CCEM Podcast Episode 10
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Prof. Rajib Shaw: [00:00:00] So in UN, there is a word called, no one is left behind. So I think for the disaster resilience also, we need to think about that no one should be left behind. And the benefit of all new innovation technology could address this type of most vulnerable people also. So I think that's one of the possibly future challenge or future direction.
Hello and
Mr. Kyle King: welcome to the Crisis Conflict Emergency Management Podcast, and I'm Kyle, your host. And in today's episode, we'll be exploring the intersection of climate change and disaster risk reduction in Asia with an expert in the field, Professor Rajiv Shah. Professor Shah is a distinguished professor in the Graduate School of Media and Governance at Keio University in Japan, and has extensive experience in community based disaster risk management and climate change adaptation in Asia.
We'll be discussing his insights on the current state of climate change and disaster risk reduction in Asia. The importance of community based approaches and how [00:01:00] collaboration between international organizations and governments can address disaster risk. We'll also be exploring how policy makers and communities can better prepare for future disasters and the role of technology in education and disaster risk reduction efforts.
So sit back, relax, and join us for an enlightening conversation with Professor Shaw. So, Professor Shah, thank you for joining us today. Thank you very much, Kyle, for having me. So let's start off with just a really easy question, which is what has inspired you to focus on climate change adaptation and community based disaster risk management in Asia?
Well,
Prof. Rajib Shaw: that's a, that's a nice question to start with. Actually, I started this particular work of disasters, climate change, community based risk reduction almost now, 25 years back, when I started. That time actually I was working for a consulting firm, Tokyo based consulting firm, and I started a project that was a part of the United Nations program, and we did some work on the earthquake risk management in [00:02:00] Asian cities, and I'm talking about Tokyo.
The time of 1997 to 1999, that time, when you talk about the urban area or the cities, the community based approach was not that popular. It was more like the government oriented or government driven approach. But what we found that ultimately is the human being or the people or the resident of a city who needs to take action.
Of course, government will provide different types of support. It can provide legislative support, it can provide Some sort of, uh, different infrastructure related support, but ultimately if someone has to retrofit their home, he or she needs to be aware about the risk and he or she needs to actually spend something from their own pocket to retrofit that.
So now the challenge is that how you actually convince. And house owner to spend their own money. [00:03:00] And there comes this importance of education, awareness, and community based approach, but we did is, you know, we, the so called expert, we developed lots of earthquake scenario, very colorful map, which shows that, okay, if an earthquake happens, what will be the percentage of collapse of the building?
What will be the percentage of collapse? And the maps become very colorful, but. For a person who is living in that city, they need to relate themselves to that particular map. So what we did is that we had a very senior journalist from the very beginning from in our core team to actually translate this damage estimation.
Into a narrative of a person who actually lives in that city and then that person, it was a four member of the family, husband, wife, two children, the earthquake strike around 10 o'clock in the daytime [00:04:00] when everyone was indifferent, the two children, they were in different school, the husband was in the office and the So from there they started that what will be, how you will communicate each other, how you will try to locate the safety of your family.
And I'm talking about 97, 98, 99, when we did not have smartphones, when we did not have different types of like Facebook, I am safe, that type of app and all those type of things. It was more non digital work. So we started from there and then gradually that particular narrative talks about what will be the scenario after one hour, after six hours, one day, three days, seven days.
So that actually helps us to disseminate that particular knowledge as well as correlate to a person's own life and my main learning about the community based disaster risk reduction, unless a family or a community correlates [00:05:00] that risk as their own risk, it's very difficult actually to make a specific action.
So that was my starting point. of the community based risk reduction. Well,
Mr. Kyle King: thank you for that overview. When you were explaining that, I had a couple of thoughts and the first one was of course the private investment. And I think that's something that at least in a lot of the work that we're doing, that we don't see a lot of discussion around is sort of getting private and individual, say homeowner investment and things like that So what are the challenges between.
Are, what are the challenges with trying to get the homeowners and other residents to invest their own money in a community and in their own safety, when in fact that there still is a view that the government should be providing a lot of the safety and because a lot of that sort of response oriented and things like that, they go along with that.
What are your thoughts on that? What has been your experience so far? Actually,
Prof. Rajib Shaw: you know, it will vary from earthquake.[00:06:00]
And we all know that when there is an earthquake, the maximum damage of the buildings and not the very poor household, poor household or in Asia is a significant number of people. They leave what we call the informal settlement or slum areas. And they are the building materials are very light, very informal building material.
And that actually does not. Pause that much of death due to earthquake. Where the maximum casualty happens is the middle income group ppe who have the brick masonries, like the buildings which are made by brick, or sometimes it is concrete block. This becomes very heavy and this often does not follow the building code and the people who have that type of houses.
They possibly means, of course, everybody has their own aspiration for life. So if they have a good amount of money, they can save, they will possibly [00:07:00] opt that money to be used for a travel abroad sometimes. And that is what I am seeing in many parts of Asia. People become more aspirant. We are having some more leisure time.
Within the country, outside the country, affordable travel and all this thing, which is perfectly okay. There's absolutely nothing wrong in that, but the same amount of money, whether he or she will spend for strengthening the house where possibly they are living, maybe almost sometimes 10 hours. Maybe if there is an housewife, maybe she will be living in that particular house, maybe 18 to 20 hours.
So whether we can actually use our own funding for retrofitting a house and that possibly is a combination of awareness. To understand the risk, but also commitment or your, which one, like it's a trade off. Like if you want to put certain amount of funding for your own housing retrofitting, [00:08:00] you need to compromise with something, right?
So you need to make a decision, which is a trade off of your luxury or leisure or aspiration. So whether we are able to do that and they are, I think that is nothing to blame with this mid income group people. I think it is our role, the so called experts, we are possibly not been able to express the risk properly or the communicate the risk properly, which that person can actually be associated with.
So that's one of the major challenge for the earthquake related risk. But if it is. The climate related hazards, say, for example, typhoon or flooding, they are possibly this type of very low income group people. They become the hardest hit because most of the time their buildings are not strong enough. To withstand the wind, or sometimes they possibly live very near to the river, more prone to the flooding.
So they are [00:09:00] possibly some sort of government legislation, regulation, land use pattern. These things will be very, very important.
Mr. Kyle King: So it appears to be a bit of a combination of both, right? So it's not only just the education and getting people to prioritize investment and their own safety and stability, so to speak.
But also in terms of government regulation. So land use planning, and then as well as I guess, creating incentives for people to invest in their own development and changing codes, changing standards and things like that are also, I think an integral part of that process. One thing that you had mentioned is of course the changing times, right?
So starting in an era when there was no. Real sort of, you know, smartphones and technology and, or at least technology wasn't playing such a big role in our lives as it is today. It gets me to thinking about the changes of the times and disaster risk reduction and emergency management and how things have sort of shifted.
And you see a lot of conversations these days about whether things are a natural disaster or just a disaster, and it's only just the [00:10:00] introduction of man and the humankind into this. Equation that makes it a disaster apart from just a landslide in the middle of nowhere and nobody would notice. But one of the things that I have found, at least in the public education sphere is sometimes that, and I would like to hear your thoughts on this, but sometimes that nuance is very good at an academic, say a professional level within our niche and our expertise.
That's a great way to explore the idea and have this very finesse discussion around the ideas of disasters, but is often difficult to just convey to the public. Right? Because an industrial accident versus natural disaster, I mean, they're used to having these terms. And while we can have a more nuanced conversation within our professional academic spheres, translating that to the public is often quite difficult.
What are your thoughts about that? These sort of really nuanced and I'll be correct, but nuanced conversations. within our field and in how we can convey more complex ideas to the public to be able to increase [00:11:00] their awareness and to drive investment or action or planning or whatever the case may be.
Prof. Rajib Shaw: Yes. You are right. Like in the so called disaster vocabulary or in the. Current terminology, we don't use any more natural disasters, we call natural hazard. The main reason is that it is not the natural hazard which matter, it's the vulnerability and the exposure and which is created by the human being, combination of many different things which we were discussing earlier, whether it is land use planning, whether it is regulations and so on, whether it is lack of awareness.
So yes, the hazard becomes. The main point, but then the consequent become the disaster. But what we are seeing these days, this natural hazard induced, what you mentioned about the technological hazards or the different types of accidents. You know, I see, we have been working on this area also for last at least seven, eight years.
And my own understanding is [00:12:00] that in many times, our Hierarchical governance system that makes it's quite difficult or that makes possibly lots of walls or boundaries around us for the information flow. I give you an example that example from Japan, like in Japan. The disaster risk reduction responsibility as a whole, the country, it is under the cabinet office, which is directly under the prime minister.
But as part of the city is concerned, the city's mayor is the supreme authority for making an early warning. Or asking people to evacuate if there is a disaster coming. So it's very decentralized in that way. Now, a city might have different types of industries within the city boundary, but how much of hazardous waste are located in that particular industry, that information does not belong to the local government.
That information belongs to a different [00:13:00] ministry, which is Ministry of Industries. And they often all these as a classified information which is very difficult sometimes to share openly for the people. But there happens actually several times. That in the local government, the mayor gave the warning, but then there was an aluminum, I'm talking about the flooding incidents in 2018 in western part of Japan, there was an aluminum factory.
They got the warning and they could not bring the whole aluminum factory to a steel, the inside where they prepared the aluminum, like the, from the liquid to the solid one. So they are, it was still very hot, they could not close it down properly. So people actually found the risk and the company people, they evacuated that particular place.
Then the flood water entered and there was an explosion, but due to that explosion, the surrounding area, it was actually the neighborhoods, there were quite a bit of residents. And there [00:14:00] are major damage on the roof, on the wall, and also on the windows of the, of that particular houses. The point here is that the look, the factory decision maker, they got the warning, they evacuated, but they did not inform the local government that there might be a possibility of explosion.
So, because they are state. It's not that much related to the local government. So the problem is that when we try to actually raise the awareness of the people, I think the transparency of information becomes very, very important or we become transparent, more possibly the risk becomes lower. But then from the company side.
They may think that, oh, if we open it, then maybe people will think it about their negative. But can we think about some sort of positiveness, like what we call in the environment field, except for example, there is a process of environmental disclosure and [00:15:00] many countries, they have very specific protocol, which is laid out for the environmental disclosure and they get a recognition that, okay, this company is the best because they are very transparent about their environmental disclosure.
Similarly. If we can have a sort of protocol for disaster risk disclosure by these private companies and if we can give them incentive. That, okay, this company is very transparent because they are very open about the disaster risk and they are also trying to reduce that risk. I think that type of things are very, very important apart from just only the awareness raising.
When we make it more transparent, when we give incentive to the companies to come out with whatever risk they have, whatever potential risk they have, then it becomes more transparent. The people also become more aware. And it's a win win situation.
Mr. Kyle King: Yeah, that's, that's quite interesting. And again, it comes down to sort of governance and the way that we manage these risks and hazards.
And so by creating [00:16:00] programs that incentivize people to be transparent so that the public can understand what they're exposed to and then make some informed decisions as a result of that information, obviously there's a public education and sort of a training element to where people have to be able to understand and process that information to be able to make informed decisions.
But it's certainly interesting nonetheless. And then, so. When we're talking about this sort of exposure, and then we're looking at the sort of other challenges that are facing the disaster risk reduction efforts, and then specifically in Asia, what are some of the most pressing challenges that you're seeing?
One
Prof. Rajib Shaw: is, of course, like our urban areas in Asia. It is extremely, extremely high density compared to any other. European cities, Africa, in some of the African countries, it is also becoming high density, the thing, or maybe North America or South American cities. So the population concentration, the density becomes extremely challenging.
That's how the exposure for any natural hazard, the exposure, [00:17:00] possibly a similar type of hazard, if in some areas in, in some other cities. Outside Asia, if it actually expose, maybe say for example, thousand people here in Asian cities, they easily go to a hundred thousand. So it's, it's almost, uh, like the numbers become the major challenge for that by saying that.
Also, these numbers can be in one way threat, but in one way, it can also be the potential. Potential in the sense, when people actually help each other during the disaster. These numbers is potentially can be amazingly good, especially for helping each other. Because in many of the Asian cities, especially I will say in the developing country cities, The cities are not possibly well resourced, like there are always problems with the financial resource.
Technical resource, there are also different other types of problems like day to day problem, whether it is traffic, whether it is air pollution, whether it is [00:18:00] waste management, the daily cities problem. So, within those cities area, like cities daily problem, how we can. Actually, in May, a city manager or a city mayor think about risk reduction.
That becomes a major challenge in most of the cases. Now, for good or bad reason, the climate change impacts has been very feasible. Every year we have been seeing prolonged heatwave, the hot days or dry days. So the people become, or the city mayors or the city managers become more. cautious as well as conscious for the climate related hazard.
The geological hazards, which I was talking about, the earthquake or maybe tsunami, still remains a major challenge because it doesn't come in that high frequency as that of the climatic hazards. So, There are many different challenges, I will say. As per the city structure, the density, haphazard, or sort [00:19:00] of very unplanned development practices, that becomes one of the major challenge.
On the other hand, frequency of and the severity of the
IPCC report, in the last IPCC report, in the sixth assessment, I was the coordinating lead author for Asia. We had a very strong focus on cities in Asia, which type of future risk we should be having and which type of future risk the cities are exposed to. And of course, the heat wave, the typhoon, the flooding or the precipitation, this becomes very, very high.
And we have been seeing that time and again. So I will say that for the climate related hazards, yes, the awareness is now much higher in most of the cities. And that possibly gives us some opening as well to do to undertake some sort of risk reduction method. Thanks
Mr. Kyle King: for that. So in terms of the, for those that were not familiar, what is the IPCC report?
IPCC
Prof. Rajib Shaw: is full form of IPCC [00:20:00] Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change. This was actually started more than 30 years back, now 35 years. So when the scientists were debating that, yes, climate is changing, there are a big ozone hole, which is created. Many governments or the decision makers did not believe that because there was no specific evidence of that.
It was more on the modeling, but that time the IPCC was created, tried to make an interface of science and policy. A group of scientists globally, they come together and they assess the current state of climate change. And then we interact with the government, all the country governments of the United Nations, and then they provide feedback, which sometimes they agree, sometimes they don't agree.
And then we, the scientists, try to provide scientific evidence for that. So that is the report, IPCC report. It's usually once in seven years. The [00:21:00] last one was published in 2022, that is the sixth cycle. So that's how we call the sixth assessment report. It has three parts. One is more on the climate change itself.
The models of the different types of climatic change. One is the adaptation and another one is the mitigation. So the report, which I mentioned, it was on the Adaptation specifically for Asia.
Mr. Kyle King: Thanks for giving us that overview. I think that's very helpful. So in terms of the climate and the changes that we're talking about and how has climate change overall affected disaster risk reduction efforts in Asia?
Uh, since this was your focus in that report, what are some of the things that you're looking at now and for the future? You see earlier.
Prof. Rajib Shaw: We used to separate these two groups, one group working on the disaster risk reduction, another group working on the climate change adaptation. But I think the frequency, severity, intensity of the climate related hazard, be it heat wave, cold wave, typhoon, uh, flooding, [00:22:00] like the precipitation.
So all these things we are seeing that these are actually causing different types of disasters because the rainfall pattern has changed. Now what we are seeing is very short duration, heavy rainfall. Say for example, within two hours, around 100 millimeter, 150 millimeter rainfall is happening. So what is happening is like the city is having what we call the inundation flooding.
So it's not that a river, say for example, a city is located near the river. There are two types of flooding. Once, when the river water actually comes, means there are dike system, but it overflow the dike and comes to the city. That's one would call the river flooding. But another one is that when the rainfall induced flooding, which is very purely the problem of the city's drainage system, like the city has a very short duration heavy rainfall, but the drains are not well [00:23:00] equipped.
to bring that water out. So what happens is different pockets of the cities are having differential inundation. Some parts where the drainage is very bad, you can have 60 or 70 millimeter of Inundation, water logging, or in some areas where possibly a newly developed area, which is more planned, broader drainage system, maybe very little, maybe 10 to 20 centimeter of inundation.
So what we are seeing as an impact of climate change in terms of disasters, the city is now having differential level of flooding. The old part of the city, which is possibly not well developed drainage. They have always very high inundation and the new part of the city has a little bit less inundation.
So you need possibly a differential risk reduction plan for the different zones of the city. Earlier it was like a city's single disaster management plan, which [00:24:00] is more or less uniform. But now that type of uniform disaster management plan is not working. What we need is. Depending on the nature of the risk, local risk, we need to customize the plan, and we need to customize the actions also.
So, if we have an early warning of a heavy rain, possibly the pockets, the old part of the city needs to evacuate early. Possibly the old people, or a pregnant lady, or the children, or the people who are possibly on the wheelchair. Those people in the old part of the city needs to be evacuated properly. So this becomes more very specific local actions.
And that's how, what we call localizing disaster management actions becomes very, very important due to this climate change induced
Mr. Kyle King: disaster. That's a very interesting idea in terms of segmenting down, you know, cause I agree with you in terms of. The overall [00:25:00] report are very sort of either national level or state level, or even sometime at city level in terms of, you know, DRR platforms, or even in building resilience and other aspects and sort of systems and connectivity.
But it hasn't really, at least as far as I've seen, been really hyper localized in this way, like you're talking about to where it's down to neighborhoods. and segments of a city that are then required for implementation of their own versions of the plan. Is anybody doing this currently, or is there somebody that's leading in this effort as a model?
You mean the city? For example, as a city that's actually taken their plans and localized them in that way into various different segments of a city.
Prof. Rajib Shaw: Yes, actually. I can give you one classic example of a city from Philippines. It's called Makati. Makati is one of the metro Manila city. Metro Manila is the national capital region and they had 17 cities.
But Makati is the main, we call the CBD central business district where there [00:26:00] are mostly the high rise building in a very concentrated area. And then there are outside a few residences. So one of the challenge of like many CBDs in the world, like in Makati also the main problem is a floating population.
Most of the people, they come in the morning for the work and then they go back in the evening. So what happens nowadays is that somehow the rain is starting around in the afternoon, around two, three o'clock, four, five hours. And then that becomes huge water logging in some cases. So Makati city has now, they had made some sort of agreement with the local business leader, especially the local restaurant owner, that if this type of emergency happens.
They will be required to provide the meals to the people who are stranded there, because many times they take shelter to the local schools or the city hall, [00:27:00] whichever is safe. But then the whole night they cannot go out, like they cannot go back to their home. So there needs to be a huge amount of food which is required for them.
And this is a pre agreement with the restaurant association in certain pockets. And I find this is a very, very innovative way to make it. And of course, they will bill it to the local government later. This particular agreement, which actually asked the local restaurant owners. To provide meals to the stranded people.
That's a very, very simple, yet very useful approach. And they have made this as a part of the local localizing this disaster management plan. So this type of approach, it does not need a huge amount of resource. It just needs some good idea and some good leadership. So McCarthy had been very fortunate to have very strong mayor and thought that leadership of [00:28:00] the mayor becomes really, And this is a factor and also really they give lots of incentive to this type of restaurants who actually serve the people.
So you do something good and you also get recognized for your work with the top city authority. I think that's a very interesting way of actually involving the business sector, private business
Mr. Kyle King: sector. Yeah, I think so also. And also in terms of reinvestment in the community. Right. And so. It keeps things localized.
And so as long as these restaurants are not, you know, flooded themselves and now they don't become sort of get closed because of the, the rainfall and the floods, and they're able to provide services and continue to work, then that is just a reinvestment into the community itself. I think that's smart and local, you know, decision and implementation plan.
So in terms of these innovations, are there other examples and innovation space that you're seeing that are maybe unconventional approaches to disastrous reduction or anything that comes to mind?
Prof. Rajib Shaw: You know, there are lots of, I work very closely with the private sector in Japan and [00:29:00] try to promote different types of innovation.
I give you two very simple example. One is an heat registered paint. So this is a company which actually developed this heat registered pen, and they are using this paint to on the roof of the public building. Mostly the schools and also some of the community halls as well as the local government. And I actually went to their experimental facility and this paint can reduce temperature up to 13 to 15 degrees centigrade.
And that's a like a huge amount of temperature. Say for example. If the outside temperature is around 37, 38, it actually brings it to the 25, 26 degree. So what actually helps that it helps the schools actually to use less air condition. It becomes more energy efficient and sometimes they use it also on the buses.
So that [00:30:00] bus also, especially the limousine buses and all this thing, because now they have developed this nano pen. So when I see this particular word, I find it has a huge potential, especially for the developing countries schools or public buildings because most of the developing countries schools, they don't have air conditioned facility.
And many times due to this heat wave, they have to actually close the schools. There is a summer vacation, but now what we are seeing is that But even in some countries, say, for example, March, usually the summer vacation starts from mid April, which is the peak summer. Sometimes from March onward, that becomes extremely hot.
So you lose a big amount of time of your education curriculum. The very simple reason is that their rooms become so hot that you can't just keep the children for two hours or three hours there. So this is a very simple technology. And this is [00:31:00] quite affordable. So we are actually trying to work with this type of paint in some of the schools.
So that's one example to cope with the heatwave. Another innovation, which is a little bit of high tech innovation, but again, it started with a small startup group. And this group focuses on AI based water refining or water purification system. So, this is a sort of cylinder of 20 liter of water and the AI based work is for hand washing.
So, after the hand wash, you don't need a water supply. So it actually automatically goes to the treatment, there is a small treatment system and that's the actual innovation of this group. And they have also the patent for that, like this is an AI based treatment, which actually automatically. It makes this water purified and it can be recycled within a 20 liter water.
You can keep on making hand wash [00:32:00] and this becomes actually big hit during this COVID time because in COVID time many you might remember that many people were reluctant to use the sanitizer because it's of alcohol and it sometimes have some rash. People have allergy with that one. But this hand wash becomes very popular.
So we actually see this in many of the supermarkets, like after you go to the shopping and when you come out, you just wash your hand and then go back. So this again, this is the system which we are now trying to work with some of the dry states in India and try to see again in the schools, in many of the schools in the dry area.
They don't have. Proper sanitation and the water facility. And many times the, the children, they don't go to the school, especially the girls student, because they don't have better sanitation system. So this is what we are trying to use it, like try to introduce them and try to see that [00:33:00] if this can be a feasible option for the dry region.
And not only in India, there are many different types of innovation, simple innovation, more high tech innovation. Sometimes people have lots of new process innovation. So I think innovation is possibly one of the key aspect of these days to address the climate and disaster risk reduction.
Mr. Kyle King: That's very interesting.
And on the paint side, just for those who are from the United States and operating on a Fahrenheit scale, 15 degrees Celsius is a big change in temperature. That is equivalent to, if I'm not wrong, I think that's equivalent to about 59 degrees Fahrenheit. So you're talking about the surface temperature of a building or whatever the case is moving from say a hundred degrees Fahrenheit to about, well, obviously ambient temperature is important, but essentially on paper, that would reduce down to like 41 degrees, right?
So essentially. 59 degrees in terms of heat is significant, and that is an amazing sort of development in terms of simple things that we can [00:34:00] do to implement some of, of course, energy usage, the effects of, you know, heat and things like that in terms of our inner cities and buildings and public administration and everything else, not even just in the private sector would be a great implementation as well.
And in terms of the, the closed system on water purification, that's also fascinating, right? In terms of the potential for that and what that could produce in the near term, even just even in future developments and larger scales and seeing how that sort of scales across communities and how it could be implemented, especially in these, let's say more austere, more rural environments where water sources are more of a key issue.
for public hygiene and everything else could really be interesting to see how that develops. And it's also interesting to see how these things link together. The innovation side on the humanitarian side and how that can also be applied even over towards the disaster risk reduction side is also quite interesting nexus as well.
Prof. Rajib Shaw: What a challenge, I think is one of the future major challenge in most of the Asian cities. For many reasons, of course, the precipitation is decreasing. Population is increasing. Lifestyle [00:35:00] is changing. Water usage is changing. So every Here we see the water shortage or the water scarcity, uh, is becoming one of the major challenge in many of the Asian places.
So this type of innovations really help. So
Mr. Kyle King: looking ahead, what is in Sichuan, the issue of sort of technology and innovation? What do you see as a future of disaster risk reduction in Asia from your
Prof. Rajib Shaw: view? Nowadays, we are going more into the digital world. So of course the digital transformation, what do you call it?
The X becomes one of the key driver of many of these innovations. Early warning system. We are talking about now multi hazard early warning system. Most of the early warning is becoming now more through smartphone or this type of digital devices. Which should be the case, but to me, one of the things which bothers me still very strongly is that digital divide, which is we are creating, [00:36:00] you know, the young people, they are, we call them digitally native, like the university students, the generation said.
They were born with the smartphone, so they are level of awareness. Their level of information is totally different, but who are possibly the most vulnerable people in case of Japan? Say for example, a 85 year old person who is living alone in a small rural house in the mountain. So how we give him or her the proper early warning and how we can actually ensure that person has evacuated before the typhoon has struck.
So what I'm trying to point out here is the digital inclusivity becomes a major, major issue. How we can make our all new innovation inclusive. How the benefit of the new [00:37:00] innovations actually goes to the most vulnerable part of the society. I think that is one of the major challenge and the real, I say that the real innovation or the real, real technology is when we have this inclusive technology becomes a much better technology.
So in UN there is a word called. No one is left behind, so I think for the disaster resilience also, we need to think about that no one should be left behind and the benefit of all new innovation technology could address this type of most vulnerable people also. So I think that's one of the possibly.
future challenge or future direction.
Mr. Kyle King: And I think that's a valid issue. I mean, that's a valid concern because when we look at the population demographics of various different nations, you see aging populations and a much lower rate of a younger generation and population [00:38:00] rate and birth rates and things like that.
So all societies are getting older at a faster rate
and all the younger population now is completely connected. And every minute of their life, and it is just something that they're, as you said, they're digitally connected and digital natives they've grown up with their entire life, but a vast majority of the population now is aging and is, is not going to be in the same way.
And on the innovation side with technologies as well, I think that's a really interesting point. You know, we're designing things or creating new apps, new products, new services that are not oriented necessarily towards that market. It's towards the next great thing, the faster, the sleeker, the more, you know, sort of app that's oriented towards that.
That digital audience that is not necessarily the ones that are the most demographic in our society these days. That's a really interesting point. So in terms of, and the last question I'll see is coming back to the. The role of education awareness. What are your final thoughts in terms of how we can increase education awareness, [00:39:00] especially in terms of the public?
And, you know, we've talked about this dynamic of, okay, there's issue of understanding hazards, understanding risks, understanding the exposures and getting private sector, public sector, be more transparent. And there's also a key role in terms of education and awareness campaigns. How can we pull all of these things together and, and what can people in, in positions like yours as emergency managers or city officials or public administration, what could they think about today in terms of bringing these thoughts together?
I
Prof. Rajib Shaw: think we need to change the word. From education to core learning, education is something that, okay, I know everything I'm teaching someone and that does not work for the community based risk reduction. There are significant wealth of information, knowledge, practices in the communities. There are lots of traditional knowledge as well.
Many times we, the so called expert, fail to understand that, realize that, [00:40:00] appreciate that. So, and we often say that, okay, last mile. Connectivity or last mile communication, we say last mile keeping us as the starting point and bringing community as the last mile. I think we need to change the concept that last mile to the first mile.
So the mile zero should be at the community and any solutions we provide, it needs to be co design as well as co delivery. Many times our problem is that we develop something. Uh, some solutions back in the university or in the laboratory, and then think that, okay, we will bring it to the community and apply that.
Maybe sometimes it is right, but sometimes there are lots of discrepancy or mismatch. So I think this whole awareness raising thing, it should be, it's not only just the awareness raising of the people, but awareness raising. Of the researchers, the academics, the [00:41:00] government official, it's a more dynamic co learning process.
It's not that someone is teaching someone and someone is a student like that. So it's a, it needs to evolve over time. It needs to be more dynamic in nature. It needs to be more organic in nature. And it should be a collective co learning together. And that's the only way I think. That we can possibly see some very visible changes, changes in mindset, changes in behavior, changes in perception, and finally changes in the action.
Mr. Kyle King: I think that's a great note to close out on. And so that's all the time we have for today's episode of Crisis Conflict Emergency Management Podcast. I want to give a huge thank you to our guest, Professor Rajiv Shah. for sharing his valuable insights on climate change and disaster risk reduction in Asia.
And truly, it was an honor to have you on the show. So thank you very much for joining us. Thank
Prof. Rajib Shaw: you. Thank you very much. It was a pleasure talking to you.
Mr. Kyle King: And to our listeners, thank you for tuning in. We hope you found this episode informative and thought [00:42:00] provoking. If you have any feedback or suggestions for future episodes, please don't hesitate to reach out to us on our website or social media.
And if you like the topics and discussions, please share and leave a review on your favorite podcast player. Until next time, stay safe and keep learning.
