00:00:00:01 - 00:00:20:17
Dewald van Niekerk
We were one of the first countries to have what we call this new generation disaster risk legislation. It took us the better part of about all of the years to have a fair implementation of the act and was promulgated in 2003. We still have major deficits in implementing the legislation in municipalities and all that, he said. With that situation, it's just like, you know, it's just it's torture.
00:00:20:17 - 00:00:34:06
Dewald van Niekerk
We just saying we're doing these the AB legislation. We have policies, we have plan, but there's no real output to it. There's nothing we can see in how this affect a population or the community or how it produces their risk or what makes them safer.
00:00:34:08 - 00:01:07:18
Kyle King
Hello and welcome to the Crisis. Sounds like Emerge based podcast on coronavirus today. And in today's episode, we'll be discussing the current state of disaster risk governance in Africa with Professor de Waal Van Niekerk. Professor Van Niekerk is a professor of geography and the founder and head of the African Center for Disaster Studies at Northwestern University is joining us today to discuss disaster risk governance in Africa, the challenges that countries face when implementing disaster risk reduction strategies, and also delve into the role that different stakeholders such as governments, INGOs and communities can play in promoting better disaster risk governance.
00:01:07:20 - 00:01:27:17
Kyle King
Additionally, we will discuss examples of how successful disaster risk reduction strategies have occurred in Africa, lessons learned from previous disasters and the impact of climate change on disaster risk governance. And Professor Van Niekerk, thanks for joining us today. And I know that you're from South Africa, so I probably didn't pronounce your name correctly. How do we officially pronounce that.
00:01:27:19 - 00:01:37:00
Dewald van Niekerk
Very key word? So very much for the invitation. You know, the old Suncare Another does not always roll over. Thanks. That you that you've got it actually on 2%. Correct.
00:01:37:02 - 00:01:49:03
Kyle King
Okay. Thanks a lot. Appreciate that. So let's start with your background and the story behind starting the African Center for Disaster Studies. Can you give us a little bit more context and information of how you got to where you are today?
00:01:49:05 - 00:02:21:15
Dewald van Niekerk
Sure. I started off my academic career in political science and development studies and human geography, and a lot of my research on my master's label focused on early warning, but much more from political stability points of view within the studied context and Southern African Development Community. And in that year I was in this transition space in South Africa where we went a bit to democracy out of the apartheid government and the image money role which South Africa played in the region.
00:02:21:15 - 00:02:48:05
Dewald van Niekerk
And it was extremely diffuse in that area. And then in that period I came upon the dull face of disaster management and the university. I worked for. There was actually the only one that presented taught courses in our professional courses in the advanced management for all of the Southern African region and one thing led to the next. I find myself working in that space more, looking at early warning from the audit added perspective and they might assess things.
00:02:48:05 - 00:03:36:20
Dewald van Niekerk
Progress are received opportunity to move to another university, establish a singing specifically that focuses on disaster management back then and disaster risk and resolving issues. That was in 2002. So the center was established and from there our main focus was on capacity development, very much linking with industry making, with government. A huge amount of our work went into assisting various levels of government from municipalities to regional to national government and also other governments outside of South Africa to understand disaster management better and to develop processes and legislation and policy to assist them in implementing and ensuring kind of bottom, not only a bottom up approach, but also getting the right kind of policies in place
00:03:36:20 - 00:04:03:07
Dewald van Niekerk
that would enable implementation of disaster management and disaster risk issues on a bottom up perspective as well. And from then on we did quite a lot of research obviously linked to these projects. And in that period we also establish strong programs, undergraduate programs in disaster management linked up to geography, urban planning, political science, public management. So we tried to throw the net quite wide and to disciplinary.
00:04:03:09 - 00:04:12:21
Dewald van Niekerk
And now a focus in our research that focus shifted to the broader issues of climate change as any entity in the disaster risk space as well.
00:04:12:23 - 00:04:42:22
Kyle King
Well, thanks for that background. I know that there is quite a lot to unpack there in terms of discussions and the work that you're doing. But I think this said, you do have such an Africa focus naturally. It would be good for our listeners to sort of understand what are some of the common challenges that you have in Africa, in South Africa and in the regions that you're working in, and especially in terms of implementing disaster risk reduction strategies within the context and against the background of a changing climate, which is obviously going to be something that is going to impact Africa quite substantially.
00:04:42:24 - 00:05:11:20
Dewald van Niekerk
Absolutely. What has happened in Africa from the disaster management, I would say probably from 20 years ago received a bit more prominence from the previous two decades. The focus was very much all and it actually still is, unfortunately, but it's been very much focus around disaster response to events. So if you look at what has happened in many regions and in many, many countries, that was that focus kind of dominated a lot of the activities that we on by just said was allocated.
00:05:11:22 - 00:05:34:09
Dewald van Niekerk
And disaster management, which I think was understood back then, was much more done to implement this disaster management cycle then. We think our research and action is not right and sexual framework to use anymore. But there was also the cyclical thinking linked to disasters in thinking that if we implement this cycle we be able to reduce disasters and we know that hasn't happened.
00:05:34:09 - 00:06:05:11
Dewald van Niekerk
But thinking was was fundamentally flawed and countries have moved on in the past, largely leading to what is happening in the international community with their global framework for action that came into being with the prominence of climate change and the linkages of climate change and disaster risk reduction that was happening. And now with this enhanced framework as well, and what is happening you see in this this two decade process, why is that more over A regional and continental institutions have taken ownership of disaster risk management issues.
00:06:05:13 - 00:06:28:06
Dewald van Niekerk
And you could see at a flow of the new two countries and what they were doing and how they were thinking about and the type of processes that was implemented. But it wasn't a crisis without many hiccups. And there's various reasons for this. But what we now see in Africa that there's more over countries having very good policies and legislation for disaster management from a national state down to a local level.
00:06:28:08 - 00:06:59:14
Dewald van Niekerk
A lot of people with capacities and knowledge and in the research and academic sector, there's more of it. Universities that understand this is the important component there. We see quite a lot of centers being established within other universities. And in the past ten years, this exposure of master's degrees, Ramos's degrees in various universities across the continent. And we've also seen a lot of networks being established between different universities to support each other and help with research and student operation and all those things.
00:06:59:16 - 00:07:32:13
Dewald van Niekerk
It's a really on a on a multilevel and multi sector basis that it is exponentially growing and we are still growing. We find ourselves currently is that there is a massive focus on obviously the limitation on the same time framework elements are doing best and then also very specific to the African continent. We have a program for action that we try to achieve which runs concurrently and it's kind of an add on to the same bond framework as well, though we really, as I say on this, this upward curve in trying to do a lot of things, but with quite a lot of issues linked to that as well.
00:07:32:15 - 00:08:10:16
Kyle King
Yeah, absolutely. I think that resonates with a lot of probably with our listeners or feeling in terms of the response side mechanism, in terms of disaster risk reduction and emergency management being heavily focused on the response or as let's say, oriented towards a response and less so in other phases. And that often drives not always right, but I would say in lesser developed areas you might see where emergency managers or city emergency managers or even possibly even a state or especially if you're in smaller nations, the emergency managers or those that have this portfolio of disaster risk reduction are coming from the response side.
00:08:10:18 - 00:08:30:16
Kyle King
So the former fire chief police chief, things like that. So it seemed to be an add on to the response mechanism, but that has been slowly shifting over time so that things have matured more with Sendai Framework, with Tiger, with all these other sort of pushes into societal resilience and resilience and what that means in terms of climate security and all these other dynamics coming up.
00:08:30:18 - 00:08:43:15
Kyle King
But you mentioned something that I wanted to just dive into a little bit, because you mentioned that the research that you were doing or you have done has shown that this response framework and in terms of these phases is not necessarily working anymore.
00:08:43:17 - 00:09:01:24
Dewald van Niekerk
Can you elaborate on that? Ah yes. Again, we actually published, I think two or three articles on this as well. The recent one came out, you know, Chula Go we did it with colleagues from DeVry University in the UK. We have to take a few steps back and then understand we the the cyclical approach to disaster management control.
00:09:02:03 - 00:09:31:21
Dewald van Niekerk
And it's very much linked to the UN system which start to build capacity. And in that thinking of about two or three decades ago and we were kind of adopted this, this as a linear process of implementation without understanding that there's a bigger picture just without understanding and addressing the root causes of disasters and there's risk and the notion, ability to assume that if we do preparedness mitigation, inevitably we're going to go to press with these early warning phase, but we're going to sit with a disaster.
00:09:31:21 - 00:09:52:11
Dewald van Niekerk
And then after that, we have to do recovery. And it wasn't a very clever way of thinking of disaster management. And I remember seeing a video made by one of the US news channels as well, Austin, I think it was Hurricane Andrew, which actually kind of fun at FEMA and saying that, well, you did exactly what you said you're going to do and then you had all of this crisis.
00:09:52:11 - 00:10:11:16
Dewald van Niekerk
You had. It is awesome in nature. It is awesome. Again, I mean, they jokingly actually captured exactly what the problem is with that that cycle that you have to understand, if you do disaster risk reduction, you have to find ways of breaking out of the possibility of sitting with this idea of planning. Obviously, you have to plan for the worst that your planning should be centered around a disaster.
00:10:11:18 - 00:10:33:04
Dewald van Niekerk
She'd be centered around the root causes, which inevitably might lead to a disaster if you don't address that. And that is where I think disaster risk reduction, the loss of risk management and resilience thinking places you or forces you to place your thinking outside of just the disaster strike and asking really difficult, complex issues. And that cuts across sectors and disciplines.
00:10:33:04 - 00:10:43:12
Dewald van Niekerk
And so as basically shown the areas in this kind of cyclical planning and suggested other ways of going about and looking and understanding disaster.
00:10:43:14 - 00:11:00:14
Kyle King
One of the conversations that we had recently was with a gentleman named Aaron March who's a guest on the podcast, and we talked about governance and emergency management. And it was interesting in terms of trying to frame the governance problem within the context of emergency management and response, because we continue to make decisions just like what you're saying.
00:11:00:14 - 00:11:31:08
Kyle King
We go through this disaster management cycle. You know, we plan, we prepare, we respond, recover, mitigate, and we go through this over and over and over again, often with very much the same results without removing this this risk as part of that equation and then trying to reduce overall impacts, because at the end of the day, I'm just sort of giving a short synopsis here, but at the end of the day, it still has to be a governance decision on implementation, new policies, you know, financial sort of payments, the economic aspect and changing the way that we live in our society.
00:11:31:08 - 00:11:49:12
Kyle King
And that's going to be something that I think is really the future of where we're going, because it's not just this response cycle, recovery cycle anymore, but the time we are recording this. I mean, there's the fires that were in Hawaii and you can just see the mass devastation. And then the question becomes, what now just recover and replace everything?
00:11:49:14 - 00:12:05:11
Kyle King
Or what do we do to reduce future risk and then that or are we going to invest in that? There's all these sort of questions that come out of that. If we really want to break the cycle. And so what was your research pointing towards? There's some things that community leaders can take a look at in terms of trying to break out of this cycle.
00:12:05:13 - 00:12:22:20
Dewald van Niekerk
Management of the main problem that we sit with is that and you alluded to it previously, that there's a feasible human resource component that does not necessarily have the skills and understanding of what they need to do. We see it very much in this African environment where it's like you said, it's an add on to people's normal based work.
00:12:22:20 - 00:12:42:12
Dewald van Niekerk
And if you're a fire chief, that's what you have been trying to do. And that, too, your focus will lie, will be in disaster response area. But I think the bigger problem and what we showed you is that disaster risk must be understood as a multidisciplinary problem. It is not just the fire chief or the Disaster Management Center's responsibility to address that.
00:12:42:17 - 00:12:59:02
Dewald van Niekerk
If we tried to do this, we back in this the same cycle, the same people will try and solve the same problem with the same kind of solutions. That's not working. It. It must be understood that this cuts across all sectors of government. If it's a government issue, doesn't matter which sect you find yourself in, you have some kind of responsibility in.
00:12:59:03 - 00:13:26:09
Dewald van Niekerk
It's also and you have to share the risk and the responsibility of mitigation. And what our research point is that we have to embark. MORGAN A process of risk, informed development, all of these the vulnerability that we set in in various community, all the possibility of added protection, comes back to good development decisions. Well, the fact that development doesn't take place, that we approach it from a risk informed, it makes it much easier to fill the void left by the risk that that we said.
00:13:26:09 - 00:13:58:20
Dewald van Niekerk
And this is where you will have urban spaces being planned, building infrastructure, being more more resilient, infrastructure, better understanding of community needs and all that can be addressed through limited budget application, taking into account that our development should not create risk as these various things, many, many things we can do. But if within our governance structure, we don't realize that this is everyone's business, it becomes extremely difficult for one person to bang the drum and to address that the issues and just by saying that we all know that most governments still focus in silence.
00:13:58:20 - 00:14:16:14
Dewald van Niekerk
And it's a constant, I think, battle due to breakdown assignments, a breakthrough this on and I mean I research show it has happened we just in Malawi is a very good example the benefits that that comes from that and the more people talk about it, the more they realize, oh, this is how I contribute to the loss of lives for my atmosphere and you run with it.
00:14:16:14 - 00:14:20:12
Dewald van Niekerk
And once you add those champions in various sectors, then you see the benefit of it.
00:14:20:14 - 00:14:35:22
Kyle King
And I couldn't agree more on that risk. Inform development is going to be a key piece moving forward, and I think that needs to be focused on a lot more, especially if you are, I don't want to say fortunate, maybe in an unfortunate situation of where you were working in an administration or government and you have to rebuild your community.
00:14:35:22 - 00:14:57:07
Kyle King
And so I think that's the opportune time to try and make significant changes. But when we talk about stakeholders because we talk about this multi-domain aspect, we talk about different stakeholders recognition by public, private, academia, communities as well, you know, private sector in terms of maybe businesses, but also INGOs. How do they view their different roles in terms of promoting better disaster risk governance?
00:14:57:07 - 00:14:59:17
Kyle King
And how has it been going in Africa?
00:14:59:19 - 00:15:23:18
Dewald van Niekerk
You know, it's a very interesting question. I mean, a lot of the disaster management is also risk management with these has actually been driven and funded by international organizations within humanitarian organizations or within and as you're in organizations and it's been kind of, you know, pushing the donkey uphill battle and understand why there's there's quite a lot of frustration within that sector as well.
00:15:23:21 - 00:15:48:02
Dewald van Niekerk
If you look at the amount of money that has been spent, I'm not only just talking about disaster risk issues, but obviously new material and post-disaster recovery launch money has gone into a black hole and it doesn't benefited the beneficiaries as we thought. And it left a space of the governments. But still there's just space for the humanitarian actors to show and and that to do this, if you look at the work of all of you in Habitat funders like US, Aid was a big idea.
00:15:48:06 - 00:16:05:15
Dewald van Niekerk
They came in Josette to the Germans are doing quite a lot of work and they realized that and for this space, the investment in developing, they're just going to go down the tubes. So they had to intervene. So that's the one unfortunate aspect is that I think it got a lot of government says now adopted this wait and see approach.
00:16:05:17 - 00:16:25:05
Dewald van Niekerk
They said let a disaster occur. The international community will come in and assist us. We're going to do a lot of development through that process so it doesn't get to office and we'll just, you know, kind of build the car as as we drive it. That's a nonsense perspective they have. And I'm saying it quite generally, it's not obvious to everyone that would ask it, but we we still see this happening.
00:16:25:07 - 00:16:47:02
Dewald van Niekerk
And I think that's where the reluctance come in to fund disaster risk projects and processes from government to state that are previously mentioned, the plan of action. Now we've done research in in all four tricky union states, and one of the questions that we ask is how much do you actually fund locally? What's the dollar amount that you fund locally?
00:16:47:04 - 00:17:09:22
Dewald van Niekerk
But is also this project and the data that we receive is extremely poor or non-existent, just don't know because the funding comes from outside. Now these we can have this discussion in the corridors, yet you say what would happen if the international community just stopped funding with Assad's reduction in US governments to do that themselves? I would actually have an answer would be shocking that nothing even we would be in a new situation because people switch onto that.
00:17:09:24 - 00:17:27:23
Dewald van Niekerk
But this must have been government need to take responsibility and work that into their budget. And we that has happened. We see that things are going fine now. I think that is one of the key issues is we need to understanding this process that all players and who are supposed to be leading this, the disaster risk reduction environment.
00:17:27:23 - 00:17:47:21
Dewald van Niekerk
And unfortunately it should not be the international community should be governments all level to take this responsibility and carry it forward. And but that's unfortunately, I think, one of this uphill battle that we will continue to fighting that gets cut. If I don't see the benefit, immediate benefit within the very short political space where the politicians find themselves, they are not going to invest in this.
00:17:47:21 - 00:18:11:16
Dewald van Niekerk
Our politicians, the local government level, I think in most cases stick around for about five years. So they memory and they need to do anything is just a five year period and they would rather spend money if they do this on Arctic development initiatives later bulldozers or late ensure sanitation or let's just agriculture and spending it on something quite abstract and that's I think, the kind of focus that we need to get to the politicians at understand.
00:18:11:16 - 00:18:14:09
Dewald van Niekerk
Well, there's more to do than just normal development.
00:18:14:11 - 00:18:35:07
Kyle King
I think that's something that we find across all countries to be honest in terms of sort of the political timeline trying to appeal to a voter base, prepare for the next election, and then trying to contrast that with the 20 or 30 or 40 year timeline of reducing risk with disasters. And I think that's something that is we are challenged with all the way around the world in terms of trying to get investment.
00:18:35:07 - 00:19:07:13
Kyle King
I saw this when I was on the response side of the house for many, many years, which is we essentially said after a disaster, you have a two week window of opportunity to try and get any additional funding because after that the news cycle changes and then moving on to some other priority. So while it is a priority, you can get the investment and get some people's attention, but then after that it's lost again and it's very, very difficult to try and communicate and long term timelines on these types of programs and get people to understand risk and that the it's nothing ever happens that's actually the outcome that you want and that's something that
00:19:07:13 - 00:19:30:21
Kyle King
is not tangible and people don't tend to try and invest in. And that becomes very difficult. And one of the ways that has often been what has been said at least recently in one of our interviews about trying to raise awareness, was to have something in terms of a risk index for people in communities so that they understand from private sector, from public sector the risk of where people are living and then put that right in front of them as a score.
00:19:30:21 - 00:19:49:10
Kyle King
Right. Here's where you're living and this is the risk to you and to have that be front and center all the time so they understand where they're building in the risk from chemicals from a local machine shop or something like that, you know, And just so that people understand and it's sort of a publication, you know, a piece of transparency in a corporate environment that they have to publicize these things and their scores about risk in their community.
00:19:49:10 - 00:20:10:03
Kyle King
And the risk that they have in bringing into a community. And so that's where I think that that's something that is interesting. But this is a long term issue and we haven't quite figured out, I don't think, in many ways now to resolve the issue of our timelines on disaster risk reduction versus competing political timeline. Has there been any discussions or any good initiatives that you've seen have tried to address this issue?
00:20:10:05 - 00:20:28:24
Dewald van Niekerk
And, you know, it's quite funny because on a political level all week, Margaret, looking at behavior change issue, which are even much longer. So there's no reason why political office bearers can't be doing these things, just political role of saying yes. Now item issue is an asset with a problem, but I can't pass on this problem to the next person and to the next one to the next one.
00:20:28:24 - 00:20:45:06
Dewald van Niekerk
We we need to do something about it. So I think from a political perspective, it to me, it's all a difficult thing to do. It's honestly, we we do have everything in place. It's a question of let's make the right decision, allocate the resources to pick up on your point of understanding the risk. This relates to both of these question.
00:20:45:08 - 00:21:07:09
Dewald van Niekerk
The research that we're currently doing for the African Union Commission is to build a kind of a dashboard and try to understand where they are in implementing the same DEI and the program of action. And just by having that kind of continental focus we've seen it catches the attention of the minister specifically because they want to understand why do I have 1.4 and I had a 1.6 or what has happened.
00:21:07:10 - 00:21:37:14
Dewald van Niekerk
So all of a sudden this displaying of data and the variable, the people's imagination and I up, how do we get from a 2 to 3? What what should we do? And that's that's been proven to be quite a thing. And from a ministerial perspective, we see that they are holding the subordinates accountable now to onset towards these goals, keeping the object to the lots and I and the plan of action, but it's just one component is fine to say, okay, we scored points to the four out of five spark because we are planning, but we have to interrogate what that means.
00:21:37:17 - 00:21:56:16
Dewald van Niekerk
Okay, you've got a national disaster management plan. What does it mean? How is it implemented? Subnational level on our sector. And I don't think we are in the position yet to answer those questions. And then we also have issue of subnational politician that also needs to fall in line for the community, needs on a regional or whether it's on a municipal and local basis.
00:21:56:16 - 00:22:08:04
Dewald van Niekerk
And I need to be educated more to understand within these limited timeframes what the right decisions to be made. But like I said, I think it's absolutely possible this is getting the right process in place and mandated run.
00:22:08:06 - 00:22:26:07
Kyle King
Now, I think that's a fantastic point. If we're having these conversations around climate security and climate change and other long term impacts, then we should easily have the same conversation about overall disaster risk reduction platform. I mean, you're absolutely right in that regard. I completely agree with that. And so let's discuss that a little bit in terms of the impact of climate change on disaster risk governance in Africa.
00:22:26:07 - 00:22:38:11
Kyle King
And what are some of the the work that you're doing at your center and what are some of the practical or tangible things that you're seeing come as these actions from the different institutions or civil society or government?
00:22:38:13 - 00:23:04:07
Dewald van Niekerk
We put out the message that is also an introduction. Climate change are two sides of the same way, and that's something that is pushing quite a lot in a posting 16 years, a lot that we need to do to achieve or address climate change issues and adaptation reduces disasters. I think we all agree to that argument. You can get the policymakers and the planners to understand that you get synergy planning and you get a lot of mitigation and also the risk reduction that has happened.
00:23:04:08 - 00:23:21:06
Dewald van Niekerk
So we speak to governments, the way we do projects. We try to always address both of these issues. You can't just focus on the one and then leave it and then you got onto the next. These things are so intertwined that it's a great that you need to be thinking of both. And this saying that to many people that's not within this space.
00:23:21:08 - 00:23:45:17
Dewald van Niekerk
It's quite daunting to get your head around. Okay, Do you actually think about all of these major things Are climate change and are you studying resource issues as well? You know, my brain hurts and I'm not going to work on this. So what we saw on that is a very nice equalizer. You know, kind of a level playing field is not to necessarily throw disaster risk and climate change issues to politicians and your planners, but you have it more around a discussion of resilience and development.
00:23:45:18 - 00:24:06:15
Dewald van Niekerk
Most people understand that. And if you can make the connection between we want to achieve much more resilience to find out how do we go about this and why are we doing this, we're also addressing issues that would make them less resilient or would impact on the resilience and that relate to your development challenges, to your design solution to climate change adaptation that we said we want to be resilient as a resilient to what?
00:24:06:15 - 00:24:27:10
Dewald van Niekerk
And that opens up the space to talk about why we need to be resilient to climate change issue. And now we sit with heatwaves like we've never seen before in the past 200 years of recorded data. What do we do about this? You know, it's not just the development issue. All of a sudden, there's not books about climate change, but there's also risk issues, and that opens up a space for very meaningful conversation.
00:24:27:12 - 00:24:55:20
Dewald van Niekerk
So our workers and shifted a bit, we've got this hidden agenda of obviously we want to address. There's also risk issues, but we reframe it much more subtly within the resilience context. And what our research also I've been doing is to try and do our analysis around complex systems and complex adaptive system, you know, match one on a high level talking, working with planners or technicians, whether in government, and they understand editing, but understand the complexity of systems and the constraints and the benefit of using such an analysis.
00:24:55:20 - 00:25:18:07
Dewald van Niekerk
So all of a sudden you open up spaces for conversation that you never had or that would have been closed. If you throw these though, the terms of climate change adaptation and zosimus production, and that has so far shown to be quite effective. And we also see in the Southern Africa context, many governments have now also kind of shifted their thinking and you see a couple of strategic policies and plans around resilience.
00:25:18:08 - 00:25:31:17
Dewald van Niekerk
I mean, a lot of focus on resilient urban centers, which is our narrative by the consent in Africa and is heartening that if you read those documents, there's also risk issues and disaster risk reduction are woven into all that. And that's what we want to see that that gets me thought here.
00:25:31:18 - 00:25:51:09
Kyle King
Very interesting. I think we need to capitalize on all these opportunities, especially as you're saying, two sides of the same coin as we discussed, climate change, climate security, and then also a disaster risk reduction perspective. I mean, they shouldn't be separated. So using that current conversation to also drive the discussion in terms of disaster risk reduction platforms as well is going to be very helpful.
00:25:51:09 - 00:25:58:12
Kyle King
But to your point about the urban resilience and city centers and things like that in urban populations, why is that such a concern for Africa now?
00:25:58:14 - 00:26:21:11
Dewald van Niekerk
Well, if you look at the amount of people migrating into urban centers, it's exponential at this stage. We're going to say, well, I don't have the stats on my end, but billions of people more in the next 20 years. We're going to have been saying to the Abbott, there's massive drain on the rural areas, obviously migrations around food security, machine agriculture and urban development, you know, the food value chains.
00:26:21:13 - 00:26:49:14
Dewald van Niekerk
There's so many things that just the major concern when I'm thinking about these things. But urban centers are exponentially growing more younger. People want to be in the urban centers, obviously, for all these reasons that we know. And with that our urban development and our many within urban centers to South Africa. That's the chilwell, the bean that you go to, all major urban centers, you will see there's a turtle geek that's happening in terms of services, being able to deliver, infrastructure that's being maintained, housing, sanitation, being water.
00:26:49:14 - 00:27:06:10
Dewald van Niekerk
This is just in South Africa. I mean, the rest of Africa and you have data about similar problems that you said. And all of these has got a knock on effect beside the fact that people are extremely vulnerable and exposed to any type of hazard that could impact them. It's got a major impact in the development and the sustainable development of those seem to stand for.
00:27:06:11 - 00:27:34:13
Dewald van Niekerk
So also because within the urban centers, as you got a lot of understanding the urban risk issues and urban rural linkages that either fuel or mitigate those problems, we also have within the region seem to be specifically focusing on urban aspect and they look Walled City Wrap, which basically looks at making that official through a process of planning around resilience and disaster risk issues and trying to understand the underlying process in thinking it up to to the development planning and specific actions.
00:27:34:17 - 00:27:55:08
Dewald van Niekerk
And on the other side, also much linked to support being given by the international organization, because the methodology I think is extremely fine. It's not prescribing or trying to measure, but it's allowing them to develop their own process. And that is that's wonderful because they take ownership and once again, developmental resilience, lean that gives much benefit, the urban risk environment as well.
00:27:55:11 - 00:28:18:03
Dewald van Niekerk
So in the African context, we see this is where 90% of our attention should lie, especially if we talk about climate. Then you look at the amount of population in Africa living on coastal areas. It's a huge concern and they look at this already quite a lot happening, but I think much more can be done in understanding urban risk and trying to mitigate that through whichever means which will be development operations at the end of the day.
00:28:18:05 - 00:28:38:08
Kyle King
Your point on international organizations is, I think, really spot on because, you know, working with international organizations and some of the work that we do, we work with that international policy guidance issued by many of the international organizations from the UN to NAITO to others. And it is a guide, I guess I could say. But the real magic or to use that term happens when there's local ownership.
00:28:38:08 - 00:29:07:16
Kyle King
And so it's not prescriptive in terms of what absolutely you have to do, but it asks for the fundamental frameworks and foundation of national response planning or energy security or food and water security. It is there sort of aligning these fundamental aspects that we have to have in society in order to secure our future. But at the same time, the way that it's done, the methodology that's applied is based on every nation they're legislation or frameworks or regional structures, bureaucracy, you know, staffing, politics, everything else that goes along with it and including economics.
00:29:07:16 - 00:29:27:00
Kyle King
And so that's one of the key roles that I believe in terms of international organizations, is to provide some of that framework guidance to nations to be able to at least start that conversation, to identify gaps and to be able to provide a good bit of guidance for nations to be able to get started or for communities to be able to get started in terms of building more sustainable, resilient societies.
00:29:27:00 - 00:29:37:08
Kyle King
But in terms of the work that you're talking about with the international organizations as well, do you find that to be a common theme or is that something that is different from your perspective working at the center?
00:29:37:10 - 00:29:59:15
Dewald van Niekerk
No, not at all. Actually. A lot of these disaster risk and resilience issues has come from these international organizations. And what we see is we've always tried to push the advocate for mainstreaming disaster risk reduction in a lot of our work in governments. I've been trying to do that with all the constraints, as I mentioned previously. But a lot of international organization have been able to do that.
00:29:59:15 - 00:30:20:17
Dewald van Niekerk
You look at a chart and you look at the work between habitat engineering you had. Woman There's such a lot of focus now on the disaster risk, gender and that incorporate that into what the program is doing and what they also expect from if you see the projects being funded even by international donors. A lot of this talks about this cross-sectoral disaster risk issue.
00:30:20:17 - 00:30:44:09
Dewald van Niekerk
So it's heartening to see that. But I think there's one that is not linking disaster risk issues when they're doing their work in always find it some way in. They they kind of thinking you can read it within the documents that sea based is a kind of a political will to address these issues and that's wonderful. But what I don't see is that translation into African government, the talk at National, they all might be there, but the implementation at subnational that is extremely poor.
00:30:44:11 - 00:31:03:15
Dewald van Niekerk
If I can use South Africa as an example, again, we were one of the first countries to have what we call this new generation disaster risk legislation. It took us the better part of about all of years to have a state implementation of the act, and it was promulgated in 2003. We still have major efforts in implementing the legislation in municipalities.
00:31:03:15 - 00:31:17:24
Dewald van Niekerk
And what is it with that situation? It's it's like, you know, it's a torture. We're just saying we're doing these the ABA legislation. We have policies, we have plan, but there's no real output to it. There's nothing we can see in how this affects a population or the community or how it reduces their risk or what makes them safer.
00:31:18:00 - 00:31:35:09
Dewald van Niekerk
And that is this kind of issue that we still set. Although there is a major international push, it does not may certainly find its way from on a national level. That's our concern, is why does this not happen? Why do we have wonderful early warning systems in place, really technical state of the art, start it. People on the front receiving the message.
00:31:35:09 - 00:32:00:04
Dewald van Niekerk
They're not listening to messages, they're not reacting to messages. You know, they've got a saying in English that the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and that's the problem. We sit with it. We can't see it as certainly the benefits at subnational level. And the only way we're going to be able to address this is once again, get this into our development planning and getting people to understand, well, this is important because at the end of the day, it's going to meet these benefits in people's wellbeing.
00:32:00:06 - 00:32:27:06
Kyle King
I think you're faced with one of the challenges that many community leaders and others representatives are trying to take and operationalize a lot of these policies and trying to get that down to a community level. And so it's going to be a struggle for all of us to try and operationalize a lot of these this guidance and documents and frameworks and guidelines that are all coming out from the different organizations and trying to really bring that into a an actual measurable implementation plan within our communities.
00:32:27:08 - 00:32:37:02
Kyle King
I'm sure there are successes out there, but I agree with your point that it remains to be a significant challenge for many of us, and that's something that we constantly see as well. So yeah, so.
00:32:37:02 - 00:32:37:14
Dewald van Niekerk
We're.
00:32:37:20 - 00:33:00:11
Kyle King
Running just about out of time. So first of all, I want to thank you very much for joining us today, Professor Van Niekerk. It's really your insights and things like that in terms of disaster risk reduction, your experience and the background you're working with in terms of Africa and are said to there is really interesting for me to hear about and give such a different global perspective on terms of the same issues that we're dealing with in an international level.
00:33:00:11 - 00:33:17:13
Kyle King
And it's it's really nice to be able to hear your perspective as well. So to our listeners, thanks for tuning in. If you have any feedback or suggestions for a future podcast, please don't hesitate to reach out to us on our website or social media channels. And if you like the topics of discussions, please share and leave a review on your favorite podcast player and we'll see you in the next episode.
00:33:17:13 - 00:33:24:09
Kyle King
Until then, the world. How can we reach out to you? And if somebody wants to get in contact you, what's weather? What's the best way to do that?
00:33:24:12 - 00:33:47:06
Dewald van Niekerk
Well, I'm worried by the social media, but you'll probably find me opening in. You can look at the North West University website in you don't see those eBay. You can do a search then you'll find me all the easiest. My email address with this audible gearbox dot fun recap at w .8.0. There's just a dot between my name and state and I'm going to do that actually books and get well.
00:33:47:06 - 00:34:01:02
Kyle King
Thanks again for joining us and we'll put that in the show notes as well so people can reach out to you if they have any questions about the work you're doing at your center and if they have any insights or experiences, they can share those as well. Other than that, thanks a lot for your time today. I really do appreciate it.
00:34:01:04 - 00:34:02:08
Kyle King
And thanks for joining us.
