THE DISASTER SITUATION 
 

The Latin American context of disaster occurrence*

The Andean Strategy was conceived as a way to respond to the disaster risk in the Andean Community.  The countries in the Andean subregion are among the Latin American countries in general that have experienced a disproportionate number of disasters in recent years, which have taken a heavy social and economic toll.  Between 1900 and 1999, 1,309 natural disasters --or 19% of the world’s disasters-- were recorded in Latin America and the Caribbean, placing the region second after Asia (44%) in disaster occurrence.  A total of 972 disasters struck the region between 1970 and 1999 and are estimated to have caused the deaths of 227,000 people, leaving approximately eight million homeless and affecting nearly 148 million indirectly.  The annual average cost of these disasters over the past 30 years has been estimated at between US$ 700 million and US$ 3.3 billion.

Table1. Andean Region. Basic Statistics. 2003

Source: Macroeconomic Information system – IMACRO- Andean Community General Secretariat                 Preliminary official data.
* Official data supplied by the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses of Ecuador – INEC.

The Andean Subregion, made up of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela, with an area of 4,745,891 square kilometers and a population of 119 million people producing an annual GDP of 274 billion dollars, presents one of the most complex risk panoramas. 

The greater part of the risks can be attributed mainly to vulnerabilities created by the Andean countries’ development models. The Subregion is highly prone to earthquakes, landslides, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions because its territory rests on three active tectonic plates (Nazca, South American and Caribbean plates) and it is situated within the Pacific “Ring of Fire” where 80% of the world’s seismic and volcanic activity takes place and where the relief shaping process gives rise to active geological faults and fractures.

The threats looming over the Andean Subregion are closely associated with the natural phenomena that created it and that modeled its landscape.  In fact, the Andes have been heavily eroded, leading to the deposit of sediments on the outer slopes or in the interandean valleys, favored living places because of their bountiful resources, particularly the presence of water and fertile soil (instable, for the most part), which come together to increase the risk of disasters due to the Subregion’s existing and created vulnerabilities. 

The Subregion is also the site of extreme climates that take the form of successive and lengthy droughts, floods and strong winds, combined with climate anomalies with differing causes that affect various parts of the Andean territory.  The recent climate changes appear to have worsened the changeability of the climate in the subregion by augmenting the torrential rainfalls and creating more frequent and stronger occurrences of the El Niño and La Niña phenomena that have brought on flooding and droughts.  It is also assumed that an increase in the Earth’s temperature would raise the sea level, placing coastal areas at risk by making them more vulnerable to flooding. 

The economic losses in the subregion produced by El Niño in 1997 and 1998, for example, are estimated at 7.5 billion dollars, and over the past five years each of the Andean countries has suffered at least one severe disaster.

Source: CAF

Common subregional characteristics of the risk situation

The similarity of risk situations is another characteristic that reinforces the countries’ subregional identity.  Similar processes of resource use and territorial settlement and development patterns from the Prehispanic cultures to the present day have produced a like range of distinguishing vulnerabilities among the societies of the subregional countries.

Minor disasters that do not often make the headlines frequently occur throughout the Latin American countries, with cumulative effects that are often more damaging than most of the major disasters.  Although disasters directly affect the people living in the disaster area most heavily, they also generally have repercussions of one sort or another on the country’s entire population.  In fact, the effects are sometimes even felt in other subregional countries (migrations, reduced demand for imports, interruption of communications, vector transmission, etc.).

Territorial settlement and development processes and inadequate resource management: determinants of the risk level in the Subregion

The Andean Strategy for Disaster Prevention and Relief has emerged from the need to reduce the level of the subregion’s characteristic disaster risks.  The presence of a wide range of physical phenomena, the frequency of their occurrence and the extreme vulnerability of the human settlements have effectively determined the existence of risks resulting from natural and/or antropical events. 

In addition to the threats/dangers arising from the subregion’s location and its climate, factors associated with socioeconomic vulnerabilities heavily increase the risk or probability of damage. 

The factors that contribute most heavily to the subregion’s vulnerability are the patterns of settlement on fragile soil, the poor quality of dwellings and infrastructure, environmental degradation, the lack of effective risk reduction strategies and the type of economic activities performed and their management. 

Due to the rapid demographic growth and the increase in population density in the Andean subregion over the past three decades, the numbers of people and of elements exposed to the same threats/dangers have increased.   

This dynamic has targeted the cities, which are physically, functionally and economically more vulnerable to those threats because of the concentration of the population and goods and the heavy dependence on public utilities and food distribution systems.  Furthermore, emergency relief in a medium-sized or large city is extremely complex because of the large demand for resources and the preparation needed for their handling.  The Andean capital cities are generally located in areas with a medium-to-high seismic risk.  A case in point is Lima, which has suffered six major earthquakes since 1856; at the same time, its population has increased twelve-fold since 1940, the date of the last major earthquake.   

Areas with high population densities, resulting from urbanization and migratory patterns, tend to be located in coastal areas, areas with geological faults and/or environmentally fragile areas.  In Peru, for example, 73% of the country’s inhabitants currently live in coastal areas no more than 80 kilometers from the ocean, which are more susceptible to El Niño and other phenomena, as compared with 54% thirty years ago.   

Because of accelerated population growth and rural migration, most cities have grown haphazardly, without any planning, construction codes or appropriate regulations to ensure that land use is adapted to the physical environment.  Over the past thirty years, the majority of the population of the Andean subregion has moved from the countryside to the cities, where 75% of the people now live and 79% will reside in 2015.  Colonization, uncontrolled migration and forced displacement have brought with them the spread of poor neighborhoods onto land with little economic value in areas prone to threats/dangers.  It is not surprising, then, that shantytowns built on seized lands are the most strongly affected by adverse events. 

The poor quality of the dwellings prompted by uncontrolled construction and the spread of poverty only compounds the effects of natural phenomena. Poor households, generally speaking, in addition to having no economic access to better housing conditions, also have no access to information that will enable them to obtain better housing; as a result, they lack knowledge about and the technical skills for appropriate construction, and the necessary income to deal with unstable land and to drain off sewage and ground water, among other things. 

At the same time, local authorities monitor only a minimum percentage of the dwellings built every year to ensure that they comply with construction standards.  When such standards exist, they are either unknown or not complied with, even by companies that work in the formal construction sector and enterprises that are responsible for public infrastructure.  In this way, illegality, corruption and the indifference of authorities to building standards have opened the way for risk to proliferate. 

Inadequate management and indiscriminate use of natural resources, by turning habitats that in the past had been safe into areas subject to new threats and vulnerabilities, have been largely responsible for the current risk situation.  Activities like deforestation, agriculture and uncontrolled mining have caused environmental damage and created risks.  Some 90% of the forested hectares that are deforested every year in the Andean subregion are the result of unsustainable agricultural practices. 

Environmental degradation brought about by production activities and land settlement and development processes helps turn natural phenomena into disasters.  The deforestation of hydrographic basins, the absence of soil conservation programs and inappropriate land use exacerbate the risk of flooding and landslides in the Andean subregion today. Attention should be drawn to the fact that the occupation of fragile ecosystems, the performance of inappropriate agricultural activities or the construction of rural roads on unstable slopes --to cite only a few examples-- alter the water regulation capacity of basins and touch off heavy erosion and land removal. 

Together with geologically- and hydrometeorologically-related risks, there are antropic risks associated with industrial, technological and sanitary processes; fires, oil and gas spills, chemical pollution, epidemics, and crises in areas where masses of people are present are just some of the examples of these antropic risks. National development has boosted the proliferation of this series of events.   

In short, the development pattern followed by the Andean countries, accompanied by high levels of poverty, socioeconomic exclusion and environmental deterioration is a determinant of the extreme vulnerability and, as a result, of the risk of natural and antropic threats. 

Limited social and institutional capacity to reduce vulnerabilities and face uncontrolled risks

Although the Andean subregion is continuing to internalize the new perspective about the social responsibility for creating disasters, as can be seen from the formation of CAPRADE with the participation of representatives of civil defense, Planning Ministries or institutions that perform that function and Ministries of Foreign Affairs, multisector public risk policies are seen to be weak and institutional development planning processes fragile. 

The lack of appropriate medium- and long-term planning in the development and investment projects and actions of the region’s countries that incorporates an understanding of the limits and possibilities determined by the geography and the risk conditions is one of the major weaknesses of the public policies and institutional development for risk reduction in the subregion. 

Infrastructure like roads, public utilities, hospitals and schools is frequently built without incorporating the necessary safety conditions.  At the same time, production activities like agriculture, stock breeding and mining have become increasingly susceptible to the phenomena and often create risk conditions. 

The El Niño phenomenon of 1982/83 and 1997/98 revealed just how vulnerable the development sectors are, as can been noted in the ECLAC and CAF studies of its socioeconomic impacts. 

Sector losses due to the El Niño phenomenon, 1997 1998

Source. ECLAC, CAF. Evaluation of the Impacts of the El Niño Phenomenon, 1997 1998.

Although the countries in the subregion do have disaster prevention and relief policies, the application of these policies is deficient.  Poorly funded state research institutions that have little coordination with potential users hold the key responsibility for knowledge about the threats and vulnerabilities.   Furthermore, the academic and research sector shows little inclination to develop future professionals and citizens wit