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Pakistan earthquake - the challenge after
Ingeborg Hauge HøylandSammen med tre andre UMB-forskere fikk førsteamanuensis Håvard Steinsholt kjenne jordskjelvet i Pakistan på kroppen da det rammet. Steinsholt har kjennskap til områdene gjennom mange oppdrag for NORAD. Her er (på engelsk) hans foredrag fra UMBs Pakistan-seminar i november.
Pakistan, Earthquake 2005:
Challenges for the thousands of ground zeroes.
Håvard Steinsholt, UMB, Landscape Planning
Since 1998 the department has been involved in the NORAD founded research collaboration project “High Altitude Nature Resource Management” between UMB and Aga Khan Rural Support Program. 8th October 2005 associate Professor Håvard Steinsholt was attending a project workshop in Khaplu when the earthquake catastrophe hit Pakistan.
Back in Norway (shaken but sound) it’s time for reflection among researchers with knowledge of agriculture production systems, land and institutional structures of districts close to the catastrophe areas.
Food and rights
The urgent challenge is to bring food, sanitation, water and shelter into these rugged terrains. But this is also time for plan for the spring - when these societies must start their new lives.
The catastrophe areas are dominated by small-scale livelihood based agriculture with small and fragmented holdings (plots down to 5 m2 with detailed networks of terraces, irrigation channels and footpaths; both technically and institutionally complex systems with large degree of dependency among the villagers.
Repair of the physical systems is a challenge, but reconstruction or redistribution of rights is perhaps even more important. Local institutions are well trained in land and heritance conflict resolution while official land record institutions have severe deficits. We don’t know if the local institutions still are operative. We do know that their challenge is massive and urgent.
The earthquake hit at end of harvest season. Winter food supplies and next years’ seeds had been brought into the villages and most ruminants were back from the high pastures. Most of this is within rubble and dirt today. What is still available will probably be consumed during winter.
Even if land is available, agriculture starts from zero next spring; seeds, new parent livestock and cultivation equipment must be in place in April 06. This has to be done in ways that avoids spreading of deceases etc..
Even if most of the damaged areas are on the “monsoon rain side” of the Himalayas, agriculture is dependent on irrigation from June to September. Even if ploughing and sowing will be successful, the channels and the irrigation organisations have to be repaired before end of June.
Reconstruction or new-construction
It’s understandable that people affected by a catastrophe want their former surroundings and lives brought back as soon as possible. This may conflict a long-term planning that may ease everyday life or prevent future disasters.
It might be a good idea in this “ground zero situation” to consolidate agricultural land structures. Even if labour is cheap and mechanised production hardly is possible, pre-quake structures created unnecessary workload, complex infrastructures and land disputes.
Deficits in construction techniques and bad construction work (especially public buildings) has been head lighted as one reason to the massive destruction in towns and villages. The construction industry will probably be controlled closely during the years to come.
New settlements should be located to more landslide secure areas. In hilly urbanities, urban structures of houses, open spaces and streets are important to avoid “domino effects” of construction breakdowns. Land subdivision may produce so small or misshaped plots that solid constructions are difficult to build. A bit of town planning coordinated with land reallocation schemes should be implemented.
Down-and up the mountains
Pakistani authorities have established refugee camps for people from the affected mountainous villages in the milder climate lowlands - a necessary preliminary action for at least the first winter. Such camps have their own set of problems. For some the lowland life will be permanent – as poor among the other poors.
From next spring some of these refugees will return, and some will probably continue to even higher altitudes than their pre-quake homes.
Numerous people of the lowlands and the affected areas are 1st, 2nd or 3rd generation of migrants coming from higher and poorer villages of the Himalayas. But still they possess land up there; of sentimental reasons, as bond to clans and other networks – but also as (hypothetical) precaution for security.
In this time of crisis – they might return to their claims for small plots of inherited. But the high mountain villages are not ready for this. The land is already much too limited. The new-comers may be intruders into local customs and institutions. Conflicts of heritage, land and rights will be severe.
During the last decades, many of these poor higher mountain regions have been receiver of foreign and domestic support – and these economies are to some extend dependent on this.
The catastrophe struck the lower parts of these mountains, where most economies have been more self running. Most foreign and domestic support will now be redirected to the catastrophe areas. This may cause severe problems in higher areas.
In august 2005 the river Shyok went furious and totally flushed away the major village of Koro. For months the population waited for promised help to reconstruct their houses. After the earthquake they now face the severe winter at 2500 meters altitude from inside their tents…
Relief and confidence
It is not only geological structures that meet and sometimes clashes in the hills of the North-West Frontier Province. These areas have always been a meeting point of cultures, races, languages and religions. These wild mountains have so often been the “great game” board of contesting powers.
For centuries this has been the frontier between territory of Pakistani state rule and areas where that is blurred by state border disputes (to the north and east), gangs of bandits/“freedom fighters” in Kashmir and “tribal rule”/ clan anarchy to the east; an important frontier and battlefield between humanistic forms of Islam and more uncivilized hard-liner adoptions.
The present challenge is not only to help people through a devastating crisis and to clear the grounds for a new start in these areas.
It is also the chance for the Pakistani State, for bridge-building Muslims and for the West to win the people’s confidence through sufficient resources, humanity and efficiency. It’s about amounts used in this situation, but also about doing the right things – or at least – not to do the wrong things practically and culturally.
To win the battle against the effects of the 2005 earthquake – and to win the hearts of the people of this Frontier Province, will be a more important political victory than any military action ever can achieve. If bridge-building powers don’t achieve this success – others will.
Oppdatert: 22.12.05
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