Bottlenecks and Challenges in Global Risk Management Frameworks, Policies, Planning, and Ground-Level Action ( Z M Sajjadul Islam)

The way the changing climate contributed to global warming, atmospheric anomalies, and shifts in weather and climate regimes into hydro-meteorological hazard-breeding spaces means the entire globe is now on the brink of climate catastrophes.

Climate catastrophes are now pointing out the clear pathway of a unipolar, de-bordered world with ‘whole-of-earth-as-a-whole societies’ integrated approach to combat the climate catastrophes at an extensive level. We must refrain from exerting political (country-bordered) and unilateral control over common & shared landscape processes; we need to abolish international boundaries(?) that, through the structural controls of natural resources, surface water bodies/ecosystems, and biodiversity, create potential structural (human-induced) flooding, landslide & drought risks to downstream nations/communities.

The world is mostly terrain, with land-based risks; we need to abolish international boundaries that structural controls on natural resources, surface water bodies/ecosystems, and biodiversity create, and the vulnerabilities associated with hydrometeorological, geomorphological, and geological hazard triggers. The country’s political borders created unilateral control over shared landscape resources, impacting and harming downstream countries. This political border-resource control paradigm now creates human-induced multi-hazard catastrophes beyond immense climate-induced triggers in neighboring and downstream countries, leading to hydrometeorological hazards and disasters at a severe and colossal level (flash flooding & human-induced water scarcity in downstream landscapes).

The erratic hydrometeorological hazardous events create rapid-onset hazards, such as flash floods, fluvial and pluvial floods, landslides, mudslides, debris falls, droughts, and coastal erosion. Under no circumstances can transboundary win-win action reduce risks for downstream and neighboring countries.

Tackling the longer-term climate catastrophe at the country level, encompassing policy propagation, informed and hyper-actionable integrated planning process now far beyond the holistic and realistic actions from a holistic environment/empowered of whole-of-society, whole-open-ended and politico-broader cohesion and accountability to the last-mile, still counties are far lagging in an instrumentalized national risk management governance system with the latest ICT/AI/Geospatial system powered.

What challenges persist in this serious backdrop? The Global South countries are still suffering from tangled bureaucracies, entrenched traditional risk governance systems, and minimal accountability to avert human suffering; it’s hindering a paradigm shift toward robust & technology-driven disaster risk management (DRM) governance mechanisms that ensure transparency and accountability to the last mile and the climate frontline. Unfortunately, the tangled bureaucracies hardly listen to last-mile climate cries, and they can hardly be held accountable for handling the climate crisis at scale in a pro-people, pro-frontline way.

Given this critical human-induced and unethical political intention driven by the powerful neighboring countries, who continue to build up water control structures for unilateral withdrawals of transboundary shared water and biodiversity resources, and created tremendous hydrological, geomorphological, geological and landscape risk and vulnerabilities to lower riparian landscape and any given torrential rainfall and huge runoff ( with already reserved water) extensively triggered downstream tsunami with colossal and catastrophic flooding events to almost all elements of livelihood sustaining productive sectors as well as means of livelihood as a whole. Therefore, we need to dismantle political borders and prevent countries from controlling shared landscapes and natural resources to mitigate human- and country-induced multi-hazards that cause loss and damage.

For atmospheric parameters that lead to weather and climate anomalies, however, it is imperative that more innovative technologies for hazard detection, forecasting, warning, alerting, and precision-level anticipatory action planning and implementation be developed to bridge last-mile early-warning gaps.

The most timely and demanding solution is to establish a “whole-of-earth-as-a-whole societies” societies-integrated approach (de facto DRM consortium), mitigating tangled bureaucracies, establishing comprehensive, inclusive/exclusive, cohesive partnerships (driven by informed policy & planning action), integrated action planning, and combating climate catastrophes.