After Fukushima, Sendai disaster risk framework to make world safer

By Andrew Hammond

Friday marked fifth anniversary of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and subsequent tsunami which former Prime Minister Naoto Kan has said was the “toughest and most difficult crisis” for Japan in the post-war period. Indeed, Kan this month admitted that, following the meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power station, he even considered evacuating an area some 250 kilometres from the plant, including the massive population of Tokyo, with the “future existence of Japan as a whole [seemingly] at stake...there was a real possibility this could [have been] bigger than Chernobyl.”.

Kan’s candid comments underline the enormity of the crisis following one of the most powerful earthquakes ever to hit Japan which triggered some tsunami waves of around 40 metres. In March 2015, the Japanese National Police Agency confirmed some 15,894 deaths, over 6,000 injuries, and over 2,500 people still missing. Moreover, with over 127,000 buildings totally collapsed, and over 270,000 half collapsed, almost 230,000 people were living away from their homes as of 2015.

In terms of economic harm, insurance losses in Japan alone were in the tens of billions of US dollars. Moreover, the World Bank has estimated the total cost of the crisis at some US 235 billion dollars, making it the most expensive natural disaster in history.

And the implications were felt beyond Japan in at least two senses. Firstly, given the scale of the carnage, the country requested assistance from other countries, including Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and the United States, and overall some 116 countries and 28 international organisations offered assistance.

Secondly, however, the power of the tsunami waves meant that the ramifications were not restricted to Japan’s shores. Russia evacuated some 11,000 people from coastal areas of the Kuril Islands; in California and Oregon well over 2 metres high waves hit some areas causing millions of dollars in damage; while high waves also caused distress from The Philippines, Guam, Indonesia, Peru, Chile, and Antartica.

Given the monumental nature of the crisis, the United Nations decided in March 2015 to host its 2015-2030 Disaster Risk Reduction World Conference in Sendai, a region where tsunami waves in 2011 travelled up to 10 kilometres inland. The new framework agreed at Sendai City aims at the substantial reduction of disaster risk and losses in lives, livelihoods, and health and the economic, physical, social, cultural, and environmental assets of persons, businesses, communities and countries.

While the Sendai deal achieved little public recognition at the time, it forms part of an important series of summits in 2015 that has, collectively, been called a once in a generation opportunity to build a new international framework to address the challenges of sustainable development and global warming more broadly. This package included the UN summit in New York last September, which agreed the new 2030 development goals; the finance for development conference in Addis Ababa last July, and the new global warming deal brokered in Paris last December.

Together, it is hoped that these agreements could provide a criss-crossing, coherent and fully integrated framework for billions across the world in coming decades. This is important because, for instance, it is estimated that at least 90% of disasters linked to natural hazards are climate change related.

The Sendai framework for disaster risk reduction has seven specific targets by 2030 which include substantially reducing global disaster mortality; reducing direct disaster economic loss in relation to GDP; substantially reducing disaster damage to critical infrastructure and disruption to basic services; substantially increasing the number of countries with national and local disaster reduction strategies; substantially enhancing international cooperation to developing countries; and substantially increasing the availability of and access to multi-hazard early warning systems, disaster risk information and assessments to people.

As the Japanese crisis in 2011 underlined, the importance of reducing disaster damage to critical infrastructure can be especially important. As former prime minister Kan has asserted this month, “From March 11 [2011], when the incident happened, until the 15th, the effects [of radioactive contamination] were expanding geographically. From the 16th to the 20th we were able to halt the spread of radiation but the margin left for us was paper thin. If the [fuel rods] had burned through [in] all six reactors that would definitely have affected Tokyo. We were only able to avert a 250 kilometres evacuation zone by a wafer-thin margin, thanks to the efforts of people who risked their lives. Next time we might not be so lucky”.

Kan further added, “there was so little precise information coming in. It was very difficult to make clear judgments…I knew that even based on what little we were hearing, there was a real possibility this could be bigger than Chernobyl. That was a terrible disaster, but there was only one reactor there. There were six here”.

Underpinning the seven strategic goals of the Sendai deal are four key strategic priorities: achieving a better understanding of disaster risk; strengthening disaster risk governance to manage disaster risk; investing in disaster risk reduction for resilience; and enhancing disaster preparedness for effective response. While the framework enshrines that the State has a primary role to reduce disaster risk, it widely emphasises that this responsibility must be shared with other stakeholders across the public, private and third sectors. This is especially important in arenas like managing disaster risk and investing in disaster risk reduction for resilience where the private sector has a key role to play, not least given that these areas can be drivers of innovation, growth and job creation.

Taken overall, the Sendai framework and wider UN deals agreed in 2015 collectively represent a potential foundation stone for global sustainable development for billions across the world in coming decades. While natural disasters will continue to strike, the agreements have the potential to help fortify societal and economic resilience to key hazards of the twenty first century.

Andrew Hammond is an Associate at LSE IDEAS (the Centre for International Affairs, Diplomacy and Strategy) at the London School of Economics.