Hurricanes & Emergency Aid

Two interesting and related stories in the news today.

First, some background: United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator, Jan Egeland, is in Guatemala for a three-day, high level regional meeting on preparations for the forthcoming 2006 hurricane season.

Yesterday Mr. Egeland made a rather dire forecast...

UN: Next hurricane season could match 2005, or worse

By Mica Rosenberg, Reuters
02 Mar 2006

Guatemala City - This year's hurricane season could match the record breaking destruction caused by storms in 2005, the United Nations warned.

In 2005, an unprecedented 27 tropical storms, 15 of which became full-blown hurricanes, battered Central America and the U.S. Gulf coast, killing more than 3,000 people and causing tens of billions of dollars in damage.

"We have reason to fear that 2006 could be as bad as 2005," Jan Egeland, the undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs who coordinates U.N. emergency relief, told Reuters on Wednesday.

"We have had a dramatic increase in climate related natural disasters and at the same time we have more vulnerable people, so it's a double effect," he said in Guatemala, where he is meeting Central American leaders to plan for future disasters.

"That's why we need to prepare in order to prevent the damage."

Hurricane Stan killed more than 2,000 people in Central America last October. Guatemala was hardest hit with mudslides burying villages and washing away roads.

Hurricane Katrina wrecked New Orleans and much of the U.S. Gulf coast in late August, killing about 1,300 people.

Guatemala's losses from Stan were nearly $1 billion, equivalent to more than 3 percent of the country's gross domestic product, according to a recent U.N. study.

The U.N. launched an international appeal for more than $30 million in hurricane relief here but has only managed to raise two-thirds of that amount so far.

Most is earmarked for reconstruction rather than prevention. Programs to reinforce buildings and train emergency workers are expensive but Egeland insisted that every dollar spent on prevention can save millions in the aftermath of a natural disaster.

"Haiti is the most vulnerable society in the region and Cuba is one of the best prepared, if not the best prepared for natural disasters," said Egeland. "The same hurricane which would take zero lives in Cuba would kill massively in Haiti."

Latin American and Caribbean nations are prone to floods, earthquakes and forest fires as well as hurricanes, the fallout from which is compounded by poverty and weak infrastructure.

In the second article, the United Nations just announced the creation of a new global emergency fund.

According to the article: "The idea is to give the world body the ability to quickly send emergency supplies to areas hit by natural disasters and other humanitarian crises, without having to wait for international donors to send checks."

Which sounds to me like a brilliant idea. Now if we can only get the United States (and some other major cheapskates... I mean, counties) to actually donate to the fund.

New UN fund to speed global disaster response

Reuters
Fri Mar 3, 2006

The United Nations next week launches a new global emergency fund to provide swifter relief to victims of natural disasters, but with far less money on hand than the $500 million it had hoped to raise.

The Central Emergency Response Fund will have just $188 million when it opens for business, which is nonetheless a significant improvement over an existing U.N. standby loan facility of $50 million.

Donations to the new fund, which will be able to make grants as well as loan money, have come from 19 of the 191 U.N. member-states: Armenia, Britain, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Grenada, Ireland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Pakistan, Sweden, Switzerland and Sri Lanka.

But some wealthy nations including the United States, Japan, Australia, Italy and Canada have yet to make pledges.

"Governments have committed to responding quickly and effectively to help those most in need, yet now that we have a global emergency fund, governments seem reluctant to actually put money in," said Sarah Kline, an official of international relief organization Oxfam.

Read the entire article

Tags: Guatemala, United Nations, Egeland, Hurricane, Relief