An Ambassador’s Lessons in Engaging Science for Disaster Reduction
By Ambassador Scott DeLisi
Science and the use of scientific evidence must increasingly be a part of the toolbox that diplomats and policy-makers must use to drive solutions to the problems in their communities, countries, and the world. At the AAAS Center for Science Diplomacy, we are encouraged at the number of senior-level diplomats who understand this reality and we seek to highlight practical examples from their experiences through a new series here on Medium. This post by Ambassador Scott DeLisi describes his experiences using input from the scientific and engineering communities to develop policies for risk management when he was the U.S. Ambassador to Nepal and Uganda — an ideal piece to kick off our “Diplomat’s Corner” series.
When I joined the United States Foreign Service in 1981, advances in science and technology were something to marvel at but little did I know they would become integral components of my work in diplomacy. Earth sciences, life sciences, medicine, and climatology all would help diplomats find answers and shape policy initiatives in a changing landscape where we confronted new challenges and threats that had not, in the past, been on the radar screen of the typical Foreign Service Officer.
I went to Nepal as Ambassador in 2010, a few short months after the disastrous earthquake in Haiti. More than 230,000 people died in that quake and its aftermath. The world saw the trauma, the devastation, and the families in despair. Our hearts were touched and the global community asked, “What can we do? How can we help?” Donations flooded in. People responded. And that was the right thing to do.
I felt the pain of the survivors in Haiti as did anyone who paid attention. But it also occurred to me that if we truly care, if we feel called to respond when we see such suffering and devastation, the time to act isn’t after tens of thousands are dead and hundreds of thousands injured and homeless. The time to act is now.
That understanding convinced me that disaster risk reduction and preparedness had to be central to my engagement in Nepal as Ambassador, I consulted with the geoscientists who came to Nepal and worked with us as the U.S. mission sought to identify vulnerabilities, fault lines, and stressors. We placed monitors, installed earthquake alarms, and drew on their expertise to inform and educate our staff, the resident American community, and officials of the Government of Nepal about earthquake and other natural disaster risk.
The time to act isn’t after tens of thousands are dead and hundreds of thousands injured and homeless. The time to act is now.
At the embassy we understood that every step we take to educate people, to make their homes and schools safer, and to build capacity before disasters strike will save lives. But we also knew that we must complement disaster preparedness with carefully conceived plans for disaster response. Plans need to be exercised and refined; caches of water, food, medicine, shelter materials, and fuel, must be prepositioned. And, as was clear during the earthquakes in 2015, the communication infrastructure is also vital. Developing the capacity to ensure access to, and sharing of, information is another first order requirement.
In preparing for an earthquake, I came to realize that our diplomatic engagement was much more than just about preparedness for one disaster. Flooding was an annual calamity that the Nepalese people seemed to accept as a given rather than as a threat that could be managed and mitigated. And to the lowland flooding that was so commonplace, we had to add the risks posed by glacial outburst flooding in the Himalayas — a problem exacerbated by global warming and no less dangerous than floods on the plains that bordered India.
The U.S. embassy team turned to experts in civil and mechanical engineering as we assessed the safety of the homes our staff lived in, our facilities, and local hospitals or the survivability of airfields and other key infrastructure in the event of a quake. We consulted software engineers, computer scientists, and information technology experts from the Nepali diaspora to develop innovative approaches to communications and coordination in the post-disaster environment.
These partnerships informed our policy choices and provided the foundational knowledge that buttressed my arguments for additional resources, higher safety standards, and new approaches to risk reduction. After the Haiti earthquake, President Obama called for new thinking saying, “no more Haitis.” Armed with a new understanding of the threat, and a greater appreciation for what could actually be done to make a difference, Embassy Katmandu got the support we needed to rethink our approaches to the complementary issues of risk reduction/preparedness and disaster response.
Disaster preparedness and response still is central to my current work in Nepal as Executive Director of the Soarway Foundation. At Soarway, we hope to work with partners to develop mobile apps that can be used on various platforms as part of an effort to save lives through readily accessible risk reduction education and preparedness programs.
In Uganda, where I served as Ambassador after Nepal, the lessons learned from Nepal about the nexus between applied science and managing risk guided me as we confronted the challenges of bringing an HIV/AIDS epidemic that once posed an existential threat to the nation’s future firmly under control.
We faced the daunting risks of outbreaks of Ebola and Marburg virus, applying the best practices in medical science to transform potential disasters into worrisome but manageable concerns. Diplomacy alone could not fix under-funded health systems that lacked proper safeguards for handling biologically hazardous samples or ensure a safe blood supply across the nation. But by drawing on the expertise of doctors and public health teams we could identify the risks and how to best address them.
The AIDS response in Uganda contended with local and sometimes international leaders whose understanding of how to manage malaria, HIV, or other health challenges were rooted in outdated medical thinking or, at times medical myths.
But with scientific evidence to guide our own thinking, we could shape policies and articulate narratives that helped Uganda to make progress.
Applying science to yet another critical policy issue improved the ability of the U.S. to contribute to Uganda’s agricultural development. American farmers and ranchers shared with Ugandan counterparts the manner in which modern agricultural science continues to transform agriculture in America and how it could do the same in Uganda.
Thirty-five years ago the risks to our oceans, air, and the earth itself were issues environmentalists tackled but were not yet part of an Ambassador’s portfolio. Ambassadors might have responded to natural disasters, but did far less to forestall them. Today these problems are front and center on a diplomat’s radar screen. Diplomats must think more creatively, build new partnerships and draw on all the tools available to us as we seek to grow global economies, create new jobs, and protect the planet for the generations to come.
Diplomats will need, as we always have, to find paths for dialogue and cooperation rather than conflict. We will need to build international awareness and find ways for the global community of nations — friend and foe alike — to manage these issues as we seek solutions.
As we already have seen, scientific achievement in a range of disciplines will help us to find those solutions. Diplomats don’t need to be scientists to find ways to weave scientific thinking and advances into our narratives or to find the path forward. But we do need to recognize that an expanded engagement with the scientific community is critical to informing our understanding of complex issues that confront us and to help us shape policy and design programs that advance our interests and our values.
The challenges of our changing world are too great to hope that this will happen by chance or when compelled by necessity. We must instead build platforms for shared engagement as part of a deliberate and thoughtful effort to strengthen this partnership for the good of our nation and, I would argue, the planet.
A 34-year career foreign service officer, Scott DeLisi served as United States Ambassador to Uganda, Nepal and Eritrea and Deputy Chief of Mission of the American Embassy in Botswana. He also served in India, Madagascar, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka as well as Washington D.C. Retired from the Department of State in 2016, Ambassador DeLisi is Executive Director of the Soarway Foundation whose focus is disaster risk reduction and preparedness in Nepal. He is a graduate of the University of Minnesota and the University of Minnesota Law School
