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With increased awareness that high-level national and
global level negotiations have fallen short of providing sufficient
solutions fast enough to prevent disasters, strengthening community
capacity to be able to reduce the impact of disasters at the local level
has become a mainstream concern for those tackling disaster management
from a variety of fields. The basic principles of this approach are
being recognised internationally (i.e. for poverty reduction, disaster
reduction, adaptation to climate change and so forth), but progress
toward its effective implementation continues to be slow.
With these concerns in mind, knowledge, innovation and education are
considered central to the development of a culture of safety and
resilience at all levels. Together they represent one of the five key
actions adopted by the international community following the World
Conference on Disaster Reduction held in Japan in 2005. In fact, in
wider recognition of Japan's long-established reputation in disaster
education, and as a vital first step toward operationalising this
important agenda, the Japan-UK Disaster Risk Reduction Study Programme
was established by the Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI),
Kyoto University and Northumbria University's Disaster and Development
Centre (DDC) in 2006. This includes an attempt to unpack and interrogate
complex notions of 'disaster', 'adversity', 'blame', 'resilience',
'vulnerability' and community' within the wider context of efforts to
strengthen the capacity of communities and countries to reduce the
impact of disasters.
This programme of ESRC supported seminars is to link existing work
oriented to disaster education as a community based disaster reduction
initiative internationally and in the UK. The series will explore
disaster education in primary and secondary schools in the UK, engaging
members of the UK emergency services, school representatives, and
disaster reduction experts.
It is intended that strengthening the debate and practical ways forward
for disaster education in schools will help in the quest for community
based evaluation of solutions to hazards and vulnerabilities. This will
in turn contribute to encouraging the engagement of all of society in
disaster risk reduction.
Specifically, the seminar series will provide a flexible forum within
which key user groups - including Category 1 and 2 Responders and
Education Authorities - can identify both their own needs, as well as
possible methods of advancing a people-centred approach to disaster
reduction within the framework of the Civil Contingencies Act. It will
contribute to the development of new theoretical and methodological
approaches to the study of disaster reduction, engaging, in so doing,
those with an interest in school-based disasters education from the
worlds of academia, policy making and practice. This will be centred
around the common goal of establishing what an appropriate programme
might look like, and how 'disasters education' can be mainstreamed
within wider institutions. |
