SDG11 — Comparative Study of Disaster Management of India and Japan

Written by Chanchal, class 11 (India)

Published in

ASEFEdu (Blog)

7 min readSep 15, 2020

This article is part of our 2020 Sustainable September Campaign. This article is written by a student participant of the School of Active Citizenship Young Leaders Policy Lab (YLPL) programme. Read more about the campaign here!

Sustainable Development Goal 11 — Sustainable Cities & Communities
Target 5 — By 2030, significantly reduce the number of deaths and the number of people affected and substantially decrease the direct economic losses relative to global gross domestic product caused by disasters, including water-related disasters, with a focus on protecting the poor and people in vulnerable situations.

Introduction

A natural disaster is situation where nobody has control. Each year natural disasters kill thousands of people and inflict billions of dollars in economic losses. No nation or community is immune to the damage. There has been an increase in the number of natural disasters over the past years, and with it, increasing losses on account of urbanisation and population growth, as a result of which the impact of natural disasters is now felt to a larger extent. Among all the continents, Asia is considered to be most vulnerable to disasters. Between 1991 and 2000, Asia accounted for as much as 83 percent of the population affected by disasters globally. India is highly prone to natural disasters, and the country has experienced very severe natural disasters at regular intervals.

Let us look into the case of Japan, despite the Japanese Government’s preparedness for high natural disasters, on March 11, 2013, the northeastern part of Japan was severely destroyed by a magnitude 9 earthquake followed by a tsunami (called Tohoku Earthquake). The severity of the disaster was beyond imagination which caused a huge loss of lives and damage to properties. Even with the horrific disasters that have struck Japan linger in our minds, one cannot but wonder what would happen if a similar disaster were to strike India!

The Japanese disaster management, mitigation and community involvement in the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake was proven to be the most successful. Our current report highlights the comparison between the Japanese and the Indian disaster management system and how we can overcome these problems.

In the case of Japan

Japan is a disaster-prone country which suffers from many kinds of natural disasters because of its geographical, topographical, and meteorological conditions. On March 11, 2011, a magnitude-9 earthquake shook northeastern Japan, unleashing a savage tsunami. The effects of the great earthquake were felt around the world, from Norway’s fjords to Antarctica’s ice sheet. Tsunami debris has continued to wash up on North American beaches years later. The latest report from the Japanese National Police Agency confirms 15,899 deaths, 6,157 injured, and 2,529 people missing. Across twenty prefectures, and a report from 2015 indicated 228,863 people are still living away from their home in either temporary housing or due to be permanently relocated.

To cite another example, let us talk about landslides and flooding caused by torrential rain in mid-July 2018, successive heavy downpours in southwestern Japan resulted in widespread, devastating floods and mudflows. As of 20 July, 225 people were confirmed dead across 15 prefectures with a further 13 people reported missing by the Japan Meteorological Agency. More than 8 million people were advised or urged to evacuate across 23 prefectures. It was the deadliest freshwater flood-related disaster in the country since the 1982 Nagasaki flood.

Measures taken to decrease the impact of Natural Disaster in Japan.

Transportation and tourism in eastern Japan were affected for several weeks following the earthquake due to power shortages and damage to infrastructure, but all major airports, train lines and expressways were reopened within two months of the disaster. Sendai, Matsushima, Iwaki and the Sanriku Coast were the only destinations in a nationwide sightseeing guide that suffered considerable damage from the earthquake.

However, even in those respective places, most tourist attractions reopened within a few weeks or months. The Japanese government immediately responded under then existing emergency response systems, which were already quite robust given Japan’s unique geographical location, but was also forced to enact a number of new laws and regulations to expand those systems due to the sheer magnitude of the disasters. Among other innovations, the government created a new system to process debris that involved local governments far removed from the disaster area. A reconstruction agency was created to coordinate various reconstruction efforts and a new tsunami countermeasures law was enacted. Based on post-earthquake assessments of the effectiveness of the existing nuclear regulatory authority, a new nuclear regulatory agency and new standards for nuclear power plants were created.

In the case of India

Among the various types of natural disasters affecting different parts of the country, floods, cyclones, earthquakes and droughts cause maximum damage to life and property; and heat wave, cold wave, avalanches, landslides, firealso take heavy tolls on life and property at regular intervals. Floods are an annual occurrence in India, with little changing in terms of disaster management from year to year. Almost 15% of India is prone to flooding. And annually, 2,000 lives are lost and 80,000 hectares of crop land are damaged at a cost of about INR 180,000,000 by reports from the Times of India.

Mumbai experiences an annual rainfall of about 2,200 millimeters(mm) during the monsoon season between June and September. Since 2004, the average annual rainfall has been more than 2,400mm, with variations in rainfall from the lowest of 1,274 mm recorded at Colaba weather station in 2002 to a maximum of 3,378mm recorded at Santacruz weather station in 2010 (MCGM, 2014). There are a number of days every year when rainfall exceeds 65mm or 135mm per day. Rainfall of 200mm or more per day is also not uncommon during the onset of monsoon. Heavy precipitation and resultant flash floods are, therefore, a regular event in Mumbai.

Flooding is a chronic and recurrent problem throughout the monsoon season. Mumbai’s vulnerability to extreme precipitation was demonstrated on 26 July 2005 when 944mm rainfall occurred in the suburban district within a 24‐hour period. About 200km of road and the airport was submerged in a flood. Local train services, bus services and air traffic came to a complete standstill. Around 2 million people were stranded in transit and another 2.5 million had their houses under water for hours together. Property and assets worth billions of rupees were lost or damaged.

Measures taken to decrease the impact of Natural Disaster in India.

A welcome step in this direction was the setting up of a High Powered Committee on Disaster Management in 1999, which submitted a report in 2001. An important recommendation of the committee was that at least 10 percent of plan funds at the national, state and district levels be earmarked and apportioned for schemes that specifically address areas such as prevention, reduction, preparedness and mitigation of disasters. The Ministry of Home Affairs (Disaster Management Division), National Institute for Disaster Management (New Delhi), Gujarat State Disaster Management Authority (GSDMA), Orissa State Disaster Management Authority (OSDMA), Disaster Mitigation Institute (Ahmedabad) can be seen as initiatives taken in the right direction.

After the 26 July 2005 flood, central government of India gave a support of INR 100,000,000 crores to the state, further assistance was offered as required. Cash assistance was provided to the next of kin of those who died and to the affected. Within Mumbai, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) engaged sanitary teams in collecting garbage and cleaning drains. According to BMC, 100,000 metric tons of garbage has been collected in ten days within Mumbai only. The government of Mumbai’s Maharashtra state set up a committee under Madhav Chitale, former secretary-general of the International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage, to identify preventive measures after 2005 floods, immediately. The resultant report’s proposals ranged from installation of heavy-duty water pumps to the renovation of stormwater drains that date to the British Raj. But the recommendations have not been fully implemented, according to a report published in July by the Mumbai Vikas Samiti, a group of engineers pushing for more effective infrastructure development in the city.

Conclusion

Disaster management is fundamentally a self-motivated process. There has been an increase in natural disasters in recent years that has put pressure on developed as well as developing countries. Natural disasters cannot be prevented but steps can be taken to reduce the adversity of disaster. A realistic attitude to reduce the effect of disasters in the country requires a more extensive approach that comprises both pre-disaster risk reduction and post-disaster recovery. It is framed by new policies and institutional arrangements that support effective action.

In India, the government mostly focuses on rescue and relief operations only, while in the case of Japan it is beyond that. Japan mainly focus on prevention and preparedness. In India, the Government machinery lacks proper training in disaster management, and it is poorly equipped to undertake natural disasters through effective mitigation and preparedness measures. Disasters and their management generally get discussed in their aftermath but practically it should result in planning and preparing the strategy to tackle and mitigate disasters in a responsible and effective manner.

Chanchal is a class 11 student, graduated from Jai Hing English School, Pune. She wants to serve her country and bring a change to people’s lives by eradicating the inequalities that exist across the region.