Poverty, Environment and Disaster Preparedness to be focus of Recovery Efforts in Central America

Press Release IHA/668
NEW YORK, 19 November (OCHA/UNDP) -- The United Nations system will seek funding for a major United Nations inter-agency relief and recovery effort for central America in an appeal to be launched next week, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) announced today.

Representatives of 10 United Nations agencies, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Inter-American Development Bank met yesterday at United Nations Headquarters in New York to discuss the region's needs following Hurricane Mitch. The meeting was jointly chaired by the UNDP, James Gustav Speth, and the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Sergio Vieira de Mello. A follow-up meeting will be hosted by the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, D.C., on 10 December.

Participants discussed possibilities for debt relief and singled out extreme poverty as one of the root causes of Central America's vulnerability to natural disasters. They noted that the lack of sustainable nvironmental practices and poor disaster prevention and response were major contributing factors to the enormous loss of life and suffering, which continues.

Mr. Speth said after the meeting: "It is very important not just to reconstruct, but to build something new. This means that infrastructure should be built to better withstand natural disasters. It means reconstruction of homes in less precarious areas and with more resilience. It means building new national institutional capacities to prevent and to mitigate events of this type."

Mr. Vieira de Mello emphasized that short-term relief efforts and long- term development efforts should go hand in hand. "Many of the sheltered people are living in public buildings, schools -- buildings that must be used for their originally intended purpose", he said. "Education is paralysed at present. While these people must leave their shelters, they must not return to the areas where they were living because these were high-risk areas. They must, therefore, be provided with new land with new services, with livelihoods, that is, employment opportunities. These are not simple issues. Therefore, we must start now in the knowledge that this will take years to resolve. But unless we start now, they will either return to where they came from and will become victims again when the next natural disaster strikes, or they will be tempted to migrate, to emigrate".

Mr. Vieira de Mello said that unless people were provided with new land and new livelihoods, they would continue to cut wood and use soil without conservation measures. The overuse of fragile lands and large-scale deforestation had contributed to the tragic consequences of the current disaster, he said.

Mr. Speth said that while the UNDP and other United Nations bodies could be helpful and supportive in Central America, the United Nations system recognized very much the leadership of the governments of the affected countries. "Our role is to be supportive and not to try to supplant capacities", he said. "It is very important to build indigenous capacities. The international community is responding, and there is a definite need to increase the absorptive capacity for the resources that are being made available, particularly the local absorptive capacities; the capacity to make good use of the funds that are available."

Humanitarian agencies will focus their efforts on food, health and shelter for hurricane victims, in concert with the long-term development efforts of the UNDP and other United Nations agencies to fight extreme poverty and environmental sustainability, Mr. Vieira de Mello said. Together, the OCHA and UNDP will develop a strategy -- to involve the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the World Meteorological Organization and other specialized agencies -- to strengthen the early-warning, prevention, mitigation and disaster-response capacity, both at the national and regional levels.