how to mainstream large-scale disasters?

8/14/2019 How to Mainstream Large-scale Disasters?

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Why? Michel ODIKA

War in Brazzaville (Congo) (1).

War Philosophy: Cogito ergo boom (Susan SONTAG)

Before else, there is no waste of time in life like that of makingexplanations. However, it is no waste of time to remember some things of

crucial importance. Especially noteworthy is the fact that forgotten is forgiven,

according to Scott FITZGERALD.

WARNING It is not catastrophes, murders or diseases that kill itis the way people believe and think(Virginia WOOLF, novelist).

NO MORE WARWar has become a luxury only small nations can afford (Hannah

ARENDT, philosopher).

Not only does war settles nothing, but to win a war is as disastrous as to

lose one (Agatha CHRISTIE, novelist).


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War is never a solution it is always an aggravation (Benjamin

DISRAELI, statesman).

It is by no means self-evident that human beings are most real when

violently excited. Violent physical passions do not in themselves differentiate

men from each other, but tend to reduce them to the same state (Thomas ELIOT,poet and dramatist).

Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a

crime (Ernest HEMINGWAY, novelist).

Force and fraud are in war two cardinal virtues (Thomas HOBBES,

philosopher).

War must never be praised as ennobling mankind, for war is bad in that it

begets more evil than it kills (KANT, philosopher).

War is only a cowardly escape from peace-induced problems (Thomas

MANN, novelist).

War does not determine who is right only who is wrong (Bertrand

RUSSELL, mathematician and philosopher).

Peace is not mere absence of war, but a virtue that springs from a state of

mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice (SPINOZA,

philosopher).

HOPE MESSAGE Believe in life! Always human beings willlive and progress to greater, broader and fuller life (William DUBOIS,

novelist).

1. Photograph by David LUTTENBERGER (American

photographer, Associated Press) Cover illustration of a

French-written book I published a few years ago: Michel

ODIKA, Au plus prs de Brazza, ditions Harmattan (2004),Paris.


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Mainstreaming Large-scale DisastersMichel ODIKA

M ainstreaming disasters basically means addressing the causes and effectsassociated with emergency and crisis situations, so as to mitigate, rather than

to ex acerbate, their environmental and medical impact. For the most part, it

consists in combining and coordinating three approaches, that is: facing the

facts, building a critical mass of capacity for safety, and k eeping up

momentum on prevention.

W hat needs to be done in terms of mainstreaming disasters, ultimately, is to

grasp things at the root, with a constant view to securing the future.

Building a critical mass of capacity for safetyWhat needs to be done to go beyond a paper exercise? When dealing withemergency situations, the best we can do is to think about things as they are, not asthey are said to be. In practical terms, only those who are acquainted with facts can

make a continual addition to their stock of knowledge and experience. Thats in thelast resort the price to pay for preparing the ground and thereby breaking somepotentially dangerous and poisonous myths.Prior to all crisis management, please let us have no illusion that, one fine day, the

world will be permanently preserved from disasters. No, disasters simply rewritethe rules. And to prevail we too must rewrite these rules. However, the foundationsexist to mount responses commensurate with the challenge of better controlling

adverse events facing the world.

Keeping up momentum on preventionEach plan and programme established must become the building block forsustainable strategies to free us, not of disasters as such, but of the damagingconsequences resulting from disasters. At the same time, we have to make thisconceptual leap in our actions and interventions in order to move from the reactiveto the preventive. Success is in sight, but securing it will require that we have thewill, means and knowledge needed to make real headway.

In matter of large-scale disasters, prevention may be best defined as the ability andwillingness to envision the future, so that we can unite connecting and convergingelements to make the years to come as safe as possible. Thus, the global responseto acute environmental disorders must be transformed from an episodic andcrisis-management approach to a thoughtful and long-term response thatemphasizes the use of evidence-based principles.


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Facing the factsWhat does it mean to mainstream large-scale disasters? In short, mainstreamingdisasters is the process that enables free individuals and responsible citizens to address thecauses and effects of acute environmental disorders in an efficient and sustained manner, so as to

mitigate, rather than to ex acerbate, their impact as much as possible. The point, then, is todemonstrate a strong sense of preparedness for what can possibly lie ahead. Why?In many respects, both little anticipation and slow reaction contribute to exacerbatethe impact of catastrophes. Besides being damaging to individuals health anddestructive to human lives, large-scale catastrophes radically differ from what most

people believe. In concrete terms, acute environmental disorders basically stand asa continuum instead of emerging from somewhat a vacuum of latent pre-existing background problems. In other words, evident and violent growingdifficulties of the moment must be dealt with anyway. But permanent underlying

difficulties are originally difficulties of every moment Clearly difficulties must bedivided in as many parts as is necessary and useful to overcome them.

As a result of lessons learned from major catastrophes across the world, greater

emphasis is now placed on lack, or simply absence, of any appropriate preventionpolicy when required. Another fact to be aware of is that humanitarian emergenciesdo not in themselves generate problems. We should rather assume exactly this: aswell as revealing and/ or worsening background problems, major emergencies

degenerate in exacerbated troubles, since they are no more than amplified andintensified reflects of the global environment in which human beings live. Still,their magnitude tend to increase in inverse proportion to the quality of prevention

strategies implemented in normal time.

What else? What we call health, whether in normal condition or in exceptionalsituation, is nothing else than the precarious attainment of balance and relevancein intensely mobile flux to which things human are permanently subject. Such is, in

summary, the key message to promote in order to better control violentenvironmental fluctuations once they happen

Doctor Michel ODIKAContact e-mail: [email protected]

how to mainstream large-scale disasters?

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