It is bitterly ironic that as Cyclone Pam barrelled down on Vanuatu, many of the world’s leading disaster experts were gathered in Japan to negotiate a new 15-year agreement to protect life, property and the environment from disasters.

You’d think events in Vanuatu would have been just the tonic to inspire bold commitments.

In case it wasn’t obvious, Vanuatu’s Prime Minister told delegates what a setback the cyclone had been for his country’s development, and made an emotional plea for ‘a strong new framework on disaster risk reduction which will support us in tackling the drivers of disaster risk such as climate change.’

What happened in Vanuatu shouldn’t have been a surprise.

It was known that Vanuatu was the most vulnerable country in the world to disasters (based on the proportion of the population exposed to disaster risk), and that given the lack of infrastructure and disparate population, mobilising a rapid response would be enormously challenging. The World Bank had warned that a major disaster could affect half the population and cost 50% of annual GDP.

You’d think that in light of this, there’d have been significant investment in reducing disaster risk.

But efforts to build resilience and reduce risk in Vanuatu have been grossly inadequate, and now we’re seeing the results. On the main island, about 80 percent of homes and buildings have been damaged or destroyed. In the outer islands many people still haven’t been reached with assistance, and supplies of food and water are dangerously low. In some provinces up to 60 percent of the population lacks access to drinking water.

We knew this was coming, and we know that with more investment in disaster risk reduction and better preparation, the damage and impacts could have been significantly reduced. You’d be hard pressed to think of a more pertinent example for those negotiating the new international framework on disaster risk reduction.

But evidently it wasn’t enough, because the conference outcomes were profoundly disappointing.

In what was supposed to be a collaborative forum with all participants working towards a common goal, the needs of the most vulnerable – including children, who will suffer the greatest consequences of climate change – played second fiddle to political argy-bargy between states.

In the end, there was no tangible commitment to fund disaster risk reduction in developing countries, no agreement on quantitative targets to measure progress, and no real means to hold governments accountable for the targets laid out. It highlights how extremely difficult it is to secure international commitments to reduce disaster risk for the world’s most vulnerable people.

On the up side, delegates did at least manage to agree a 15-year ‘Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction’, containing rhetorical commitment to action in four priority areas – understanding disaster risk, strengthening disaster risk governance, investing in disaster risk reduction and resilience as well as enhancing disaster preparedness. And they recognised that success was contingent upon ‘strong commitment and involvement of political leadership in every country’.

For Pacific Island States, investment in reducing disaster risk and building resilience becomes more important each year. Cyclone Pam highlighted the fact that had better risk reduction and preparedness measures been in place, losses could have been significantly reduced, at a fraction of the cost of the humanitarian response we’re seeing now.

But the cyclone also provides an ominous warning: disaster events of this nature will become more common, and Pacific Island States will bear the brunt.

The damage caused by cyclones comes partly from the storm surges that follow in their wake, causing extensive flooding. Rising sea levels means that storm surges are now riding on higher levels than they were before, meaning that the floods are more severe.

Doing nothing will be and is hugely expensive.

It’s been predicted that by 2050, the losses from coastal flooding globally could rise to $US1 trillion a year, almost the size of the Australian economy. It’s food for thought for the Australian Government in considering how to apportion the recent cuts to its own aid budget. Any reduction in funding for disaster risk reduction will undoubtedly result in an increased requirement for humanitarian aid over the long term.

There are a few global moments coming up this year that provide governments an opportunity to redeem themselves after the fiasco in Japan and indicate that they’re serious about reducing disaster risk and mitigating the impacts of climate change for the world’s most vulnerable people.

There’s an international conference on financing for development in July, the UN Summit to adopt the post-2015 development agenda in September, and the UN Climate Change Conference in December.

The message from Cyclone Pam was missed in Japan. Missing it again will come at enormous economic cost for the countries called upon to provide humanitarian aid, and further loss of life and livelihoods in the Pacific.

Rebecca Barber is the Humanitarian Policy & Advocacy Advisor for Save the Children. To help Vanuatu recover from the devastation of Cyclone Pam go to www.savethechildren.org.nz

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