OPINION> Commentary
Time for Asian system to fight back disasters
By Liu Junhong (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-06-04 07:57

The Wenchuan earthquake in Sichuan province caused tremendous losses to China and drew widespread concern from nations not just in Asia but other parts of the world as well. Several countries, including Japan and Russia, sent emergency rescue and medical teams to the disaster area while the international community provided relief materials as well as cash donations.

Disaster relief has become a common humanitarian cause of the whole world as the era of increasing interdependency calls for an international disaster relief and reduction system that covers the whole of Asia.

Natural disasters never respect national boundaries, nor do they observe social systems, nationalities, religions or ideologies. For quite a long period of time after World War II, however, international cooperation in disaster relief largely took the form of bilateral aid. Though international organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO), UNESCO and institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have played an important role in organizing, coordinating and directly participating in many international emergency relief efforts over the decades, an extensive international disaster relief system was nowhere to be found until the mid-1990s, when international cooperation in disaster relief led by the UN finally headed toward constructing such a system.

In 1994 the first World conference on disaster reduction, organized by the UN, was held in Yokohama, Japan, and put forward a "Yokohama Strategy" aimed at prevention before disasters occur and building a strong society afterwards. The concept symbolized international efforts in disaster prevention and relief began moving toward systemization.

On January 18, 2005, the second world conference on disaster reduction began in Kobe, Japan, as relief efforts were in full swing for tsunami-hit nations such as Indonesia and the host nation Japan marked the 10th anniversary of the Hanshin earthquake. Almost 4,000 representatives of 168 countries and regions attended the gathering.

The conference proposed the Hyogo Declaration, which embodies the philosophy of global disaster reduction, and worked out the Hyogo Action Plan - a 10-year scheme for international cooperation in disaster relief. It is worth noting that the Japanese government and the UN together called for setting up an international disaster reduction institution focused on long-term support for post-disaster reconstruction. It would join the WHO center in Kobe, which was born in response to the Hanshin earthquake, as an international disaster reduction cooperation base.

The new international disaster reduction institution would formulate effective long-term international disaster prevention and reduction measures. It would also provide intellectual support for the construction of a global disaster prevention and reduction system by hiring experts from all over the world to collect useful data at the scenes of disasters and conduct scientific research on the spot.

As a matter of fact, China has also played an active role in pushing for an international disaster prevention and reduction system. In august 2007, the third world conference on disaster reduction was held in Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang province in Northeast China. It was jointly organized by the Ministry of Water Resources and the UNESCO. An international exhibition of rescue technology and equipment was held on the side of the conference and served as a venue for international exchanges on disaster prevention and reduction cooperation. The conference took the philosophy of international cooperation in disaster reduction to another level, implemented the disaster reduction strategy adopted at the 2005 Kobe conference and advanced the construction of an international cooperation-based disaster reduction system.

In view of international aid for cyclone-battered Myanmar last month, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) foreign ministers' emergency meeting last month came up with the idea of forming an ASEAN disaster relief system with conditional openness. It was seen as another way to construct a regional disaster prevention and reduction system.

From a regional point of view, Asia is one of the regions in the world hit most frequently by natural disasters due to its vast area and long coastlines with a wide range of climatic as well as geographical features. In the past decade or so in particular, the region's tectonic plates have shown heightened activities with the number of earthquakes and tsunamis on the rise; while extreme weather conditions such as floods, droughts and blizzards often caught people by surprise. Accompanied by epidemic and communal diseases and even the plague, natural disasters have become a new threat to Asia's prosperity. The construction of a regional cooperative system of disaster prevention and reduction is now more urgent than ever.

In the Asian region Japan is a country that faces frequent earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis and typhoons. It is also one of the few developed nations in the region with a rich experience and knowledge in dealing with natural calamities through decades of practice, which forms an important part of the common know-how on disaster prevention and reduction for the region.

Following the massive earthquake that struck Wenchuan in Sichuan province on May 22, Japan's seismic department immediately provided relevant data to China to confirm the accuracy of the latter's own, while the Japanese government took the lead in sending professional rescue and medical teams to the disaster area in Sichuan. Other Asian countries soon offered their support in a deluge of humanitarian gestures. This shows there is real possibility that Asia can build up a region-wide disaster prevention and reduction system based on mutual support and cooperation.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao suggested to the Japanese government at the high-level meeting on relief efforts for tsunami-ravaged Indonesia in early 2005 that China and Japan should step up cooperation on disaster prevention and reduction in the region. Then Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi expressed his support for Wen's proposal.

Today, as the strategic relationship of mutual benefit has become the dominant theme of the China-Japan relations, it will no doubt serve the common interest of the whole Asian region to construct a regional disaster monitoring and reporting system based on economic and environmental cooperation.

The author is a researcher with China Institute of Contemporary International Relations

(China Daily 06/04/2008 page8)