Coordination of disasters and disaster risk management in Madagascar is handled by a National Committee for Disaster and Risk Management, which includes the government and relevant stakeholders. Through the committee, members share experiences and are able to advise BNGRC to help improve the implementation plan of the national strategy on disaster and risk management.

According to Mr. Venty, there is a need to spearhead more programmes to support organizations, communities and households to improve their risk culture. Besides increasing education and awareness on disaster risk reduction among communities, it is important to capitalize on the achievements so far and share best practice and lessons learnt from indigenous knowledge and skills. BGNRC have ongoing projects on educating children at school, training journalists, and media campaigns for the public, but these are not enough to cover all the risks faced in Madagascar, all the sectors of activities and all the districts in the country.

Madagascar participated in a regionwide Indian Ocean tsunami exercise in September 2016 and used it to check its information-sharing practices between national and local levels, a stress test that be applied to all hazards.  “We took lessons from this exercise in areas such as the preparation cycle from forecasts to alerts, information management and coordination and these played a key role in improving our internal organization,” said Mr. Venty.

More than half of the populations affected by Cyclone Enawo were assessed as being able to rebuild their houses unassisted. However, BNGRC stressed that this part of the population still required assistance to build back better with high-standard traditional homes, to better protect each household in the future.

BNGRC identifies the greatest lessons learnt from the cyclone as the importance of prevention and preparedness. All steps of information management, from information collection to protecting and sharing information, will be improved and coordination among all stakeholders at the national and local levels strengthened. BNGRC also points to the need to improve its real-time communication through its website and its communication to media.

A key step taken by the Government of Madagascar is to include disaster risk reduction in the national development policy and the consideration of disaster risk reduction in all national poverty reduction programmes. One of the strategic areas of the country’s 2015-2019 National Development Plan is the valuation of natural capital and the strengthening of resilience to risks of disasters.

To inform this process, UNISDR provides technical support to the government, including through risk profiling and published a report on ‘Public Investment Planning and Financing Strategy for Disaster Risk Reduction’ to facilitate planning and implementation of risk-informed development.

Date:

7 Jun 2017

Sources:

United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction - Regional Office for Africa (UNISDR AF)

Themes:

Early Warning, Risk Identification & Assessment, Disaster Risk Management

Hazards:

Cyclone, Flood, Land Slide, Storm Surge, Tsunami

Countries:

Madagascar