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THOUSANDS IN NEED AFTER NEPAL QUAKE

April 27, 2015

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Photo: UN Photo/ Stuart Price

Photo: UN Photo/ Kibae Park 3

Youth to lead Africa’s Urbanization 8

Thousands in needafter Nepal quake4

Keeping cities cool with electric vehicles 10

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Photo: “Nepal Earthquake 2015 01” by Krish Dulal

Licensed under CC By-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Com-mons

Nepal quake leaves thousands indesperate need of help

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Tens of thousands of frightened Nepalese huddled in tents desperate for help Mon-day, two days after a quake killed more than

3,200 people, as international rescue teams with sniffer dogs raced to find survivors buried in the rubble.

Teams equipped with heavy cutting gear and re-lief supplies were landing round the clock at the country’s only international airport on the out-skirts of Kathmandu, which has been devastated by Saturday’s 7.8 magnitude quake.

Officials say more than 3,300 people are now known to have died, including 3,218 in Nepal -- making it the quake-prone Himalayan nation’s deadliest disaster in more than 80 years.

Families, the sick and elderly packed into parks and other open spaces in Kathmandu after los-ing their houses, with others too terrified of after-shocks to return home.

“This is a nightmare, why don’t these aftershocks stop?” asked 70-year-old Sanu Ranjitkar, clutch-ing her dog and with an oxygen mask strapped to her face, sitting under a tarpaulin.

With just sheets of plastic to protect them from the cold and rain, many said they were desperate for aid and information on what to do next.

“There is just too much fear and confusion,” said Bijay Sreshth, as he tried to listen to a radio in the hope of hearing a message from the government.

“We don’t know what to do next or for how much longer we are here,” said Sreshth, who fled to a

park with his three children, wife and mother when the quake hit.

A government official said tonnes of clean water and other essential supplies were needed for the survivors as well as stepped up search and rescue efforts outside the capital.

“We need more helicopters for our rescue opera-tions in rural areas,” home minister spokesman Laxmi Prasad Dhakal told AFP.

“We also need supplies of essential goods such as food and clean water to provide relief for survi-vors,” he said.

Saturday’s earthquake also killed around 90 peo-ple in neighbouring countries, including at least 67 in India and 20 in China.

It triggered an avalanche on Mount Everest, the world’s highest mountain, which buried part of base camp and killed at least 18 people.

And aftershocks set off fresh avalanches on the mountain Sunday even as helicopters evacuated some of those worst injured the day before.

Hundreds of mountaineers had gathered at Ever-est at the start of the annual climbing season, and the real scale of the disaster there has been im-possible to evaluate with communications all but cut off.

“We have deployed three helicopters today to bring climbers down from camp one and two. They are safe but we need to bring them down because part of the route is damaged,” tourism department head Tulsi Gautam said.

“It is possible that climbing might not continue this year. However, there has been no official deci-sion.”

- ‘Why do we suffer?’ -

Reconstruction efforts in impoverished Nepal could cost than $5 billion, or around 20 percent of the country’s GDP, according to Rajiv Biswas, Asia Pacific chief economist at business research firm IHS.

Much of the historic centre of the capital Kath-

“This is a night-mare, why don’t these aftershocks stop?”

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mandu is in ruins. The situation for survivors has been exacerbated by power cuts and the country’s cell phone network is at breaking point.

“I don’t know why the gods want us to suffer like this,” said 34-year-old shopkeeper Rabi Shrestha as he camped out on the roadside.

Announcing the latest death toll in Nepal, a top disaster official said that emergency crews would also step up their efforts to rescue those trapped in the rubble of high-rise buildings which pan-caked on Saturday.

“Our efforts today will also be focused on finding survivors in areas where big buildings have col-lapsed,” Rameshwor Dangal, who heads the home ministry’s national disaster management division,

“Our efforts to-day will also be focused on find-ing survivors in areas where big buildings have col-lapsed,”told AFP.

The historic nine-storey Dharahara tower, a ma-jor tourist attraction, was among the buildings brought down in Kathmandu Saturday.

Police said around 150 people were thought to have been in the tower at the time of the disaster, based on ticket sales.

“At least 30 dead bodies have been pulled out. We don’t have a number on the rescued but over 20 injured were helped out,” local police official Bishwa Raj Pokharel told AFP.

“We haven’t finished our work there, rescue work is still continuing.”

Home ministry spokesman Dhakal said the gov-ernment was also stepping up efforts to help re-mote areas closer to the epicentre of the quake.

- Food and blankets -

The Nepalese rescuers were being joined by hun-dreds of foreign aid workers from countries such as China, India and the United States.

Around 70 US aid workers, along with rescue dogs, headed to Nepal aboard a military transport plane which flew from Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

The European Commission released three mil-lion euros ($3.25 million) in emergency aid for Nepal which will help fund clean water, medicine, emergency shelter and telecommunications in the worst-affected areas.

India meanwhile flew in 13 military transport planes loaded with tonnes of food, blankets and other aid.

Hospitals have been overwhelmed by the disaster, with morgues overflowing and medics having to work through the night to cope with an endless stream of victims suffering trauma or multiple fractures.

Some surgeons have been operating from make-shift theatres set up in parking lots, with the after-shocks making patients too scared to stay inside.

Around a dozen dead bodies had to be placed on the floor at Bir Hospital, the city’s oldest, while stricken relatives stood vigil, trying to swat away the flies.

Nepal and the rest of the Himalayas, where the Indian and Eurasia tectonic plates collide, are par-ticularly prone to earthquakes.

An 6.8 magnitude quake hit eastern Nepal in Au-gust 1988 killing 721 people, and a magnitude 8.1 quake killed 10,700 people in Nepal and India in 1934.

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Young people will lead Africa’s urbanization

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From minerals to oil and gas reserves, Africa is replete with untapped resources.

But the greatest asset cities across the continent may have to drive economic prosperity is a demographic shift toward young people, Kathleen Caulderwood writes for the International Busi-ness Times.

A 2015 trends report from Ernst & Young projects that by 2030, the vast majority of the world’s urbanized children ages 14 and lower would reside in one of Africa’s cities. As municipalities elsewhere contend with aging populations, African metropo-lises will benefit from a notably youthful workforce, Caulder-wood emphasizes.

That means increased produc-tivity, fresh ideas and more entrepreneurial businesses. On the downside, these demo-graphic shifts can increase the risk of social tension and vio-lence if coupled with unemploy-ment. Lagos is among the cities poised for economic expansion, the article says, noting that Ni-geria became Africa’s largest economy last year.

Photo: UN Photo/Marco Dormino

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Electric vehicles help keep cities cool

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A study conducted by Michigan State Uni-versity in the US and Hunan University in China suggests that electric vehicles can

contribute to reducing temperatures in cities.

The research showed that electric vehicles pro-duce significantly less heat than models with internal combustion engines; electric vehicles produce only 20 per cent of the heat generated by conventionally fuelled counterparts.

This in turn reduces the phenomenon of the urban heat island(link is external) effect, where tempera-tures in cities are noticeably higher than those in rural areas.

The researchers used summer 2012 in Beijing, the Chinese capital, as an example. By their calcula-tions, switching vehicle fuels from petrol or diesel to electricity could reduce the heat island effect’s intensity by nearly 1C.

This would have saved Beijing 14.4 million kilo-watt hours in terms of electricity consumption and reduced daily carbon dioxide emissions by 11 799 tons.

The study noted that reduced urban temperatures could also have implications for other areas where urban energy use is particularly high, such as from air conditioning.

Photo: UN Photo/JC Mcllwaine

$1.7 billion needed forEbola-affected countries

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The international humanitarian charity Ox-fam is calling on the World Bank and major donors to raise 1.7 billion dollars to improve

poor health systems in Ebola-affected countries and strengthen community networks for prevent-ing another epidemic.

Winnie Byanyima, executive director of Oxfam International, said, “Communities pulling together has been vital to cutting Ebola infection rates […] But in order to be effective these networks need to work within a strong national healthcare service that is freely available to all people.”

In light of the World Bank’s talks on Ebola, set for Apr. 17 as part of the bank’s annual spring meet-ings in Washington DC, the focus is on the need to create a 10-year investment plan for free univer-sal health care to ensure that countries are able tackle future disease outbreaks.

More than 10,000 people have died during the Ebola epidemic due to public health failures, re-marked Byanyima. Oxfam has trained community volunteers and 1.3 million workers to visit houses and raise awareness about symptoms, good hy-giene and risky behaviours, as well as support-ing clinics, schools and people in quarantine with water and sanitation.

According to Oxfam, 420 million dollars is re-quired to train more than 9,000 doctors and ap-proximately 37,060 healthcare workers, and 297 million dollars is needed to pay their salaries.

The money is the minimum amount needed to as-sure health care assistance for all in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Guinea-Bissau, according to Oxfam, and it would be invested in well-equipped facilities, sufficient trained staff, medical supplies and a systems of health information to strengthen community networks.

Photo: UN Photo/Ari Gaitanis

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We need to prevent waste rather than just manage it

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Diverting the world’s estimated 12 million tons of daily waste is no easy task. Today’s waste management strategies are often

costly, cumbersome and bad for our environment.

In order to really reduce impacts on the environ-ment while increasing profitability, companies need to aggressively shift the focus from waste management to waste prevention.

Companies in all industries have the potential for increased profitability, efficiency and reduced en-vironmental impact when they make the decision to start preventing their waste. Whether it is oc-curring during production or consumption, a high waste output is an unnecessary expense.

Incorporating a strategic waste-savings plan into your business model, instead of paying for waste removal services, is a great way to tie waste re-duction directly to the bottom line.

But waste prevention is also a matter of focus. When businesses start thinking about recyclin-gand zero waste, they tend to start with the more obvious materials: paper, plastic, cardboard, glass and aluminum. These recyclable products are eas-ily monetized and can generate revenue.

In reality, however, food is the largest component of municipal solid waste.

Every year, more than 34 million tons of food waste is produced and when it rots in landfills, it accounts for a significant portion of U.S. methane emissions. That’s why it is crucial that businesses start to employ environmentally responsible solu-tions for food waste disposal.

And in fact, businesses soon may be compelled into action. In recent years, government, business-es and environmental leaders have come together to communicate the fact that traditional food waste management is no longer a viable solution.

Photo: UN Photo/Kibae Park

NB: Press Cutting ServiceThe Urban Gateway culls articles from daily press coverage from around the world. These

articles are posted on the Urban Gateway by way of keeping all users informed about matters of interest. The opinions expressed in these articles are those of the authors and in no way

reflects the opinion of UN-Habitat

Photo: UN Photo/ Basile Zoma