Seminar Programme: UK-South Asia Young Scientists and Practitioners Seminar on Climate Change and Disaster Impact Reduction

PROCEEDINGS

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Preface

I am pleased to introduce this set of Proceedings of the UK-South Asia Young Scientists and Practitioners Seminar. The seminar explored the linkage between climate change and disaster risk reduction. Many of the scientists had been supported through ProVention and used the opportunity to present both early and final results from their field work. In many cases there was a strong sense of local field effort and a desire to help build local resilience.

Not least because the seminar took place in Nepal, there was a focus on montane systems under threat from discussions on glacial melt, glacial lake overflow (GLOF), and landslides: these processes were also linked to a possible increase in earthquake risk. Much was made of understanding risk and resilience in local livelihoods and the community perception of environmental change.

Presentations from Bangladesh focused on the problems of flooding from tropical storm, sea surge, and rivers. But, as in India, the problem is compounded by drought. A range of models of good practice were explored, including a wide range of mapping techniques. Linking the mapping to emergency management systems and linking the academic to practice, was supported by most of those in attendance.

There was a range of professional opinion offered reflecting upon emergency service experience largely in the developed world. These presentations were paralleled by offerings from Central and Latin America on the importance of networking (La Red) and drought respectively.

The theme that emerged was “Education, Education, Education”, both at formal and informal level. Special attention was given to what is essentially primary education where the emphasis, again and again, was on a holistic approach to vulnerability rather than address risk from a single hazard. Work from Turkey and Japan illustrated these themes, which were linked to the importance of education in addressing poverty that, in turn, reduced disaster vulnerability.

I would wish that any future conference had more young female scientists and practitioners and I would urge ProVention to have a positive discriminatory attitude to future grants, although I know that in this instance every effort was made to achieve gender equity.

I would like to thank all participants for their active involvement in the seminar. I would like to thank our hosts, Kathmandu University, as well as representatives of the national government of Nepal. Last, but by no means least, our sponsors, the DelPHE programme run by the British Council and funded by DfID, UK, and the ProVention Consortium.

I would like to thank the secretariat of the conference, Phil O’Keefe, Sam Jones and Zaina Gadema who helped assemble these proceedings with great speed and accuracy. I would particularly like to thank Hideyuki Shiroshita who, showed to the rest of us who thought we were computer literate, how to drop the entire proceedings to the world in less than 24 hours; and who also offered a paper that highlighted why education was critical to disaster prevention.

I look forward in anticipation to the next meeting.
Komal Raj Aryal, Faciltator