Fukushima: Reducing mortality from compound disasters
GENEVA, 15 August 2016 - A new report highlights the lessons of Japan’s 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster, the world’s deadliest catastrophe in a decade, and underlines how they fed into the creation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction.
The study by a team of leading international researchers wraps up the three-year Fukushima Global Communication Programme (FGC) at the Tokyo-based United Nations University - Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability. The project was funded by the Nuclear Regulation Authority of Japan.
The goal was to take stock of the human and social impacts of the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami and the resulting nuclear disaster, as well as the challenges of the recovery process in the Fukushima region.
“These challenges are by no means unique to Fukushima or Japan. Indeed, the impacts of the nuclear accident and the policy responses implemented hold particularly important lessons for disaster risk reduction measures across the globe,” notes the 48-page “Fukushima Global Communication Programme Final Report.”
Welcoming the report, Mr. Robert Glasser, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction, said: “This triple disaster which claimed more than 16,000 lives, accelerated an ongoing global shift to a multi-hazard approach to disasters, in which risks are not viewed in isolation but as interlocking parts of a whole.
“In our technology dependent world even the most well prepared societies can find themselves dealing with unexpected outcomes when that technology is impacted by extreme natural hazards.”
A multi-hazard approach to disaster risk management underpins the Sendai Framework, the 15-year international blueprint for reducing disaster risk adopted in March 2015 at the Third UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (WCDRR) in the Japanese city of Sendai, a community that has rebuilt in the wake of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
The Sendai Framework aims to guide substantial global reductions in disaster mortality – the theme of this year’s International Day for Disaster Reduction on 13 October, and a focus of the first edition of World Tsunami Awareness Day on 5 November.
It also seeks to bring down the number of people affected and to curb growing economic losses, and also calls for the widest-possible involvement of all members of society in reducing risk and in boosting recovery in the event of a disaster.
In addition, in a field long dominated by natural hazards like earthquakes or cyclones, the Sendai Framework has brought technological hazards, as well as health, centre-stage for disaster risk management.
“The consensus within the DRR community is that technological hazards such as nuclear accidents must be addressed through a multi-hazard approach, considering sequences of risks that can trigger such hazards and their impacts on the surrounding communities and environment. There is increasing acknowledgement of the need to adopt a multi-hazard approach, and it is emphasized in the Sendai Framework,” the FGC report said.
The Sendai Framework’s all-of-society approach also means challenges for the nuclear industry’s safety culture. “In practice, nuclear emergency preparedness remains a highly specialised and closed field,” the report said. “Opening up this field requires engagement with local communities, and open communication about potential risks,” it said.
“After the nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island [1979] and Chernobyl [1986] the forms and methods of effective risk communication were extensively discussed, yet the confusion and chaos observed during the Fukushima nuclear disaster demonstrated that many lessons had not been learned, and that deep and extensive improvements were still required.
“With the continued use of nuclear power and the growing risk of compound disasters occurring due to climate change, the frequency and magnitude of technological disasters can be expected to increase globally. It is critical that the lessons of Fukushima are learned, to avoid ineffective risk communication in future and ensure that all affected people are prepared and able to make informed decisions about risk related to nuclear accidents.”
The communication lessons of a nuclear emergency can also be applied to other hazards, the report said. The study also addressed disaster displacement, which can have a massive impact on lives and livelihoods, stoking post-traumatic stress and ill-health, and leaving people in limbo. Some 150,000 people were displaced from the Fukushima area, according to government data, and two-thirds remain scattered across the country.
“The Sendai Framework also makes an important step forward in recognising displacement as one of the most severe consequences of disasters," the report said, noting that “regaining a normal daily life remains a distant goal for many displaced people”.
“What does sustainable recovery mean in such a context? Findings from FGC research suggest that to ‘build back better’ after a compound disaster that resulted in large scale displacement, recovery policies must provide an enabling environment for the displaced people to pursue settlement options of their choice — be it return, local integration or resettlement.”