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China And UK Working In Partnership On Earthquake Disasters
By KTM Metro Reporter
December 18, 2013: a China-UK workshop on earthquake relief was held in Beijing last week, five days after British Prime Minister David Cameron' s visit, according to the Xinhua news.
For six days, 40 experts and officials from China, UN, UK and other Asian countries such as Nepal and Bangladesh attended the workshop held for sharing earthquake response experiences in medical care, search and rescue, equipment drills and seminars, and signaling a broader picture of the bilateral collaboration.
"China's quake relief capacity building started only ten years ago, but with the government's committed support, our relief capacity has been improved to a high level," said Wang Nianfa, drillmaster at the China National Training Base for Search and Rescue.
"The Wenchuan quake in 2008 was a turning point for China's quake relief capacity, after which we grew very fast. In 2009, China International Search & Rescue Team (CISAR), the country' s first professional rescue crew, passed the INSARAG External Classification (IER) and became the 12th heavy rescue team in the world," said Qu Guosheng, Professor at National Earthquake Response Support Service and Vice President of The International Emergency Management Society. That means CISAR can provide effective service to quake hit areas as a qualified team and we have established a series of proven mechanisms and working procedures, Qu said.
"We saw in this workshop that China has done a good job in post-quake response. From China' s performance, we can set up Nepal' s disaster relief forces, with same procedure, same mechanism and policy," said Pradip Koirala from Ministry of Home Affairs of Nepal. China is Nepal' s neighbor and China's CISAR team is the nearest to Nepal. If Nepal has big earthquake, China' s team and experience would be vital to Nepal' s quake relief work, Pradip Koirala said.
On average, disasters caused over 65,000 deaths in Asia and affected almost 220 million people each year between 2002 and 2011, according to the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, but regional coordination and cooperation in disaster management is still far from adequate in this world' s most disaster-prone region.
"It is the first time that we knew China had this capacity of disaster relief," said workshop participant Md. Tarik-ul-Islam from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Bangladesh mission.
China will cooperate with Bangladesh and Nepal by studying quake relief policy, sharing information and building pilot communities, said Lai Hongzhou, head of the disaster reduction division of China' s Ministry of Civil Affairs (MCA).
This workshop is part of the Sharing and Learning Program on Community-Based Disaster Management in Asia (CBDM Asia) jointly launched by China's MCA, UK's Department for International Development (DFID) and UNDP in January 2013. It aims at increasing resilience to natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods and typhoons in developing countries by strengthening regional cooperation on community-based disaster risk reduction.
The UK-China Global Development Partnership is a very successful model, which provides a platform for Britain and China to share experience and expertise with other developing countries, said Chris Chalmers, head of DFID China. "Working with China on regional cooperation in Asia is an opportunity to encourage countries to work together, discuss solutions to common problems and exchange best-practices," said Chalmers.
