How children can help reduce disaster risk

When children and parents at a school in the Mongolian capital Ulan Bator got together to see how it would stand up to disasters, they realised that if an earthquake hit, the building could collapse, electrical cables catch fire and windows shatter, endangering students inside.

So the principal tasked 15-year-old Luvsansharav Altantsetseg with learning about how other countries protected their schools – lessons the two plan to use to improve their own.

This week, Altantsetseg was diligently following up on his homework assignment in Sendai, northeast Japan, where he was one of 200 young people attending the U.N. conference on disaster risk reduction.

When Sendai was hit by a huge earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, earlier disaster-prevention efforts – including work to strengthen buildings and evacuation drills – minimised damage and meant that not one child died inside a school, including three located on the coast.

Altantsetseg met children who had experienced the Japanese disaster. And he sat in on a discussion about making schools safer, where Turkey launched a global initiative to make schools more resilient to extreme weather and earthquakes, prepare pupils for how to act in disasters, and teach them about reducing risks.

Quake-prone Turkey also said it would ensure that all 80,000 of its schools are disaster-proof by 2018.

“Before I came (to Sendai), I was told that Mongolians face many challenges, but there are many other countries that are suffering from disasters, too,” Altantsetseg told me in Sendai.

He described at the conference his own efforts back home in Mongolia, where he trains other children, giving them practical tips and showing them how to do first aid.

Learning from children 

The 15-year Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction adopted on Wednesday includes a target to substantially reduce damage to infrastructure and disruption to services, including schools and education, by 2030.

It states too that children should be encouraged and supported to contribute to disaster risk reduction.

Investing in the knowledge and skills of young people is important so they can find their own ways of averting crises, said Richard Rumsey, director of disaster risk reduction with World Vision International.

In Ethiopia, a World Vision-supported programme introduced lessons on risk management and environmental awareness into the primary school curriculum about a year ago.

The young people who came to Sendai made it clear they want to be involved in efforts at the community and government levels.

“We expect policymakers to learn from us that children can solve their own problems,” said Yudi Yanto Njappa Kaka, a 15-year-old boy from Waingapu in Indonesia’s East Nusa Tenggara province.

When the East Sumba children’s forum he leads carried out an assessment of a village badly affected by drought, they found that kids had less time to study because they were out in the forest with their parents looking for food and water.

Their research also revealed that children believed the government would do something to help them.

Kaka’s forum persuaded them they didn’t have to wait for the authorities, and students decided to each plant a tree in coastal areas and near their school, aiming to improve water retention and make the land more fertile.

According to UNICEF, the number of children affected by climate change-related disasters is expected to rise to 200 million a year in the coming decades, from about 66 million children annually at the end of the 1990s.

Although children are among the most vulnerable groups – facing physical and psychological harm, loss of education, violence and abuse – the role they can play in reducing risks is less recognised, UNICEF says.

In Sendai, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and other top officials took part in a forum organised by young volunteers.

Altantsetseg and Kaka hope their voices will be taken seriously by those deciding their future.

“Children say many things, but adults don’t want to listen,” said Altantsetseg. “Children should not give up.”

This article is published in collaboration with The Thomson Reuters Foundation. Publication does not imply endorsement of views by the World Economic Forum.

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Author: Megan Rowling is a writer at The Thomson Reuters Foundation. 

Image: Children play in a destroyed school classroom in Tanna  REUTERS/Edgar Su.