Building Capacities for Resilient Recovery II
Description
UNDP and the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare are currently implementing a project funded by the Government of Luxembourg to build the capacity of the government and communities in preparing for climate induced natural disasters. One component of the project is piloting early warning systems through text-messaging to mobile phones, that will enable individual citizens to directly receive messages, and for institutions at the national, provincial, district and village level to efficiently disperse information to vulnerable communities. The EWS pilot has been completed in four provinces Vientiane, in January and February 2019 and for roll out during the 2019 wet season.
Although the project is only in its initial stages, some major steps have already been taken towards improving the flow of information between the government and the people. In December 2018, the project signed contracts with all four private sector telecommunications companies – Lao Telecom, ETL, UNITEL and Beeline - on using SMS messages to deliver weather-related information to over 200,000 subscribers in the target provinces. The weather information is provided by the Department of Meteorology and Hydrology in the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment. A key lesson learnt is the multiple actions required to bring together the national disaster agency, the hydrometeorology specialists, the regulator agency for telecommunications and private sector companies. This has also been one key good practice to build on – bringing together three ministries with vastly different mandates and four private sector companies – to work together on an initiative specifically designed to reach out each individual who carries a mobile phone and to ensure that we leave no one behind in the event of a disaster. This partnership with different ministries and the private sector has been an important breakthrough and also creates the opportunity for private sector companies to further engage in Corporate Social Responsibility activities.<br />
The initiative will contribute to SDG 1, SD 5 and SDG 13, in reducing poverty through building resilience at the community level, ensuring that women have increased capacity for resiliencethroguh access to technology and information services, and reducing the impact of climate related disasters, which will be at the national, provincial, district and community levels. This initiative will reach even remote and rural villages where cellular service does exist and community member use mobile phones.<br />
The system was successfully pilot-tested in January and February 2019. The next step is to incorporate lessons learned, to build on the good practices of the pilot and to roll-out EWS text messages during the 2019 wet season, from May to October 2019. In addition, UNDP has acquired acoustic warning equipment, such as loudspeakers, amplifiers and generators to make sure that remote communities that have either an unreliable or no telecommunications network at all can still be warned and instructed in case of a disaster. Additional aspects to the project will include building capacities of communities by training them in developing community based community-based recovery plans, developing the skills of youth and women in disaster resilient construction technologies, and establishing a community level recovery fund to support household level recovery.
Although the project is only in its initial stages, some major steps have already been taken towards improving the flow of information between the government and the people. In December 2018, the project signed contracts with all four private sector telecommunications companies – Lao Telecom, ETL, UNITEL and Beeline - on using SMS messages to deliver weather-related information to over 200,000 subscribers in the target provinces. The weather information is provided by the Department of Meteorology and Hydrology in the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment. A key lesson learnt is the multiple actions required to bring together the national disaster agency, the hydrometeorology specialists, the regulator agency for telecommunications and private sector companies. This has also been one key good practice to build on – bringing together three ministries with vastly different mandates and four private sector companies – to work together on an initiative specifically designed to reach out each individual who carries a mobile phone and to ensure that we leave no one behind in the event of a disaster. UNDP is monitoring the project as several UNDP staff including Senior Management, Head on Natural Resources Management and Climate Change Unit/DRR Focal Point, DRM Specialist and Public Information Unit, are included as recipients of EWS SMS messaging. UNDP will prepare a monitoring repo on all the lessons learned and best practices to ensure efficient and effective roll-out in the upcoming wet season.
As meteorological events are becoming more frequent and intense in Lao PDR as a result of climate change, concepts like “disaster preparedness” and “resilience to climate change” are finding their way into the lexicon of even small farming villages like Thabo. Despite the problem being evident, many public institutions and communities are currently struggling to make the necessary adjustments due to lack of resources and experience in coping with unpredictable weather patterns. In December 2018, the project signed contracts with all four private sector telecommunications companies – Lao Telecom, ETL, UNITEL and Beeline - on using SMS messages to deliver weather-related information to over 200,000 subscribers in the target provinces. The weather information is provided by the Department of Meteorology and Hydrology in the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment. A key lesson learnt is the multiple actions required to bring together the national disaster agency, the hydrometeorology specialists, the regulator agency for telecommunications and private sector companies.
Attached photos of community members impacted by floods in the target provinces. Below are stories of the persons in the photos:
1. Mrs. Pat Tiptapmavon is 48 years old, married and has five children. She is a petty trader with a grocery store at her home which is located in Thabo village. Pat is a victim of the 2018 floods which impacted the villages for almost/nearly two months. According to her, the flood impact was so much that she had to take her groceries/wares away. “I had to put away my stuffs even though I did not have enough space to put a lot of things in my store”.
In addition to the losses at my store, I also got my crops damaged, specifically the rice paddy field. My livestock - cattle and buffalo were put away to a higher ground. However, my Buffalo died eventually when the water receded and poultry chicken was all swept away to a higher.
- Water was contaminated and the cattle had diseases
- We were able to sell our groceries during the floods but could not get supplies for replacement and sale from town, except with the use of boats. So we had to use the community boat which was not sufficient
- District and Provincial Authorities eventually helped with supplies of relief …..
2. Mr. Vongvihane Phengphachanch is 44 years old and married with three children. He is a farmer and the Village head of Thabo Village, and a victim of the 2018 flood disaster in Thabo Village, Paksan district, Bolikhamxai province. During the floods, he lost all his crops (beans, egg plants, cucumber, water melons and rice) at 100% both in the farmland and at the storage.
According to Mr. Vongvihane, “my family and I continued to grow the short-term vegetables to cope with”.
The school going children were dropped off in school using boats in the company of an adult during the floods. As the Village Head, commuting within the village for monitoring and assessment was really difficult. We will like to have more boats. There is need for adequate supply of boats to travel around to inform the communities in the lower areas for flood preparedness and mitigation.
We also like to request for an emergency evacuation centre because the community lacks an emergency evacuation centre with toilet facilities.
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- Asia and Pacific
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Margaret Jones Williams, Head, Natural Resources Management and Climate Change Unit/DRR Focal Point