{"id":68241,"date":"2021-11-01T06:00:07","date_gmt":"2021-10-31T19:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=68241"},"modified":"2021-10-30T15:30:56","modified_gmt":"2021-10-30T04:30:56","slug":"aspis-decades-cop-this-in-the-era-of-disasters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/aspis-decades-cop-this-in-the-era-of-disasters\/","title":{"rendered":"ASPI\u2019s decades: Cop this in the era of disasters"},"content":{"rendered":"
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ASPI celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. This series looks at ASPI\u2019s work since its creation in August 2001.<\/em><\/p>\n

We cop it from climate change. Now we seek to cope. The job of COP26 in Glasgow is to come up with a fair cop for the planet.<\/p>\n

Part of ASPI\u2019s response to the \u2018cop this\u2019 of global warming was an all-hazards approach to natural disasters, linked to the all-hazards approach to terrorism<\/a>.<\/p>\n

ASPI\u2019s risk and resilience program, led by Paul Barnes, ran from 2014 to 2020. The program explored disaster risk reduction in the Indo-Pacific region, researched climate impacts and worked to strengthen Australia\u2019s critical supply chains (road, rail, aviation and maritime).<\/p>\n

Australia needed a new and continuous conversation about resilience, Barnes wrote. Prevention was important, but we also needed better preparation and planning<\/a> for what was coming:<\/p>\n

Natural disasters are partly surprises: while we can\u2019t predict when they\u2019ll occur, we know that they will happen. To prepare, we must plan ahead, but we re-relearn lessons and often make the same mistakes. Given the many royal commissions and other investigations into disasters over the past few years, the lesson book is a thick one.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The 2016 defence white paper<\/a> pointed to six key drivers shaping Australia\u2019s security environment to 2035. One of them was \u2018state fragility, including within our immediate neighbourhood, caused by uneven economic growth, crime, social, environmental and governance challenges and climate change\u2019.<\/p>\n

Climate change would be a major challenge for countries in Australia\u2019s immediate region, Defence said, causing higher temperatures and increased sea-level rise and increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events: \u2018These effects will exacerbate the challenges of population growth and environmental degradation, and will contribute to food shortages and undermine economic development.\u2019<\/p>\n

In 2018, Robert Glasser joined ASPI. Now head of the institute\u2019s Climate and Security Policy Centre<\/a>, he\u2019s a former assistant UN secretary-general and was the UN secretary-general\u2019s special representative for disaster risk reduction.<\/p>\n

In Preparing for the era of disasters<\/em><\/a>, Glasser wrote: \u2018As the world warms beyond 2\u00b0C, as now seems increasingly likely, an era of disasters will be upon us with profound implications for how we organise ourselves to protect Australian lives, property and economic interests and our way of life.\u2019<\/p>\n

This emerging era would stretch emergency services, undermine community resilience and escalate economic costs and deaths. Federal, state and local governments had to prepare for the unprecedented scale of these challenges. Glasser recommended:<\/p>\n