How Is Disaster Aid Being Retooled to Meet Catastrophes That Strike Cities?

Ask the Experts | Technology

Past response strategies have focused on helping those in remote, rural areas. But when an earthquake, flood or other calamity hits an urban center, aid must take a different form

By Larry Greenemeier ?| April 6, 2012

GIMME SHELTER: CHF International's work in Port-au-Prince's Ravine Pintade area evolved into a program they call Katye, which incorporated not just the cleanup and the rebuilding of structures, but also long-term planning to create a safer community as well as improve sanitation services, health care facilities and access to drinking water. Image: Courtesy of CHF International

NASA scientists may have debunked the claim that the world will end this December, but evidence suggests that the number of natural disasters has risen during the past few decades. This trend, combined with the accelerating growth of urban populations, has international aid organizations rethinking how crisis response strategies designed to help rural communities can be adapted for city folk.

More than half of the world's seven billion inhabitants live in urban areas, and that number is expected to grow to 6.3 billion by 2050 (pdf). A century ago, fewer than 20 cities had one million or more residents; there are 450 today. The fastest-growing urban areas are in developing countries in Africa and Asia, generally places without the resources to respond adequately to a natural disaster.

The number of droughts, tsunamis, hurricanes, typhoons and floods increased from 78 in 1970 to 348 in 2004, according to the emergency events database maintained by the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) at Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium.

Over the past 50 years the international aid community has disproportionately responded to families in rural settings more than it has in urban areas because more people were living in the countryside than in cities, says Courtney Brown, director of humanitarian assistance at CHF International, a Silver Spring, Md.?based aid organization operating in 25 countries worldwide. Whereas people living in rural areas can generally work the land to meet their family's needs, urban livelihoods revolve around earning enough money to buy the things needed for survival, he adds.

CHF has been evaluating its crisis response since Haiti's earthquake in January 2010. The magnitude 7.0 temblor struck about 25?kilometers west of the capital, Port-au-Prince, killing about 316,000 people and injuring another 300,000. Nearly one million residents were left without homes, as an estimated 250,000 residential and 30,000 commercial buildings collapsed or were severely damaged.

In the wake of Port-au-Prince's crisis CHF, which has been managing aid programs in Haiti since 2006, initially focused on organizing the removal of rubble from the city and the construction of shelters for displaced residents. The aid organization's work in Port-au-Prince's Ravine Pintade area soon evolved into a program they call Katye, which is Haitian Creole for "neighborhood." Katye incorporated not just the cleanup and the rebuilding of structures, but also long-term planning to create a safer community as well as improve sanitation services, health care facilities and access to drinking water. The program also took into account economic factors with the hope of creating new jobs and other income sources.

Scientific American spoke with Brown about Katye, the impact of natural disasters on rapidly expanding cities and how cell phones may be used to help drought-plagued areas of Africa.

[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]

CHF has been providing international aid for 50 years. Why did the Haiti earthquake prompt the organization to rethink its approach?
Katye, which is winding down after two years, operated in an especially hard-hit area of Port-au-Prince, where two thirds of the more than 1,000 families were left homeless. The idea behind Katye, which we implemented with help from [relief organization Project Concern International and funding from USAID's [U.S. Agency for International Development] Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, was first to remove rubble and build shelters for the survivors. As we did this, we started to see ways where we could work with the local community to help them rebuild their neighborhood in ways that made it safer than before. This meant creating access roads, improving drainage, setting up market spaces, creating flood protection infrastructure, rebuilding the houses with earthquake-resistant construction techniques, removing waste and delivering water and sanitation services.

So Katye was a way to broaden the number and types of services you provided. In what other areas did you get involved?
Haiti lacks a comprehensive, working system for recording land tenure. According to local estimates, before the earthquake only 40 percent of landowners had documents such as a legal title or transaction receipt. We were able to identify plots of land that people owned but didn't have certificates showing land ownership.

The process was designed to create income opportunities for landholders. In Haiti it is common for people to live informally on plots of land and to pay rent to landowners. Katye formalized what had been an informal system. This included rebuilding houses for landowners and adding a second house on their property as long as they were willing to let a number of displaced families live in this second house rent-free for two years. After two years the landowner can charge rent on that house. This achieved two things: it got families into houses who previously were living in overcrowded camps and also created an economic opportunity for the landowner in the future. We've built about 400 wood and stucco shelters in Ravine Pintade so far.

Port-au-Prince serves as a case study in how disaster relief can be administered to urban areas. In what ways do rural families and urbanites have different needs?
In rural areas there are a couple of assumptions that drive the design of aid programs. One is that a family living in the country will oftentimes produce the food it consumes?not buy it. In the country a family generally lives in close proximity to its food sources. A farmer living in rural Ethiopia, for example, will often cultivate all of the food his family needs, selling only if there is a surplus. And rural families affected by a disaster tend to live independently, on their own plot of land or on a rented plot of land in a house with only their nuclear or extended family.

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