Wave of Ignorance

The failure of the global society to effect an adequate warning of the magnitude, direction, speed and form of the tsunamis originating from the tectonic movement of the northwest coast of Sumatra can be put down to three separate factors. The first involves a fundamental organisational shortcoming, while the other two are essentially political.

Blame for the organisational shortcoming can be laid directly at the feet of the highest officials in the UN System.

Notwithstanding the police function assigned to the Security Council, the UN operates -- in the main -- as a mercantilist system. Funding to support primary tasks such as development and elaboration of infrastructure which has a multinational scope and global content is almost entirely controlled by two agencies: the World Bank, and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). These two agencies control the bulk of development funds, and more importantly, they dictate the policy structures governing expenditures.

What does this mean in practice? To put it in simple terms, the World Bank functions largely as a point source for the identification and initial support of what might be crudely termed "global investment opportunities" exercised on behalf of its main donor nations. By coincidence, these same countries just happen to be the developed nations of the world. The World Bank thus finds itself operating principally as a "front man" for the suppliers of capital located in the developed countries.

This means that as a matter of policy, the bank will not support (and in practice, has not supported) infrastructure projects which do not provide a quick and certain "return to capital". That is why it does not fund the elaboration of infrastructures that merely make life more secure for everyone -- such as global tidal-wave warning systems. If a project will "make a buck", however, then the World Bank will support it -- particularly where those bucks can be extracted from the developing world.

And which UN agency has funds of a sufficient magnitude to build global warning systems? The World Bank alone has such capacity.

The "poor sister" to the World Bank is the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Though it only has a fraction of the funding available to the bank, the UNDP functions with a very similar policy. Its main task is to support small business infrastructure, along with educational programmes. The educational component is thrown "into the mix" to develop skilled workers for employment in "outsourced" manufacturing and service industries in developing countries. Beyond these basic policy priorities, UNDP funds are very carefully dispersed, according to "Host Country" priorities. While this commitment to bottom-up programming may seem laudable in theory, in practice it functions largely as a cover to ensure funds are channelled into countries in a way that will result in favourable voting patterns in the General Assembly.

The World Bank and the UNDP are the only two components of the UN system which have significant budgets earmarked for development work. All the other agencies have only meagre funding in this area, and spend their time on "catch as catch can" projects of opportunity and policy development.

Yet, despite the UN's reluctance to fund them, systems do exist for monitoring earthquakes and warning of impending tidal waves, even if those systems are not owned and controlled by the countries of the Indian Ocean rim. If anyone imagines that the monstrous death toll of the last two weeks was inevitable, they are sorely mistaken. Of course, the most technologically advanced countries were immediately aware that an event the size of the one in northern Sumatra had taken place, and will at once have projected the resulting tsunamis. Nor can the relevant agencies in these countries protect themselves from responsibility by claiming that they did not have the address lists, fax and telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and so forth necessary to notify their counterparts in the countries about to be impacted. Claims made by senior US officials that despite their efforts to contact people in the countries most likely to be impacted they were unable to get through are either delusional or cynically hypocritical. After all, the officials from these agencies routinely "rub shoulders" at global science and management meetings the world over, month after month, year after year.

So how could it happen that no global warnings were issued? In a word, policy -- a policy dictated by political expediency. But who would invent such a diabolical policy? Many motivations may be adduced. Some have even argued that the initial silence on the part of the US authorities stemmed from the current administration's desire to "pay back" nations which had refused to back its latest venture in Iraq. However, it is not necessary to look for such a precisely focussed conspiracy. All we need to do is suppose a structural intent to "cover-up" the extent and reach of their nation's global technological capacity. But one thing is certain: the lack of notification was no accident, no bureaucratic bungle; it was the direct consequence of the insular attitude of a nation at war.

There is a larger lesson to be learned here, then. Even if the developing countries could count on the developed countries to blow the whistle on their behalf, this is not ultimately a system we should expect them to rely on. Individual nation-states need in some way to "own" their own physical detection capabilities. And these detection capabilities must be integrated into a dedicated infrastructure and staffed by people who are in direct contact with the national emergency services. This is the only way to make the whole exercise real. To rely on a phone call from California when so many lives are at stake is not enough.

Yet here we meet a parallel distortion of policy in the developing world. For the countries of the Indian Ocean rim have long been in denial concerning the possible effects of tsunamis in their region. All, that is, except Indonesia and Australia. For Indonesia, the effects of tsunamis are well known as the result of bitter experience. But Indonesia is perched directly on top of one of the biggest "subduction" or fault- lines in the world. The problem for them is that the time-lag between detection of an event and any possible response is so limited that little in the way of an effective warning could be generated even under the best of circumstances. For the remainder, the attitude has been that there are more important things to spend money on. In any case, such an event was deemed to be so unlikely that it could, given the scarce resources at their disposal, be ignored.

So the technological infrastructure necessary for generating the required signals to activate an independent early warning system has never been put in place. And the structural distortion of the UN system by commercial priorities has meant that no one else has stepped into the breach. Not that no one has tried. Local technological agencies such as the Indonesian Institute of Sciences and their counterparts in Thailand and Malaysia have always pushed for the establishment of an early warning system. And there have been numerous efforts by agencies such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) through its Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) to organise actions within the scope of its "shoestring" budget. In fact, the communications and responsibility networks do exist now, thanks to the work of IOC. They simply could not be activated in a timely manner last week because the critical input -- technical data, from whatever source -- was lacking.

What can be done to prevent such compounding of disaster in the future? There are many little things which could be done, and probably will be done, which will help a little. But if we actually want to solve the problem, and not just go on stockpiling sticking plasters, then the first thing that is needed is to re-organise the way the UN is funded and change the priorities which determine its policies. Only then will it be possible to mobilise the international community's resources for projects which address the real needs of the peoples of the developing world, rather than the political and economic priorities of those in Washington and elsewhere who like to imagine themselves their "masters".