Economic Confidential, January, 2009

FEATURES

ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF DISASTERS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

By Manzo Ezekiel and Saadatu Ovosi

Occurrence of disaster is a reality that poises serious challenge to the economy of a nation. This reality is even more challenging in developing countries where the efforts to improve on the living condition of the people are jeopardize bringing about serious setbacks. The economic environment of a nation consists of its financial systems, social welfare, power sector, transportation, investments, commerce, manufacturing, construction, banking among others.

In the past, most governments usually responded to the occurrence of disasters through ad hoc measures over a particular incident or incidences. This has since given way to the more serious approaches in the establishment of permanent organs that contend with the damages usually caused by disasters to the economy, and indeed the nation.

Disasters usually result in pains and huge losses. In most cases it is always difficult to quantify the actual cost of damages and recovery. The consequences come both in human and material losses. The impacts are also felt in the economic front.  However, the volume of such losses and impacts usually depend on the pre-disaster preparation.

Pre-disaster preparation is a vital step in mitigating the impacts. The preparations provide for risk reduction, forecasting, mitigation and other activities to assist the people cope with the situations.

The economy of developing countries like Nigeria is put at risk in times of disasters. A single case of disaster could wipe away several years of developmental efforts.  In this scenario, there could be loss of lives, destruction of public utilities and disruption in the smooth functioning of the system to render fear and uncertainties among the populace. The impacts could also be felt in the loss of livelihoods, damage to the environment, financial loss, diversion of resources, epidemics, migration, food shortages and displacement of the people.

A nation is vulnerable to disaster when there is a high level of poverty among its populace. Other causal factors include inadequate education, poor systems, lack of training on disaster, limited media freedom, improperly planned rapid urbanization and environmental degradation. The result is overcrowding, frequent building collapses, poor environment and weak economy.

There would be no point running away from the reality of disaster as a phenomenon that has come to stay. Running away from the reality could only amount to nothing short of self deceit. Happily enough, the federal government has demonstrated its commitment to the issues of disaster management through the establishment of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA).

Though NEMA was established barely ten years ago in 1999, the agency has tended to demonstrate good knowledge of dealing with the impacts of disaster on the economy. Director General of the agency AVM Mohammed Audu-Bida (Rtd) advocated for the mainstreaming of disaster management into core national development planning. He said through this, special attention could be accorded to the issues involved in planning for disaster forecasting, prevention, mitigation, response, recovery, reconstruction and development. He also that said special attention must be given in setting aside budgetary allocation to disaster management not to be caught unaware. This, according to him, becomes imperative ‘as a matter of fact because once there is a disaster the entire budget of a country may be diverted to contain it.’

Prevention is better and cheaper in disaster management. In line with this, the NEMA chief emphasized the need for the states governments to establish their own separate Emergency Management Agencies (SEMAs) to complement the role of the federal agency in their areas. Through SEMAs, the states would be seen to be more actively involved in the issues of disaster management and to prepare ahead of the untoward circumstances. Only few states have so far responded positively in this regard. Even then, some of the established SEMAs are not properly empowered to be functionally independent and proactive in the discharge of their responsibilities.

Getting the people to be more involved in response to disaster in their communities is another strategy. AVM Audu-Bida said NEMA has adopted the strategy of taking disaster management to the grassroots through the sensitization and recruitment of volunteers in the communities. In another programme being implemented in collaboration with the National Youth Service Corp (NYSC), corps members are trained as Emergency Management Vanguards (EMV) to reach out to the communities in their locations of primary assignments.  The NEMA boss said his desire is to train about 20 per cent of the Nigerian population in basic disaster management skills. There is no doubt that when communities are train on disaster management could help to reduce the volume of loss capable of resulting from such.

Disasters results in the loss of skilled human resources and jobs, diversion of scarce resources, destruction of infrastructure, negative investment climate, political destabilization and civil unrest. However, when properly handled it can also result in creating opportunities to highlight vulnerabilities, climate for positive change, external donor funds, rebuild to safer standards and development of new skills.

Manzo Ezekiel and Saadatu Ovosi

National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA)

Abuja