Risk Wise

[

] 97

tive landscape and heritage preservation and for raising the standard

of World Heritage site administration. In Thailand, there is an appar-

ent openness to such a paradigm. The Department of National Parks,

in partnership with Danida, the Danish aid agency, has created a

programme for joint management of protected areas. This scheme

consists of dialogue with all stakeholders, including indigenous

villagers living within the national parks. Issues such as capacity-build-

ing for local people, livelihood concerns, land use and tenure will be

a focus. According to Chatri Moonstan, Environmental Programme

Coordinator at the Danida office in Bangkok, the four-year pilot project

will encompass 11 national parks and the western forest complex.

Included are some parks with indigenous populations: Ob Luang

National Park in Chiang Mai province; Doi Phu Ka National Park in

Nan; Talay Bun in Satun, and Hat Chao Mai in Trang, which is also

home to sea gypsy communities.

Unfortunately, both the Surin Islands National Marine Park and

the Moken are excluded from the project. Nonetheless, it is hoped

that this programme will lead to a common policy applicable to all

national parks. Given the inclusion of the Andaman Islands in

Thailand’s tentative dossier for inscription on the World Heritage

List, now would seem the time for UNESCO to mobilize support for

the inscription of Ko Surin as a mixed site of both natural and

cultural heritage.

Phase 2: education for natural disaster

preparedness in the context of ESD

In direct response to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, in April 2005

UNESCO Bangkok’s programme for ESD, established within the Asia-

Pacific Programme on Educational Innovation for Development

(APEID), initiated a project entitled ‘Education for Natural Disaster

Preparedness in Asia-Pacific in the context of Education for

Sustainable Development’. Funded by the Japanese Funds-in-Trust

of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and

Technology (MEXT), the Government of Japan, as well as public

donations by the citizens of Switzerland and contributed to UNESCO

Bangkok by the Swiss National Commission for UNESCO, the

project focused on gathering, developing and disseminating infor-

mation from key stakeholders in the Asia-Pacific countries most

affected by the Indian Ocean tsunami.

The project provided details on the development of culturally

appropriate and locally relevant educational materials for natural

disaster preparedness which target key stakeholder groups and inte-

grate ESD principles and strategies. It successfully developed and

strengthened a regional network to implement and further ESD

initiatives throughout the region by promoting education for natural

disaster preparedness as well as ESD. This has underpinned an iden-

tified key area of the Hyogo Framework.

The impact of the project was evident from the extent to which disas-

ter prevention, recognition and preparedness within the framework of

ESD have become integrated into the policies and practices of targeted

stakeholder groups. The project articulated the lessons learned by the

four in-country project teams: the Maldives, Thailand, Indonesia and

India, and two collaborating organizations (the Asia/Pacific Cultural

Centre for UNESCO and the Bangladesh Red Crescent Society) in devel-

oping materials in collaboration with community groups in the

Asia-Pacific region. It provides insights into effective techniques to

develop locally relevant educational materials and highlights some of

the challenges in that field. Ideally, the undertaking has helped set a

strategic agenda in the Asia-Pacific region to ensure education for

natural disaster preparedness is firmly entrenched in all

educational contexts in the long term.

The launch of the World Disaster Reduction Campaign

2006-2007 led by United Nations/International Strategy

for Disaster Reduction (UN/ISDR) has as its main theme

‘Disaster Risk Reduction Begins at School’. UNESCO’s

Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura stated in his

opening address: “Education and awareness-raising

provide the foundations for a culture of prevention. If

people in places threatened by natural disasters were

conscious of the risks, and knew how to protect them-

selves, there would be fewer deaths, fewer wounded and

less destruction when such disasters strike”.

“Investing in school safety and education pays off in

the long term,” says Salvano Briceño, Director of

UN/ISDR. “Many countries are already drawing the

lessons of past disasters and taking measures to improve

the level of safety of their schools. We encourage every

government in the world to include disaster reduction

in the curricula of school children.”

These testaments

clearly proclaim the need for Education for Natural

Disaster Preparedness (ENDP) to be integrated into

school curricula and for information to be accessible to

every member of the community. The initiative aims to

ensure that political commitment to these goals is

applied until they are realized.

Under the mandate to promote the Hyogo Framework

throughout the Asia-Pacific region, the UN/ISDR Regional

Programme for Asia and the Pacific co-organized a regional

workshop with UNICEF and UNESCO Bangkok in

October 2007 on ‘School Education and Disaster Risk

Reduction’. The regional workshop is the benchmark activ-

ity giving opportunity for real dialogue on ENDP between

practitioners, curriculum developers and policy makers

from a larger number of countries throughout the region.

Following the workshop, eight national institutes in

China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Philippines, Sri Lanka,

Thailand and Vanuatu agreed to conduct a situational

analysis of policies, programmes, curricula and school-

based activities and materials in relation to the

integration of ENDP or disaster risk reduction into

school and teacher education curriculum and training.

This project has specifically targeted these eight coun-

tries because of their geographic location, population

and need for ENDP due to frequent occurrences of

natural disasters, in addition to commendable work

already undertaken for curriculum development and

training under the theme of natural disaster prepared-

ness. Regional outreach can be ensured through

coordination with the New Delhi, Beijing, Jakarta and

Apia offices of UNESCO.

What is fundamentally at stake in learning and inno-

vation as promoted through ESD is that qualitative

educational change must be locally relevant and specific.

Issues of global concern today, such as disaster risk

reduction and climate change, must be addressed and

tackled strategically: education for all is the critical spark

to ensure that the broadest and most inclusive response

to emerging challenges is ignited.