JUL 24 -
With the advance of geo-scientific research in the Himalayan region, a huge “central seismic gap” between west Kathmandu and east Dehradun has been identified. A number of minor tremors that have been recorded recently indicate that this gap, sooner or later, may produce lethal seismic waves that can kill thousands of people in South Asia, particularly Nepal, Pakistan and India. This catastrophic event is long overdue and can easily turn the region’s infrastructure into rubble very quickly.
The central seismic gap is not by itself a major earthquake risk. However, our development efforts have largely neglected the risk of such seismic activity and could directly accelerate risk and damage from a sizeable earthquake. Politicians and policymakers need to take into account the probabilities of an earthquake, given the inherent risk from our geographical location and our unsound development activities. There is a need for a rigorous analysis of loopholes and gaps in existing policies and the invisible risk factors that are fuelling a worst-case scenario of an impending disaster. These risk factors include a lack of proper technology, weak governance, the inability in prioritise national interests, flawed construction practices, rampant urbanisation, a lack of strict legal instruments and widespread disregard for expert opinions.
Despite rapid advances in earthquake-resistant design, the number of fatalities from seismic activity continues averages around 60,000 a year globally, at least in the last decade. A large number of such deaths occur in developing nations and result from building collapse and the associated secondary effects—for example, in 2004 in South and Southeast Asia, 2005 in Pakistan, 2008 in China and 2010 in Haiti. Recent research has indicates that various forms of corruption are major reasons behind such massive losses. The booming construction industry is among the most corrupt segments of the global economy. In South Asia, systemic corruption has lead to the weak implementation of building codes, the use of sub-standard construction material, covert inspection and licensing and risk insensitive rampant urbanisation. All of these came to the fore last year in Nepal when the government demolished illegally constructed structures (though previously approved by local government authorities) during the country’s road expansion drive.
According to a recent Transparency International report, the share of the construction industry in corruption amounts to $3,200 billion a year, which primarily takes place in the forms of the corrupt awarding of construction projects, governmental issuance of approvals and permits, inspection during all stages of construction and the concealment of shoddy work beneath concrete, plaster and cladding. Earthquake risk can be significantly reduced if an anti-graft body is properly empowered with strict laws and provisions for punishment in case such discrepancies are discovered.
Furthermore, compounding problems is the increasing brain-drain in developing nations, causing such countries to turn to expensive foreign consultants who sometimes lack local knowledge and practices and hence, advise inappropriate and ineffective measures for earthquake risk reduction. With a short instrumental record and a lack of date on the rate of seismicity, the mapping of probabilistic seismic hazards, while highly prioritised in the developing world, are limited to colourful contour maps that simply depict past incidents rather than predicting the probability of future events. Without a proper earthquake monitoring system, seismic hazard maps often become redundant.
The developing world needs to take into account the recently identified “earthquake vulnerability gap” that exists between the developed and developing world. But developed nations should also understand that minimising earthquake risk is not the sole concern of developing nations. Earthquake-prone South Asian countries have become key economic partners of industrialised countries and huge investments have been made in infrastructure development, residences, hydropower and other industries. The serious setback to the economy due to a mega-earthquake in a vital developing nation could means a great loss of investment for the developed world. Therefore, they too should act proactively without bypassing the major components of a sustainable disaster management cycle for the sake of a risk resilient economy.
Many developed countries, since 1970, pledged to allocate 0.7 percent of their Gross National Income as assistance to developing nations but this has not been met in practice. Only a few countries have followed this recommendation and as a result, only a small fraction of international assistance goes to disaster risk reduction programmes. Interestingly, a greater part of such assistance is spent on post disaster response rather than pre-disaster activities like prevention, preparedness, mitigation and capacity building. This practice is ultimately fuelling the vulnerability gap by making the developing world more reliant on foreign aid. Risk reduction policies, programmes and seismic planning for countries vulnerable to earthquakes should focus on needs rather than the self interest of donor agencies. However, due to a lack of identified needs, many programmes overlap with the interests of local and donor agencies, resulting in the inflow of more financial aid than these countries can absorb efficiently.
In the last decade, we have seen that earthquake fatalities, particularly in the developing world, are due to policy failures rather than nature’s fury. This problem should be taken as an opportunity by both developed and developing countries to safeguard human beings and the global economy. To tackle this problem, new approach are required rather than modification and augmentation of previous practices. Particularly, new techniques like seismic ground response analysis, along with seismic microzonation—which is the process of identifying and dividing potential zones of seismic activity with regard to geological characteristics—should be adopted for soft soil covered South Asian mega-cities where millions of people reside. More importantly, we need to empower governmental bodies with strict legal instruments that can book deeply rooted corruption practices. Since the earthquake disasters in South Asia are cross-country issues, coordination among the neighbouring states with effective and proactive policies, good governance, research and international support is also needed to account for this Himalayan seismic gap.
Chamlagain holds a PhD in Earthquake Geology and a post doctorate in Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering
dchamlagain@hotmail.com