A global review of disaster reduction initiatives - Welcome to the ...

The PRECLIF Project for the Local Preventionand Control of Forest Fires is a complementaryproject to the government-sponsored programme,which promotes improved preventionand control of forest fires at the local level,employing local techniques in risk management.Project activities train members of the local communitiesto implement measures that can reducethe risk of fires, working closely in conjunctionwith the official municipal committees in chargeof forest fires. The project has also supportedother activities to strengthen community organizationssuch as the establishment of a radio networkthat links six rural communities to theNational Coordinating Agency for Disaster Reductionin Guatemala, (CONRED). A communitynetwork for Central America for risk management(Red Comunitaria para la Gestion de Riesgo)was involved in the implementation at communitylevel.This spirit of cooperation and expanded professionalactivities that have characterized the PRE-CLIF Project have also encouraged new and usefulrelationships between the Global Fire MonitoringCentre at the Max Planck Institute of Chemistry inFreiburg, Germany and the Guatemalan institutionsinvolved with forest fire prevention and control.Professional visits have been exchanged, and asuccessful workshop was held in Peten to shareexperiences on the topics of forest fire prevention,management, and control.Selected application of disaster reduction measuresprotect community water systems. Locally generateddata will be digitised and used to generate hazardand risk maps that can be displayed in the ruralcommunities and thereby contribute to the formulationof emergency plans for local communities.In addition to providing basic early warning equipmentand training local emergency committees in 19communities, PREVOL has been able to assistCIMDEN by improving its methods and abilities toconduct volcanic surveillance. This has included thesupply of additional scientific instrumentation tocomplement efforts already underway by the NationalSeismic, Volcanic, Meteorological and HydrologicalInstitute of Guatemala and academic interests to monitorvolcanic activity at Pacaya volcano.The partnership has emphasized the crucial role oflinking activities in disaster-prone areas with theinterests of the national disaster reduction agency toencourage risk reduction. In this respect, all of theoperations in PREVOL have been conducted bypersonnel from the Risk Management Departmentof CONRED, ranging from the installation ofequipment, local community organization and training,and the design of risk reduction measures. Similarly,with respect to the sustainability of the project,a priority has been placed on developing and supportingthe capabilities of national institutions, inparticular those of the CONRED Risk ManagementDepartment.5There are three active volcanoes in Guatemala,and several communities have established themselveson the slopes of two of them. Project PRE-VOL is an effort to strengthen the disaster reductionactivities conducted by the Risk ManagementDepartment of CONRED, and the national Centrefor Disaster Research and Mitigation (CIMDEN)that works to reduce the risks from volcanic hazards.Both CONRED and CIMDEN have beenimplementing activities to promote preparednessfor possible eruptions of Pacaya and Fuego volcanoes.With the support of the Humanitarian Officeof the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Germany,PREVOL has sought to expand those activities toimprove the conditions of both disaster preparednessand risk reduction.Resources furthered the assessment of local vulnerabilitiesand the use of locally generated informationto manage risks at the community level.They are being used to increase the resilience ofexisting structures such as hanging bridges and toCross-sectoral coordination andcollaborationA positive example of an implementation partnershipis Project Impact, promoted by the American FederalEmergency Management Agency (FEMA) in the lateryears of the 1990s. Project Impact was designed tochange the way the U.S. deals with risks before disastersoccur. Each community that participated inthe programme was required to undertake a preliminaryassessment of its natural hazard risks and toprepare a tentative strategy for reducing its long termvulnerability, drawing heavily on both multi-disciplinaryand intersectoral partnership capabilities of thecommunity itself. FEMA then offered technicalexpertise and some financial support as well asinvolving other federal agencies or neighbouringstates in the process.The objective of the programme was to put the latesttechnology and mitigation practices into the hands oflocal communities and to guide these local initiatives249