Disasters (1): ‘the outlook is alarming’

The Royal Commission into national natural disaster arrangements has released a report nearly six hundred pages long scoping the scale of natural disasters in Australia, and what can be done to avert the worst consequences of such events. You can find it here.

FOBIF’s collective head is currently exploding over the information overload in this report, which covers a wide range of challenges, ranging from dealing with changed global conditions to the nitty gritty of preparing for, and facing disaster scenarios.

The report is not comforting reading: the disaster outlook for Australia is ‘alarming’, it says, before enumerating the wide range of climate change related disasters: extreme weather events, lengthened fire seasons, etc.

It does, however, offer some constructive responses to the challenge: increased attention to Indigenous land management practices, improved communication and response capacity. All of them would need significant investment.

The report reveals, wryly, that Australia has now had 240 enquiries into natural disasters, before insisting that implementation of its recommendations is urgent.

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