Linked Cultures: Breaking out of the 'Disaster Management Rut'

The author, Ilan Kelman, uses the tragedy of a Tamil Nadu school fire to highlight the lack of safety standards leading to "more general, endemic, and unnecessary vulnerabilities that to some extent plague all countries." He suggests that the pattern of a disaster management cycle "alternating between pre-disaster activities, including mitigation and preparedness, and post-disaster activities like response and recovery, is more of a 'disaster management rut'". He suggests that risk reduction should become a norm in the continuing development and sustainability processes.

Kelman states that localised implementation means that local conditions are understood, and local concerns can be expressed, resulting in the adaptation of the action planning. "Individuals can then be motivated to change their behaviour, to spread the message and unofficially monitor, evaluate and enforce desired policies and actions." He envisions the role of national governments as offering wider and higher-level support to inform localities of preferred policies and actions, to supply necessary resources, and to provide an external evaluator, adding impetus to the local efforts. "National agendas, guidance and operational support for linking disaster-risk reduction, development and sustainability would provide strategic direction and promote consistency."

The author promotes more global approaches for supporting small countries in sustainable disaster planning and for preparing for larger global-scale events, such as monitoring near-Earth objects (asteroids or comets that might strike the planet) or geological events leading to extensive tsunami. This scale of pooling information on global changes also applies to climate change and ozone depletion.

The simultaneity of working at the local, governmental, and international level could provide checks and balances on corruption, disinterest, and offences that might impact long-term goals. Education is a field in which the document suggests an interface between development and disaster risk reduction. Teaching children to think and act before a disaster event can incorporate simple and effective ways to make communities sustainable and safer. The children can disseminate classroom information to their families and bring the concepts with them into adulthood in the workforce, in policy making, and in their behaviours. An example in the document of local message dissemination based in school is a play written and performed by children in Fiji that carries a Millennium Development Goal message into the community.

The author concludes that if these kinds of local-level "messaging" incorporate personal gains (e.g., personal safety), people will act on them locally for better preparedness, rather than waiting for an event to inspire action. As development and sustainability move forward, they will move forward with disaster-risk reduction behaviours more locally ingrained.