World Tsunami Awareness Day 2023
Riding on waves of uncertainty
Tsunamis are hazardous and devastating. According to the World Health Organization, in low-lying coastal regions, nearly 700 million people are susceptible to severe sea level occurrences, including tsunamis. Although they are relatively rare, tsunamis can have catastrophic consequences. According to data from the United Nations, 58 tsunamis in the past 100 years have claimed over 260,000 people, or 4,600 lives on average—a death toll that surpasses that of any other natural catastrophe.
Sri Lanka is all too familiar with the devastation that accompanies a tsunami. As one of the many countries that fell victim to the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, the tidal wave had an incomparable immediate impact, with the death toll calculated to be over 36,000 (30,957 persons are reported killed with an additional 5,644 people identified as missing). While a majority of the victims were women and children, a staggering 800,000 individuals were displaced across the country.
Tsunamis are unpredictable and formidable natural disasters that respect no boundaries. They challenge our preparedness and resilience and compound the often-glaring social inequalities. This year’s World Tsunami Awareness Day is most opportune, in the context of the global and local economic crises, to examine not just the physical forces that drive tsunamis, but also the human forces required to withstand them. The theme, ‘Fighting Inequality for a Resilient Future,’ is apt, as it highlights the dire necessity of reducing people’s exposure and vulnerability to harm.
Disasters bring massive economic costs—the preliminary assessment of damages of the 2004 tsunami estimated that Sri Lanka had suffered asset damages of approximately US$1 billion (4.5 per cent of GDP), which required US$1.5–1.6 billion (7.5 per cent of GDP) in medium-term recovery financing (including immediate relief), and the fisheries and tourism sectors suffered estimated losses of US$200 million and US$130 million, respectively. Given Sri Lanka’s evolving risk profile, and the current debt sustainability issues, should a disaster of such proportions strike, the resultant damages would be on an overwhelming scale.
Innovative solutions in disaster preparedness
Following the tsunami, Sri Lanka has directed concerted efforts towards inclusive disaster risk management. The ‘Partnerships for Strengthening School Preparedness for Tsunamis in the Asia Pacific Region (Tsunami Project)’ is one of significance in tsunami disaster preparedness and awareness. Funded by the Government of Japan and implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the project has been advancing tsunami preparedness in three phases since 2017. The project has developed tsunami preparedness plans and conducted tsunami drills in more than 115 schools and has equipped the teachers, other academic staff and communities with relevant knowledge to respond to and withstand tsunamis. Building on this, the third phase works towards strengthening school tsunami preparedness in twenty-eight more highly vulnerable, tsunami-prone schools in the coastal belt of the Southern and Eastern provinces reaching over 9,000 school children.
Four selected schools have also been equipped with early warning systems. Complementing the direct interventions at the schools, the project has capacitated approximately 115 provincial and zonal education officials, including school principals and teachers, to train more personnel to contextualize updated tsunami preparedness plans for the education sector in the two provinces. Leveraging on the impact of the project, national tsunami exercises were conducted in eleven schools with the participation of 11,000 students, teachers and non-academic officials. Given the inherent intersection of vulnerabilities and disaster exposure, the project has made a point to ensure that socially excluded and vulnerable groups such as women, children, adolescents, and persons with disabilities are capacitated with the necessary skills for handling disaster events.
At a national level, the project has supported the Disaster Management Center (DMC) by facilitating the exchange of international best practices and technical knowledge via the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services, and the Meteorological Departments of Australia and Indonesia. Attesting to the success of the project, two of the trained schools have been selected for the seventh Indian Ocean-wide tsunami readiness exercise, known as Indian Ocean Wave 2023 (IOWave23).
The hidden divide
Inequality creates conditions that render people exposed and vulnerable to disasters. Disasters also disproportionately impact the poorest and most at-risk people, thus worsening inequality. Reducing vulnerability to disasters requires addressing these dimensions – Sri Lanka requires greater investments and a renewed focus on risk-informed development.
As the country embarks on its crisis recovery process, building innovative and inclusive disaster preparedness and management efforts – like that of the Tsunami Project, are crucial. In a world of rising tides and unpredictable forces, they remind us that the path to safety lies in elevating our preparedness, reducing inequalities, and ensuring passage to high ground.
