World Disasters Report 2010 - International Federation of Red Cross ...

CHAPTER 7
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much they contribute to reducing everyday risks and to their understanding of how
vulnerability factors are embedded in the local development process.
In Latin America, over the last 20 years, a network of academics and practitioners
from different countries and institutions has promoted new approaches to disaster risk
management which stressed disaster risk reduction, local action and local government
responsibility, and worked with vulnerable groups to understand and address disaster
risk. Much of this work has been promoted directly or indirectly by La Red de Estudios
Sociales en Prevención de Desastres en America Latina (Network of social studies in disaster
prevention in Latin America).
Many nations in Latin America now have well-established institutional structures
to support disaster risk reduction. In addition to the Colombian and Nicaraguan
systems mentioned above, other nations have focused on broadening national emergency
systems. For example, Peru’s national system and its civil protection committee,
both of which are emergency response structures, focus on capacity building,
training and awareness-raising. In El Salvador, many associations of municipalities or
micro-regions exist, for example, the association for land-use planning in the Jiboa
Valley.
Associations and networks of local governments have also been created to unite efforts
in addressing risk reduction. After Hurricane Mitch in Honduras, the municipalities
of La Masica, Arizona, Esparta, San Francisco and El Porvenir established an association,
MAMUCA (Community of central Atlántida municipalities), to unite efforts
and create a platform for dialogue and cooperation in preparing for extreme events and
coordinating local response. This helped shift national disaster management systems to
community level. It involved participatory diagnosis and planning, awareness- raising,
prioritizing strategic reconstruction activities and participating in local decision-
making through public meetings. MAMUCA also became involved in the national
and regional disaster risk management systems, which helped improve evacuations
during storms, through community-based disaster reduction practices, and encouraged
the formation of local emergency committees integrated with municipal, regional and
national emergency committees. The municipal emergency committees are chaired by
the mayors and include representatives of the local council and local institutions, such
as the police, the fire department and the Red Cross.
It is still difficult to get national programmes and networks to support local action
and encourage coordination between local governments. Risk reduction needs to be
promoted and supported in most sectors of local government and coordinated between
them – no easy task institutionally. Reviews on the actions, programmes and structures
set up after Hurricane Mitch show mixed results in terms of how they managed to
embed disaster risk within local development and thus address the structural causes of
vulnerability.