Implementing policies key for disaster management

The media last week highlighted tragic stories of loss life and property due to flooding. Like the ferocity of the torrents, equally spellbinding have been a myriad of opinions attempting to analyse and diagnose the architecture of our preparedness to such calamities.

I acknowledge that the lack of a co-ordinated mechanism for disaster risk management is a huge setback.

However, the delay in promulgation of the national disaster risk policy and the establishment of the national disaster risk management centre are the weakest link in our strategic thrust as far as disaster preparedness is concerned. It ignores another critical member in a strategic architecture, that of implementation.

There has been a consistent pointing of fingers towards planning, particularly following the cases in Narok and Nairobi. Hazards that affect human settlements have the potential to generate immense devastation.

Rightfully so, urban planners are expected to be equipped with the tools for spatial co-ordination of different forms of policies geared towards managing development in urban settlements.

This has not been the case in Kenya. Instead, we have treated implementation challenges with more policy prescriptions. We seem to have a policy overdose.

The implementation of the physical planning Act (1996) has been dogged by a legion of factors, key among them being the failure by local authorities to enforce the control on use and development of land.

The results are out there for all to see: informality, squalor, sprawl, shortage of housing, inadequate infrastructure and other services, among others.  It is therefore unsurprising that urban disasters too have a familiar malefactor: planning.

In 2012, during the reign of Fred Gumo at the Ministry of Local Government, the Government embarked on a process of preparing the National Urban Development Policy. The draft policy admits that urban plans, where they exist, do not take into account disaster risks and the need for mitigation.

Moreover, local disaster management bodies are practically ineffective and public awareness towards disaster risks is low. The policy is yet to be ratified.

Furthermore, our implementation challenges can be blamed on glaring inconsistencies among the statutes that guide planning. For instance, the manner in which Environmental Management and Co-ordination Act, Survey Act, Way-leaves Act and Physical Planning Act treat riparian reserves, Way-leaves and guidelines on development application procedures.

There are on-going initiatives to replace the Physical Planning Act (1996) with a spatial planning legislation that has a more comprehensive framework for guiding the use, management, regulation and development of land as well as provide a mechanism for coordinated and integrated planning of sectoral activities in tune with the new constitutional dispensation.

The Constitution of Kenya (2010) provides structures for policy implementation based on the allocation of responsibilities as well as the manner in which concurrent responsibilities should be handled.

Disaster management role is listed in the Fourth Schedule, under both National (no. 24) and County governments (no. 12). Implementation challenges will certainly crop up if adversarial relationship between the two levels of government exists even with the best policy document in place.

For successful disaster risk management, Kenya must shift its policy ethos from process management to strategic project management.

{Julius Coredo, Nakuru}