Disaster Risk Reduction in School Curricula: Case Studies ... - Unicef

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Section 3.
Disaster Risk Reduction in the Curriculum
the potentially diversionary nature of de-coupled co-curricular
approaches while at the same time understanding the appeal
of the ‘low hanging fruit' of the co-curricular route when faced
with a crowded and unyielding curriculum. As the fields of
environmental education and education for sustainable
development have frequently witnessed, the co- or extracurricular
initiative can serve as a diversion and distraction
from negotiating the steep, often jagged slopes of curriculum
change. The call for student engagement with the community
from within the DRR curriculum necessarily involves a bringing
together of the curricular and co-curricular.
A leitmotif in this brief curriculum overview is the relative
dearth of comprehensive and systematic approaches to the
integration of DRR into the school curriculum. Some further
points might be made in this regard.
First and foremost, a great deal of DRR curriculum is limited
to exploring the basic science of environmental hazards before
moving on to instruction in safety measures. Often missing
is systematic coverage of the hazard, its prevention, mitigation,
and, finally, preparedness to confront it. Moreover, addressing
the coverage of and preparedness for the hazard without
considering its prevention and mitigation is insufficient. Understanding
the science of a hazard alone does not develop the
propensity for pro-action, while focusing exclusively on safety
without examining prevention and mitigation implies the inevitability
of what is to happen. Attention is therefore diverted from
the social, economic and political dimensions of disasters,
and from addressing vulnerabilities and building resilience.
In other words, a basic disaster risk equation is not generally
being followed through on in any systematic way in the
development of curriculum and lesson materials, i.e.,
Disaster Risk = Natural Hazard x Vulnerability
Capacity of Societal System
(UNESCO/UNEP, 2011, 63).
A curriculum that aims to build 'proactivity' in those facing risks
must explore locality and community as well as wider societal,
economic and political structures and dynamics through the
inversely complementary lenses of vulnerability and resilience.
Second, in the cases reviewed DRR curricula vary in the range
of hazards they opt to address. Most countries focus upon the
natural hazards that are closest to their experience. For example,
Kazakhstan covers earthquakes, fires, flows, landslides and
floods; Cambodia focuses primarily on floods while also covering
volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, hurricanes, drought and
deforestation; the British Virgin Islands cover landslides,
hurricanes, earthquakes and volcanic activity (case studies 3,
6, 19). On the other hand, a number of countries bring natural
hazard and human induced and technological hazards together
in their DRR curricula. For example, Lao PDR and Madagascar
include, respectively, civil unrest and malnutrition alongside
natural disasters, while New Zealand’s programme stretches
to ‘non-natural disasters’ such as pandemics, biohazards,
terrorist bombs and threats (case studies 9, 14, 18).
In Western and Central Africa, there has been ongoing interest
in conflating natural disaster-related DRR education with education
against conflict, which has been termed ‘DRR-plus’
(UNICEF, 2011) and ‘conflict and disaster risk reduction
(C/DRR)’ (UNESCO IIEP & UNICEF WCARO, 2011). Nigeria’s
emerging DRR curriculum framework reflects this trend by
including civil unrest (case study 30).
Disaster Risk Reduction in School Curricula: Case Studies from Thirty Countries