Japan has a chequered record on climate change
KARASHIMA YUKARI sits before a colour-coded map. She points out homes that were inundated by floods in Saga prefecture in August, for the second time in two years. Ms Karashima, who works at the Peace Boat Disaster Relief Volunteer Centre, a non-profit, spends much time rushing to scenes of crisis, staying long after the television cameras have gone, scrubbing mould from wet walls and training residents to prepare for the next disaster. There is plenty to keep her busy. Japan is a department store of natural hazards, says Nishiguchi Hiro of Japan Bosai Platform, a group of firms that develop disaster-related technologies. Few countries have been shaped so much by hazards and disasters. Besides earthquakes and tsunamis, there are typhoons, floods, landslides and volcanic eruptions. Japan has had to learn to live with risks, making it a laboratory for resilient societies. The concept of resilience is key to what others can learn from Japan, says Rajib Shaw, a disaster expert at Keio University in Fujisawa. As the threat from natural hazards grows, from climate change-fuelled fires to zoonotic pandemics, the world must live with more risk. The countries that fare best will be the resilient ones. In The Resilient Society, Markus Brunnermeier, an economist from Princeton University, argues that Resilience can serve as the guiding North Star for designing a post-covid-19 society. The biggest lesson from Japan is the value of preparation. As Ms Karashima says, Its too late if you start acting after the disaster happens. That this sounds banal in much of the world makes its absence more striking. Of $137bn provided in global disaster-related development assistance from 2005 to 2017, 96% was spent on emergency response and reconstruction, less than 4% on disaster preparedness. Donors prefer high-profile rescue work; the media cover disasters when they happen, not when they do not. Many governments treat prevention as a cost, not an investment. But natural hazards are not always disasters. The hazard becomes a disaster when the coping capacity is too weak, says Takeya Kimio, an adviser to Japans overseas development agency. In 2015 he promoted the Build Back Better concept in the UN Sendai Framework, a global pact on disaster-risk management. It is a lesson learned through bitter experience. The Ise Bay Typhoon, which killed 5,000 people in 1959, prompted the first disaster-management reforms. Another round came after the Kobe earthquake in 1995, which killed 6,500 and left more than 300,000 homeless. The government now has pre-arranged contracts for repairing infrastructure, allowing post-disaster reconstruction to begin fast without going through cumbersome procurement precesses, says Sameh Wahba, of the World Banks disaster-management programme. Local governments stockpile essential goods in schools and community centres. Parks have benches that can be used as stoves and manholes that become makeshift toilets. Across Japan, every day as dusk falls, folk tunes spill out from neighbourhood speakersa charming element of local life, but also a means of testing alert systems. Building safer The government focuses on engineering-based solutions. Such investment, along with improvements to building codes, has reduced risks. That most structures built to new standards withstood the 9.0 magnitude Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011 that triggered a big tsunami and nuclear meltdown is testimony. If not for Fukushima, it is the biggest averted disaster in history, reckons Francis Ghesquiere of the World Bank. But one cannot discount Fukushima. This nuclear meltdown points to another lesson: that over-reliance on technology can create a false sense of security. Officials who believed sea walls would protect them ignored scientists warnings about the plants location near a major fault line. Regulators who were too cosy with the nuclear industry overlooked the placing of the plants backup generators in a basement. When the earthquake knocked out the main electricity lines, the tsunami overcame the sea walls and flooded the generators, cutting power to the water pumps, leading the reactors to overheat. Even the best hardware can fail. The software is as essential as the hardware. When Shimizu Mika, a resilience expert at Kyoto University, was a child in Kobe in 1995, citizens were unprepared. We used to have a drill in schools, duck and cover, and then nothing else, she recalls. Now people realise disaster risk is everyones business. A cabinet-office survey before the pandemic found a majority had discussed household disaster plans in the preceding year or two. Both the private sector and civil society, which blossomed after Kobe, have invested in disaster preparedness. The key is making this participatory and citizen-led; the goal is not simply imparting knowledge of evacuation routes, but strengthening ties within a community. Research suggests such efforts are more than feel-good fests. When disaster strikes, social capital makes a big difference in survival and recovery rates, argues Daniel Aldrich, director of the resilience-studies programme at Northeastern University. He points to the neighbourhoods of Mano and Mikura in Kobe. Both had similar demographic and physical characteristics, but Mano had more social capital, thanks to a history of activism and community events. When the earthquake hit, residents in Mano self-organised to fight fires; those in Mikura did not. More than 15 years later, NGO density is a better predictor of population recovery rates than income or public spending, Mr Aldrich contends. The Reiwa era will test these personal ties. One reason is climate change. On Yonaguni, typhoons have become highly unpredictable, says Mr Itokazu. Perversely, Japans history of disasters has made it a laggard on climate change. With so many old hazards, the new ones have not generated as much urgency as elsewhere, laments Koizumi Shinjiro, a former environment minister. The Fukushima meltdown has kept environmentalists focused on anti-nuclear campaigns, rather than climate change. The nuclear disaster also paralysed energy policy. Although the government has pledged to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, it has yet to provide a credible plan for how to get there. Its interim maps depend on restarting large numbers of mothballed nuclear plants, an unlikely prospect given popular resistance. Leaders have avoided frank discussions with the public about the trade-offs. Meanwhile, Japan will continue to consume lots of fossil fuels, including coal. Another difficulty is the changing landscape of vulnerability, says Mizutori Mami, head of the UN office for disaster-risk reduction. The elderly, of whom Japan has growing numbers, are at most risk. That was a lesson from the floods two years ago, says Ms Karashima; this year, her team had lists of those who could not reach evacuation shelters and needed help. The pandemic led even more people to remain at home. Adapting to a future when multiple hazards may hit at once will require a flexibility that the Japanese system lacks. Earthquakes remain the greatest threat, particularly in and around Tokyo. The government reckons that in the next 30 years there is a 70-80% chance of a severe earthquake and tsunami in the Nankai Trough, a zone south of Japans main island. It may strike where the population and economy are concentrated, crippling industry and roiling global supply chains. The death toll could reach as many as 323,000 (the earthquake and tsunami in 2011 took some 20,000 lives); one study reckons it could lop 11.1% off GDP (a loss 4.5 times bigger than in 2011). It would challenge the survival of Japan as a state, says Fukuwa Nobuo, director of the disaster-mitigation research centre at Nagoya University. It would also devastate one of the worlds great cities, again.