DG/2005/075
Original: French UNITED NATIONS EDUCATIONAL,山西代县
SCIENTIFIC AND CULTURAL ORGANIZATION
Address by
Mr Koïchiro Matsuura
Director-General
of the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO)
on the occasion of the Twenty-First Century Talks on tsunamis
UNESCO, 10 May 2005
五四运动口号
医生护士简笔画DG/2005/075 Minister,
可能的英语Professor,
Excellencies,
屈指可数是什么意思
双硬盘双系统Ladies and Gentlemen,
To know in order to predict, to predict in order to prevent, and to prevent rather than cure: the urgent need for future-oriented studies is strikingly obvious. Yet, it is still far from being the norm for public policy, particularly in respect of disasters, as shown in the ca of the tsunami which struck the Indian Ocean on 26 December last year.
In just a few hours, nearly 300,000 lives were swept away. In the most expod areas, which were in some cas the poorest in the region, the tsunami not only killed people, but also ruined the development efforts and future prospects of a number of communities.
The immeasurable fury of the forces unleashed, the shock arising from the number of people killed and the scale of the damage should not mislead us into neglecting our responsibilities in such a ca. It is so easy to shirk our responsibilities by blaming nature! Rousau had already denounced
such fatalism in his Lettre sur la Providence, written in respon to the earthquake and tsunami that destroyed Lisbon in 1755: one cannot, he said, lay the blame on nature for failing to construct adequate housing or for failing to inform the inhabitants of what to do in the event of an earthquake.
Two and a half centuries later, this obrvation unfortunately still applies. Yet today we have accurate information on the mechanisms that govern the earth, sophisticated computers, satellites and powerful and very rapid communication networks. Since 1968 we have even had in the Pacific Ocean a tsunami early warning and disaster mitigation system, which operates under the auspices of the UNESCO Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC).
The magnitude of the human loss caud by the disaster in December has more to do with a failure of future-oriented thinking than the violence of nature. The fact is that we could have, and should have, taken our inspiration from the Pacific Ocean region. Moreover, our Organization has been suggesting such a cour of action for years. Becau the probability of tsunami devastation in the Indian Ocean was so low, some thought that the urgency lay elwhere. The giant wave of 26 December swept away that illusion. Faced with the risk of disasters of this kind, how can we hide behind a paper wall of statistics and probabilities?
Nature nt us further warning when Sumatra was struck by another earthquake on 28 March, only three months after the tsunami. It is esntial to act as rapidly as possible becau the Indian Ocean can no longer rely, for its safety, on information from elwhere, with all the delays and time-lags that that would involve. In view of the rapidity with which a tsunami is generated the reaction time is crucial.
The international community has entrusted IOC with the responsibility for coordinating the establishment of a tsunami early warning and disaster mitigation system in the Indian Ocean. We have good reason to hope that it will be functioning by June 2006. But there are so many challenges to be met! The only way to respond to them is through the creation of a global culture of
DG/2005/075 – page 2
anticipation and prevention. Without such a culture, by means of which we can look forward into the medium- and long-term future, the countries and regions that are expod to natural disasters will continue to be caught unprepared and to pay the heaviest of costs each time that the elements unleash their fury.
Confronted with the major risk of a disaster on the scale of a tsunami, the only solution is a global, c
oordinated and preventive respon. It is not always easy to create a detection and warning system, since some countries consider that certain kinds of information involve their national curity or commercial interests. But tsunamis ignore frontiers. How can we, in that ca, protect ourlves without protecting others? Tsunami detection requires therefore the conclusion of a scientific and technical contract that will necessarily include political claus, since a project of that kind cannot be implemented without the cooperation of the competent scientific communities and the political will of policy-makers.
The will to cooperate is all the more important becau the effectiveness of such a system requires not only proper funding but also the mobilization of the countries concerned. Seen from that point of view, the establishment of a single, centralized structure for which no one would feel responsible should be avoided. To sustain the mobilization effort, we need to create an intergovernmental network in which national systems are interoperable while still retaining some degree of autonomy and sovereignty.
Nevertheless, the major challenge facing such a system is probably not its establishment, but rather ensuring its continued existence. Let us face facts: the project for a warning system in the Indian Ocean is arousing keen interest becau the tragedy and the images of devastation are still fresh in
our memories. The experience of IOC in the Pacific has shown that the maintenance of a specialized regional system often ends up by receiving less and less attention and disappearing from governmental priorities. Large-scale tsunamis are in fact rare and we tend to forget that they will always reoccur.
Our current efforts to establish warning systems will achieve no lasting results if we just repeat what we have done in the past. That is why UNESCO is advocating the creation of a global ocean obrvation system, which would cover the whole planet and include all ocean rvices.
We must first and foremost be capable of detecting tsunamis anywhere in the world since some of the zones at risk, such as the Mediterranean, the Atlantic and the Caribbean, have no warning systems. But there are other climate-related risks, such as storm surges or cyclones, which occur much more often and are equally deadly, such as tho which caud the death of 500,000 people in Bangladesh in 1970 and 1990. It would be absurd to create as many systems as there are risks when we know that they can often be detected by the same instruments.
To ensure that the tsunami warning systems are sustainable, we need to link them up with other information systems on natural phenomena and offer a whole range of oceanographic rvices not only to the scientific communities, but also to States and to the private ctor.种玉米
As long as a growing proportion of the world’s population lives in coastal zones – currently 60% (3.6 billion people), a figure that will probably ri to 75% in 2030 (6.4 billion people) – global surveillance of the oceans is more esntial than ever to human safety.
畜牧兽医毕业论文
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Prevention cannot, however, be limited to a surveillance and warning system, however global and excellent it may be. There is no possible way of predicting natural disasters over the long-term
DG/2005/075 – page 3 and conquently, a culture of prevention should aim to make local communities better prepared for cataclysmic events and thereby reduce the vulnerability of their populations.
It is up to the local authorities to organize simulation exercis and to prepare behaviour and evacuation models. The schools and the media must rai people’s awareness of tsunamis and the other risks to which I referred, so that each citizen will know immediately what to do in the event of an alert. Like you no doubt, I am reminded here of the young British girl who, remembering a geography lesson about tsunamis, was able to save hundreds of lives on a beach in Thailand. She had just learned at school the week before that when the a withdraws suddenly, it is imperative to
reach high ground. The knowledge of indigenous populations also helped save thousands of lives. In 1883 a tsunami on a scale comparable to the one last December – the last one, in fact, before the one in December – ravaged the coastline of the Indian Ocean, taking the lives of nearly 30,000 people. On one especially hard-hit Indonesian island nearly the entire population was killed. A little boy who had survived the disaster later explained to his daughter what had happened, how the a had suddenly retreated and how important it was to take to the hills to escape the wave. Transmuted into legend, that knowledge was transmitted from generation to generation. And while the disaster has been forgotten by most modern societies, the legend remained in the collective memory of that indigenous population and helped to save thousands of lives last December.
The disaster of 26 December was therefore terribly human becau the populations at risk are not all aware of what to do in the ca of a natural disaster.
Reducing vulnerability also involves an active mastery of the environment. We must identify zones at risk, lect or even create evacuation zones on higher ground and, above all, we must ensure that buildings are earthquake resistant and forbid construction in high-risk areas. In January 2005, the World Conference on Disaster Reduction, held in Kobe, recommended that protection be reinforced for nsitive sites such as schools, hospitals, communication routes, electricity generating stations a
nd heritage sites.
Furthermore, such protective measures need to be adapted to the local conditions in the countries concerned and especially to the communities at risk.
Finally, the culture of prevention that UNESCO is calling for requires a constant exchange of knowledge and information between the authorities, local communities and scientists. By bringing together this evening invited guests who personal careers bear witness to this permanent dialogue between the Earth and its people and between scientists and policy-makers, the Twenty-First Century Talks reflect UNESCO’s ambition to be a laboratory of ideas for the invention of the future.
For what we undoubtedly need is a new social contract between science and governance, a forward-looking contract without which decision-makers would be blind pilots and scientists clear-sighted but powerless pasngers. Our leaders must have a clear vision, and science must have a lever if, as Archimedes is reputed to have said, it wishes to move the world.
Thank you for your attention.
