Media guidelines for Disaster Reporting Part 3

 By Malini Shankar Digital Discourse Foundation 

It is essential for the Media to anticipate calamities like the ones induced by seasonal changes. Summer implies anticipation of drought, famine and heat wave in tropical South Asia: These can have an impact on a whole gamut of human activities: construction, industrial production, supply of raw materials, agriculture, food security, nutrition index, public health, economy, trade, tax infrastructure, subsidies, insurance and politically, they can keep the governments in South Asia on the edge.

Monsoon implies anticipating landslides and mudslides, flash floods, floods and possibly as a consequence - power crisis; epidemics follow in the breach of water and sanitation infrastructure. Each of these consequences of monsoon can have deleterious impact on human landscapes – agricultural and industrial output, food security, public health, domestic and international trade, food inflation, agricultural subsidies, crop insurance prices, fishing, and in turn the whole economy; All these factors cause: social and economic disparity / migration and socio economic upheavals like child marriages, gender violence sexual crimes, and forced labour; tribals, frail, infirm, elderly, pregnant women, children, homeless people and physically and mentally challenged people are more vulnerable in emergencies and will more likely suffer from malnutrition as a consequence too. These are aspects for beat reporters to check preparedness for.

Similarly winter implies anticipating and preparing for the cold waves. The homeless people, frail, infirm children, physically and mentally challenged people, tribals are much more vulnerable during extreme cold. Climate change has heralded heightened summers, winters and monsoons, especially in the middle latitudes. Climate change affects different people differently in different parts of the world having both long term and near term implications. 

When El Nino Southern Oscillation occurs once every few years the whole cycle goes completely awry making the job of meteorologists so much more challenging! When El Nino occurs, it has on occasion washed out winters in Europe, brought forward snowfall to Autumn, and ruined agriculture with pummelling rains in Europe. El Nino has accounted for bleached corals, and increased monsoons around the Indian Ocean Rim states, triggered flash floods, accentuated droughts and forest fires. The impact of El Nino on the tropical countries and economies are much more intimidating to the entire polity and economy. El Nino can drastically affect micro climate in every part of the world. Glacial Melt in the Himalayas can cause unseasonal avalanches and thereby unseasonal hailstorms and flash floods.  

Dr. B.N. Goswami Director Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology Pune explained in an exclusive e mail interview to the author “El Nino is a natural phenomenon, not disaster by itself. It produces influence on the global climate through which it leads to different types of disasters in different parts of the world.

“Drought as a subject is allocated to Ministry of Agriculture. Drought Mitigation is a multidisciplinary function. The dynamics of each drought varies with regard to its severity, location and extent. While policy guidelines have been prescribed by NDMA, in actual practice, a number of location specific decisions have to be taken in time to mitigate the effects of drought. These include, inter alia, alternate options for crops, food and nutrition management, provision of drinking water, fodder management and health related issues” said Mr. T. Nandakumar IAS, former member of India’s National Disaster Management Authority of the Government of India in an exclusive e mail interview to the author.

 These location specific measures that Mr. Nandakumar refers to are administrative best practices implemented at the local level. For instance in the Indian state of Karnataka if the summer temperature exceeds 380 C drought is declared, and the Administration is obliged to provide extra water to every household. Such guidelines have to be in the background knowledge of reporters. This calls for extensive training and continuous refresher courses. Administrators too need to know the pressure under which reporters work.

 “Drought affects the economy in many ways. In a country like India, the immediate worries are of food security and food inflation. The news about a possible drought starts a debate on the likely negative impact on growth, impact on inflation, power shortage, and drinking water. What gets missed out in the ‘big debate’ are issues of livelihood security, hunger, under-nutrition and livestock management” says Nandakumar. Most significantly the impact of drought on water and sanitation can have extremely hazardous and deleterious impact on vulnerable rural population.  

“This can ruin the export oriented agricultural income of apple country in both Himachal Pradesh in India and Switzerland in Europe. When trade distorting subsidies of the WTO regime are opposed by countries like India on account of food security, India risks isolation in international trade. It is an area that has been neglected by the Independent Indian Media.

“Drought, in most cases, is caused by inadequate rainfall during a particular interval of time. But the impact of drought can vary and is the consequence of a number of actions and inactions of government, society and private individuals. Policies and practices with regard to water conservation and management, cropping systems, exploitation(or over exploitation) of ground water, water use policies, access to common water bodies, inefficient use of water etc., affect the impact of a drought” Nandakumar added.

 

To be continued ... 

Excerpts from Chapter 18 of the 2014 Book Preparing for the Day

After ( https://play.google.com/store/books/details?

id=EbzkBQAAQBAJ )  ... published by Malini Shankar in time for the 

10th anniversary of the Asian Tsunami.