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Greetings –
This discussion of worker health and safety is certainly important, intrinsically, and also because it raises broader questions about the division of responsibility among different groups regarding the broad spectrum of hazards and vulnerabilities. To take just one example, many people who see themselves as disaster specialists focus on geophysical hazards such as earthquakes and floods. They leave other types of dangers to … who? Or, to make this point a different way, when an Encyclopedia of Natural Hazards is published, why isn’t it quickly followed by an Encyclopedia of Unnatural Hazards—meaning all those that are not covered in the first volume?
Ben says, “The issue of worker safety and, more generally, what are usually called 'technological hazards' really MUST be part of HFA2.” Really? Then why shouldn’t this Post-2015 Framework on Disaster Risk Reduction also cover a wide variety of other sources of risk to human well-being, including chronic hunger, corruption, AIDS, and drones?
Obviously, that would be over-reach on the part of HFA2.
We can use “human security” as an umbrella term to cover the broad range of actual and potential harms to human well-being. No one group could cover them all. We need a sensible division of labor, with different groups developing expertise to deal with particular categories of hazards.
If we had a broad conceptual framework like that, and mapped the current coverage, we would find some important categories of risk were neglected. Here is an example. Where I live, many people concerned with food issues raise alarms about possible interruptions in food imports. Others imagine possibilities for various forms of economic disaster, and some worry about asteroid hits. Yet, as far as I can tell, the civil defense people who carry primary responsibility for disaster planning focus narrowly on geophysical hazards like earthquakes and floods. Someone should raise alarms about the neglected types of potential disaster, the ones for which there has been inadequate planning.
Thus, I fully agree with Ben that HFA2 should take notice of disaster categories beyond what it has covered in the past. I think HFA2 should raise alarms and call for coverage, but I don’t think it should try to take responsibility for issues far beyond its expertise. The full spectrum of risks should be covered through a sensible division of labor.
Here is another point relating to the discussion of dangerous workplaces, as in the Dhaka building collapse. Some of you might recall our discussion on Radix back in December 2011 regarding ‘Rights-Based Disaster Planning”. Then, when we were riled up about schools collapsing during earthquakes, I argued that students and their parents should have specific legal rights regarding school safety standards. The point applies here: employees of all kinds should themselves have specific rights in relation to work-place safety. There should be institutionalized legal recourse mechanisms accessible directly by them. Without hard rights of that kind, the debates would just go on over their heads. They should have a place at the table, with a measure of power that derives from those specific rights.
Aloha, George
I welcome the letter to the editor that James shared and also the comment by Loy Rego.
I writing from Tanzania, where workers on building sites and in mines are frequently killed. In Tanzania the development paradigm has gradually shifted from the founding president, Julius Nyerere's, notion of 'socialism and self reliance' to a full-on scramble for overseas direct investment (ODI), preferably in the form of mega projects -- massive infrastructure. Leaving aside the question of kickbacks and corruption whose percolation through the whole society is in itself a social disaster and also the question of who benefits from this infrastructure (largely built to support ODI in mining and energy extraction and by US agri-business that will benefit from land grabs, displace and proletarianize the small farmers), there is question of RISK to workers of mega projects. Tanzania's newly formed re-insurance company, TAN-RE, states that mega projects bring mega risks and new risks. It is concerned with the completion 'on time and on budget' of these ports, gas pipelines, rail lines, etc. What, however, of the risk to the workers themselves? To the people in the surrounding peri-urban and rural zones? To the environment? To future generations?
Those are questions none of the big shots who jet around from G8 to Singapore to Beijing to sign these deals are inclined to ask.
Alas, to add insult to injury, President Obama is in the thick of all this, pushing the interests of US agribusiness and, in fact, coming to Tanzania next week to bless the wholesale expropriation of millions of small farmers in a great swath of the richest land in Tanzania, the so-called Southern Corridor, that runs from Lake Tanganyika across the Southern Highlands and rich valley of the Ruaha River to the Indian Ocean Coast. From drones to Guantanamo to land grabs, it is hard to continue to support, as I have done twice, a president who speaks well of common humanity, but whose deeds perpetuate the status quo. Famous for its proverbs, Swahili says, 'Mwungwana ni kitendo' (meaning, 'A gentleman is judged by his actions'.
The same lack of attention to the interest of the common people can be seen in the collapse of bridges, explosions of natural gas pipelines, recent explosion of the fertilizer plant in Texas and absurd, tragic and quasi-criminal neglect to add safe rooms to the two schools that were demolished by tornadoes just a few weeks ago.
As previous RADIX'ers have written, this is not a 'developing country' issue alone.
The issue of worker safety and, more generally, what are usually called 'technological hazards' really MUST be part of HFA2.
Regards,
BEN