of environment. Ministries have been struggling to
get their own houses in order, as you’d expect in such a new country, so
there hasn’t been much space for developing whole government approaches,"
he explained.
By the end of the project, the aim is for there to be structural operational
procedures in place to support the country’s national disaster operation
centre, housed in the MSS.
Currently district-level centres are being established in Bobonaro and Lautem
districts - with plans to eventually open stations in all 13 districts.
"The district disaster operations centre is supposed to be an operational body
that deals with things as they develop. Say there’s flooding in one [village] -
they coordinate the information and pass it on to the district administrator
and it flows to the national or regional level where decisions on appropriate
response are made," said Hardman.
Although statistical data is limited, each year in East Timor, heavy rain causes
flooding - mostly in the south - and landslides. Drought conditions affect
many parts of the country, especially during the El Niño cycle of weather
fluctuations, the most recent of which finished in 2007.
According to the Australian Government’s Bureau of Meteorology, there is a
possibility of another El Niño this year.
Manatuto in central East Timor is of particular risk to disasters. The hillsides
are regularly hit with drought - due to unreliable rains during the wet season
from November to May - plus deforestation and fires.
In Covalima in the southwest, communities are prone to regular flooding;
while in Lautem in the east, there are high seasonal risks of flooding,
landslides, drought and forest fires.
Although work on community-based disaster-risk-management practices is
still in its early stages, Concern, Oxfam and Care are among the most active
non-governmental organisations working in the field.
Maris Palencia is Concern’s DRR programme coordinator.
"We work in Lautem and Manufahi [districts]," Palencia said. "We support the
efforts of the NDMD in the formation of the disaster management
committees from the [village] level. We have public awareness activities in the
communities and we facilitate community-based disaster risk management,"
she added.
"We also have several activities to teach people how to prepare for disasters
and what they can do before, during and after. We work with local
government and local NGOs because we will be handing it over to them,"
Palencia explained.
Lautem is considered a model for disaster management structures in East
Timor. As one of the first structures to be established, the communities in
the district have undergone many challenges, Palencia said.
"To get organised, to respond in an appropriate and timely manner - it saves
lives and livelihoods," she said.
About one-third of East Timor’s population regularly experiences food
shortages and nearly half of children under the age of five are chronically
malnourished, according to the World Food Programme (WFP).
In the western part of the country, agricultural pest infestation poses a
significant threat.
In February 2007 there was a major infestation of locusts that started in the
western districts of Bobonaro and Ermera. By April, about 4,500 hectares of
crops had been affected while about 80 percent of the maize planting areas
and 70 percent of the rice seedlings for the next crops had been destroyed.
The infestation spread south to Covalima, which, along with Bobonaro,
produces about a quarter of the nation’s rice.
The locust outbreak and drought that year caused a 30 percent decline in
crop production nationwide.
"The outbreak in 2007 was most likely linked to the delayed onset of the
rainy season followed by a period of irregular rains combined with dry spells.
This was the moment FAO was requested by the government to help," said
Fabrizio Cesaretti, emergency coordinator for the United Nations Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO).
After FAO assisted the government to get the infestation under control using
aerial and ground spraying of pesticides. Now, a programme has been
launched so that future infestations could be caught and controlled earlier.
"We launched a capacity-building project working with the Ministry of
Agriculture and the communities prone to the risk of locust outbreaks to set
up a monitoring and reporting system of potential infestation. This way you
can control it from the beginning," Cesaretti said.
The ministry got a chance to test out its newly learned capabilities earlier this
year when a potential outbreak of locusts was detected in the western
districts of Bobonaro and Oecussi.
"The assessment carried out on both sides of the border [with Indonesian
West Timor] didn’t identify major threats. There was an increase in
population in one species, but it’s not so harmful," Cesaretti added. "A good
sign from our side was to see that the field offices of the Ministry of
Agriculture were able to identify the form of locust population they had and
the phase they were at. If you can identify the phase you can do the control
better," he said.
FAO also supports trans-boundary cooperation between Indonesia and East
Timor. The first Technical Workshop on Migratory Locust Issues, organised by
FAO, was held in Bali Mar. 31 to Apr. 1.
Meanwhile, Hardman is confident that the work he does with the government
over the next 12 months will continue past the initial project’s allotted time
to help build an institution that will save lives.
"UNDP’s view is that it’s not just a 12-month project, but part of a four- to
five-year plan, so we want to come up with a strategy that identifies what to
do for future disaster risk management projects, leading into phase two,"
Hardman said, "If there isn’t continuity from the government and donors then
the work we do in these 12 months would be at risk."
(END/2009)
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