PAKISTAN | National Briefing

Disaster Mortality

March, 2015

This briefing note provides information relevant to the agreement of target (i) of the draft Post-2015 Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) for national monitoring , which reads: Reduce disaster mortality per capita by 2030 and its variants (i alt bis.). is applicable to an entire population, including both sexes and all age groups.

ContextPakistan is a vast country and is home to over 180 Million people, out of which 36 percent are now concentrated in urban areas. It has a diverse geography ranging from high elevations in the Himalayas, which feed one of the largest river systems (Indus) and a large number of people, to the long coastline in the South formed by the Indian Ocean. Due to distinctive topography, climatic zones and ecosystems, Pakistan is regularly hit by a variety of hazards like cyclones, earthquakes, extreme precipitation especially during monsoon, droughts, landslides and Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs) causing numerous casualties.

TrendsDuring the period of 1980-2014, there were 8,887 reported disaster incidents in DESINVENTAR database, out of which about 47% are related to floods and rains. Of the total disaster related deaths, a large number of people (84%) were perished only in the 2005 earthquake. The average number of deaths per year has risen from 750 persons for the period 1980-1990 to 3,541 persons per year during 1990-2014. Other than 2005 earthquake, the number of deaths has still risen during the first decade of this century than the previous reported decades.

Pakistan has been frequently ranked among top 10 most affected countries in terms of deaths due to weather-related events (storms, floods, heat waves etc.). The Global Climate Risk Index 2015 has put Pakistan at 10th place among most affected by climate related events. In relative terms, Pakistan is ranked 55th with 0.306 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants for the 20 year period (1993-2013). When other factors are taken into account, Pakistan is hit much harder by climate related disasters than middle income countries and the affected population is in most cases much more than that of the other middle income countries with similar magnitude of a particular disaster.

Disaster mortality refers usually to the number of confirmed dead or those found missing and presumed dead as part of the disaster and after the impact of a disaster event. Large scale mortality is an indicator of both high levels of risk as well as limitations in disaster risk management. For measurement purposes, the suggested indicator ‘disaster mortality’ is number of deaths per 100,000 population(5 year moving average).

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Measurement Note

Sub-national patterns reveals that disaster mortality closely matches with provincial/regional topography, climatic zone and institutional preparedness. Due to limited availability of evidence, it it is hard to predict sub-national disaster mortality variations between similar regions.

NDMA has identified district wise vulnarbalities across Pakistan: 32 districts are vulnerable to floods, 18 to earthquake, 19 to droughts, 11 to landslides, 7 to cyclones, and 16 to forest fire.

Due to climate change, there is a shift in monsoon rainfall pattern from North – East to North- West brininging new areas of

Global Climate Risk Index (Avg Deaths per 100,000 persons)

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Avg. mortality per 100,000 persons 2.36

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§ DesInventar Disaster Information Management System. Available at http://www.desinventar.net/index_www.html§ EM-DAT. The International Disaster Database. Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED). Available at

http://www.emdat.be/§ Global Climate Risk Index Reports (2006-2015) Available at http://germanwatch.org/en/cri.§ NDMA. Pakistan National HFA Progress Reports (2009-2015), National Disaster Response Plan (NDRP) 2010, National Moonsoon Contingency

Plan 2013

Sources

Key Challenges

Like global practices, lack of standardization of disaster mortality definition, methodologies, and reporting framework make it hard to track disaster losses. This result into highly uneven and erratic recording and reporting of mortality in national/subnational disaster databases.

The disaster losses data is incomplete, scattered across various organizations, most often inaccessible, and sometimes is not reliable (NDMA).

Disaster damages & loss information are not systematically brought together to monitor hazard patterns, occurrence, vulnerability, magnitude and severity. These gaps limit the possibility of assessing relative impact of disaster hazards.

NDMA, in collaboration with (World Bank), has conducted a historical research on the occurrences, impact and losses of disasters between 1980 and 2013 and entered the data into UNISDR's designated “Desinventar database on 16 standard

Subnational Disaster Mortality

Recording and measuring disaster mortality

indicators of direct damage proposed in the UNISDR disaster loss collection methodology. However, this dataset is incomplete and yields different results from EM-DAT. Keys Issues in setting up a baseline

All the available datasets, do not report severity of the hazard, making it difficult to accurately establish a baseline and subsequently gauge progress made on reducing disaster mortality.

Establishing a baseline using statistical averages from mortality data (1980-2013) is inaccurate as 2005 Earthquake account for over 80% of the deaths for this period.

With limited past impact data particularly at subnational level, it is difficult to predict differential future scenarios, especially for certain types of disasters when each subnational unit is exposed to certain set of disasters.

eastern Balochistan and northern Sindh under risk of floods thereby compounding their vulnerabilities. .

Population pressures in Punjab and Sindh have resulted in encroachments on river flood plains, thereby enhancing risks and vulnerabilities.

More people from vulnerable groups (women, children, old, disabled) die in disasters than other more agile and resourceful segments of population. However, exact estimates are not possible as disaggregated data is not collected most often.

More people die is rural/semi urban areas as they are often the first victims of the disaster and afterwards last to receive support for recovery.

Implications for monitor reporting in the post-2015 framework for DRR

The administrative, methodological and statistical challenges are likely to pose problems for tracking progress on reducing mortality averages. Various national initiatives such as disaster information management and database but development have recently been taken but there is room for realigning them into a federal level disaster statistical system along with the requirement of the forthcoming disaster mortality target.

Though the post-2015 framework for DRR will require country mortality average, the future national monitoring should be disaggregated at administrative units, age, sex etc to reflect underlying risk factors in a particular area or for a particular group. This is Because; the post-2015 development agenda seeks to integrate three set of development targets- DRR, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and UNFCC Framework.

PAKISTAN | National Briefing

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Balochistan

Disputed Territory

FATA

Capital Territory

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Punjab

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Source: Desinventar database

1980-2014

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Years ofLeadership

Leadership for Environment & Development (LEAD) Pakistan

Written by: Nadeem Ahmad, Public Policy Analyst Reviewed by: Hasan Akhtar Rizvi, Khizer Farooq Omer

LEAD House, F-7 Markaz, Islamabad. Pakistan. Tel: +92 (51) 2651511, Fax: +92 (51) 2651512 Email: main@lead.org.pkWeb: www.lead.org.pk