More than 80% of country people
are somewhat exposed to earthquakes, cyclones, floods and droughts live across
Bangladesh. The colossal cost of these disasters poses a significant threat to
achieving the Millennium Development Goals, especially the first goal of
halving poverty by 2015. The ever-changing world and its impulsive nature have
already publicized the capability of humanity to withstand erratic behavior.
The recent past century has experienced hundreds of calamities which destructed
not only valuable development but also charged abundant lives. Countries with
fragile economic status like Bangladesh went through analogous development
encumbrances almost once in every decade.
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Mainstreaming DRR in different
development effort has become inescapable. Accordingly development activity and
DRR representing two sides of the same coin needs to be dealt with in unison,
with mainstreaming DRR into development planning, policy and implementation.
Till date, Government of Bangladesh has adopted notable initiatives
(particularly institutional, policy, planning etc); nevertheless, there are
huge breaches in mainstreaming those at sectoral level.
SDC, as one of the key
development partners of Government of Bangladesh, has been playing vital role
in managing adverse natural occurrences like Cyclone, Flood, Storm Surge etc.
Mainstreaming DRR into the development process and planning has been integrated
by all the leading organizations including SDC and its partners. SDC has
incorporated Mainstreaming DRR as one of the key development approaches.
Integration of DRR issues into diverse development process, planning and
implementation at local and national level capacitating local partner
organizations is inevitable.
Mainstreaming involves ensuring
that disaster risk reduction perspectives are central to all activities -
policy development, research, advocacy, legislation, resource allocation and
planning, implementation and monitoring of programmes and projects (ADPC).
Mainstreaming DRR into
development pathway required extensive exertion towards inclusiveness and
amalgamation within and beyond sector/s planning, management and
implementation. Escalating
concern in mainstreaming has been fuelled by Growing understanding of disasters
as unresolved problems of development, new focus of development strategies around poverty
reduction and Rising disaster losses. The factors together have triggered growing
realization of the need for win-win solutions for securing sustainable
development, reducing poverty and strengthening hazard resilience.
DRR being operative at all levels
and across sector, the concerted effort of integrating it into development
activities requires consensus and active participation of decision makers and
planners at the national level and all related Ministries, with equal support
from the donor and development community. It is through the consolidated and
concerted efforts of all stakeholders that safer and sustainable communities
are to be attainted and thus mainstreaming of DRR has been rightly prioritized
in the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA) adopted by 168 countries at the World
Conference on Disaster Reduction (WCDR) in January 2005.
To act on this understanding, the
development agencies have initiated the process of changing their policies and
institutional practices to support the countries. As the key development
partner of Government of Bangladesh, SDC has been giving effort to better
prepare the vulnerable communities through diversified windows. In conjunction
with that, SDC also substantially putting exertion to capacitate its local
partners involved in rural development activities across the country. To
enhance the productivity, improve knowledge and mainstream DRR into focused
department like agriculture, public health, education, water etc are inevitable
in poverty reduction and quality development as well. It is realized that DRR should be integrated
across and in all sectors, however practitioners has identified, agriculture,
infrastructure, housing, education, health and financial services as priority
areas to initiate the mainstreaming of DRR.
The broad
objective is capacitating SDC partner organization’s in mainstreaming Disaster
Risk Reduction at different level and strengthening collaboration among
themselves. The development of the capacity of senior and mid-level staff
members of SDC-supported NGOs for mainstreaming of DRR, accentuating the ‘need’
of mainstreaming DRR in crucial development sectors and familiarizing the
participants with appropriate mainstreaming mechanisms and tools are the direct
objective that SDC wants to achieve.
SDC believes that the
participants will be familiar with SDC’s DRR Guidelines/tools, the participants
will also be familiar with CDMP/GoB and 2 key sector/NGOs practices on DRR
mainstreaming, DRR mainstreaming good practices are documented, Knowledge and understanding on DRR mainstreaming will
be used in SDC project designing and implementation.
The articulated training programme will be followed by a
participatory attainment analysis process at the partner organization level
through field visit and workshop conduction. Two such programmes will focus on
how DRR activists are being incorporated within the organizations and for the
betterment of community.
All experts would be encouraged to select most-up-date
mainstreaming tools and mechanisms available and practiced in country during
the training sessions. The selection of these drivers are based on
appropriateness of mainstreaming DRR in foremost sectors e.g. agriculture,
fisheries, health, education etc. DRR mainstreaming tools would be discussed
throughout the training program to make participants better understand the process.
Targeted valuable tools practiced by different organizations would be taught by
experts.
