World's first academy for humanitarian relief to be launched

Humanitarian Leadership Academy to train aid workers from over 50 countries in organising rapid responses to disasters and emergencies

The Guardian, Julian Borger Diplomatic editor, Sunday 22 March 2015

Local residents receive humanitarian aid in the city of Debaltseve, Ukraine.
The world’s first academy for humanitarian relief will train aid workers in
responding to disasters and emergencies. Photograph: Sokolov Mikhail/
Sokolov Mikhail/ITAR-TASS Photo/Corbis

The world’s first academy for humanitarian relief is to be launched, aimed at training 100,000 aid workers from over 50 countries in organising rapid responses to disasters and emergencies.

The Humanitarian Leadership Academy, launching on Monday, is a response to the growing number of humanitarian crises around the world, driven by climate change and conflict, combined with a severe and worsening shortage of people with the skills necessary to coordinate the large-scale response required in the critical first days to prevent mass casualties.

The HLA is being set up by a global consortium of aid organisations with initial £20m funding from the UK Department for International Development, out of a target of £50m. The Save the Children charity has paid the startup costing and is hosting the academy’s hub in London.

Further centres will open in Kenya and the Philippines later this year, and by 2020 the plan is to have ten training centres around the world, which would offer both classroom and virtual training for the surrounding regions, in mobilising the rapid response in resources and manpower needed in the wake of a disaster.

Jan Egeland, a former UN head of humanitarian affairs and emergency relief, will be the academy’s first chairman. He said the initiative “may revolutionise the entire humanitarian sector”.

“Investment in a new and better trained generation of humanitarian workers closer to where we find the greatest needs will bring development and sustainability to many of the world’s most fragile communities,” Egeland, the head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said.

Last year witnessed a record number of severe global humanitarian emergencies and the highest number of refugees the world has seen since the second world war. 50 million people were forced to flee their countries.

  

Justin Forsyth, chief executive of Save the Children, said: “If we are to save more lives in some of the toughest places in the world we need to train and support local people themselves to become the humanitarian workers and volunteers of the future. The academy will do this by bringing together an extraordinary and unique coalition of actors to train and share best practice, transforming the humanitarian system.”

The idea behind the establishment of ten national and regional centres around the world is that each should be able to tailor responses to crises in terms of local conditions and local culture. Aid experts have said that previous attempts to increase local and regional capacity to react to large-scale emergencies have foundered because they were seen as impositions of practices developed far away.

The plan is for each centre to provide a common pool of knowledge, the latest technology and examples of best practice, as well as solid career structures for humanitarian workers, with internationally recognised certification for successive levels of achievement, recorded in ‘humanitarian passports’. The end result should be to expand the pool of people available in every region to manage the humanitarian response in the first 72 hours of an emergency.

“This is potentially one of the most transformational projects I have been involved in,” said Gareth Owen, Save the Children’s director of emergencies, who has been working on the academy project since 2007. “It is based on the recognition that many studies of humanitarian disasters and emergencies point to leadership and decision-making as the critical factor. Really by now we should have a global capacity that we can draw on that is far greater and more diverse. We haven’t invested enough in people on the ground.”

Owen said that climate change was adding to the relentless annual toll of humanitarian crises: “We used to have a big natural disaster about once a decade and that has come down to one every two or three years.”

Global funding for emergency relief has largely stagnated. Owen said the $20bn (£13bn) spending on the response to humanitarian emergencies is a third of the amount the world spends on yoghurt, for example, and that there is no comparison with the $1.5tn spent on arms.

“The Humanitarian Leadership Academy will help create a faster and more effective disaster response system by empowering local people in the most vulnerable countries to be the first responders after a disaster strikes,” Justine Greening, the secretary of state for international development, said. “The high quality training and expertise delivered by this academy will mean humanitarian responses not only provide immediate, life-saving relief, but also help build a more secure and resilient world.”

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Rwanda's deadly methane lake becomes source of future power

Yahoo – AFP, Stephanie Aglietti, 25 May 2014

A man looks towards the hills of Rwanda on the eastern edge of Lake Kivu from

 the Democratic Republic of the Congo's eastern city of Goma on May 28, 2012

(AFP Photo/Phil Moore)

Karongi (Rwanda) (AFP) - Beneath the calm waters of Lake Kivu lie vast but deadly reserves of methane and carbon dioxide, which Rwanda is tapping both to save lives and provide a lucrative power source.

Plans are in place to pump out enough gas for power that would nearly double Rwanda's current electricity capacity, as well as reducing the chance of what experts warn could be a potentially "catastrophic" natural disaster.

The glittering waters of the inland sea, which straddles the border of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, contain a dangerous and potent mix of the dissolved gases that if disturbed would create a rare "limnic eruption" or "lake overturn", expert Matthew Yalire said.

Levels of carbon dioxide (Co2) and methane are large and dangerous enough to risk a sudden release that could cause a disastrous explosion, after which waves of Co2 would suffocate people and livestock around, explained Yalire, a researcher at the Goma Volcano Observatory, on the lake's DR Congo shore.

A man fishes on the edge of Lake Kivu on

 May 28, 2012 near the city of Goma in

 North Kivu province in the Democratic

Republic of the Congo (AFP Photo/Phil

Moore)

"Right now the lake is stable, but for how long?" asked Yalire, who believes that extracting potentially explosive methane is one way to help "stabilise" the lake.

Near the town of Rubavu, a pilot project of the Rwandan government is already producing about two megawatts of electricity from the methane in the lake.

But a new, additional plant is being built on Kivu's eastern shore, where the US-based power company ContourGlobal plans massively to boost production.

"Our team is focused on extracting methane from the lake to generate electricity that will expand household access to power, lower costs, and reduce environmental hazards," ContourGlobal said.

Its 200 million dollar (145 million euro) "KivuWatt" project aims to lessen the natural threat of an explosion, while turning the deadly gas into a source of energy and profit.

Two million people at risk

On the lake's Rwandan shoreline and at the foot of green hills dotted with banana plantations, hundreds of construction workers are building a platform due to be installed on the lake by the end of the year.

Rather than being a drill platform, it will instead suck up the methane trapped in the depths.

"There is no drilling, gas is pumped from the lower layers of the lake that are saturated with methane," the KivuWatt project's chief, Yann Beutler, told AFP.

"From the moment when the water rises to the surface, it releases gases that are collected."

The methane and Co2 are separated, with the methane sent to a plant on the shore and the Co2 re-dissolved and returned to the depths of the lake.

"The structure of the lake, and the flora and fauna, are not changed," Beutler added.

The project's first phase is planned to generate over 25 megawatts of energy, with production to be multiplied four times in the second phase to 100 MW, almost doubling Rwanda's current national production capacity of about 115 MW.

The scheme is largely financed by private capital, though some 45 percent of the funding takes the shape of loans from international development institutions.

ContourGlobal has signed a 25-year concession with the Rwandan government and an agreement with the country's national power producer and distributor.

Lessons from Cameroon

The electrification of Rwanda is a top objective of Kigali's government, which aims to more than triple access to electricity from a mere 18 percent of the population today to 70 percent by 2017.

The methane will also help Rwanda fulfil the further goal of diversifying energy sources.

Today, almost half of its energy comes from fossil fuels, with the annual bill for imported fuel topping some 40 million dollars (30 million euros).

Kivu is not unique: two other lakes in Cameroon -- Monoun and Nyos -- have similar high concentrations of the gases. In 1984, a limnic eruption killed 37 people around Lake Monoun, then in 1986 a similar disaster at Lake Nyos claimed more than 1,700 lives. These tragedies have been seen as dire warnings for people near Lake Kivu.

A view from a UN base on the edge of Lake Kivu in the Democratic Republic

 of the Congo's eastern city of Goma on May 28, 2012 shows the hills of Rwanda

in the background (AFP Photo/Phil Moore)

"It is essential to extract the gas from the lake," said Martin Schmid, a researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag).

"If we let the gases accumulate for a long time, we should expect at a catastrophic eruption of gas."

Stretching over 2,370 kilometres squared (915 miles squared) and plunging to some 485 metres (1,590 feet) deep, the lake holds some 60 billion cubic metres (2,118 billion cubic feet) of dissolved methane gas, and some 300 billion cubic metres (10,594 billion cubic feet) of carbon dioxide.

With some two million people living close to the lake shore in both Rwanda and DR Congo, any eruption could be disastrous.

An active nearby volcano, Mount Nyiragongo, which smothered part of the Kivu lakeshore city of Goma with lava in 2002, highlights the real risk that geological activity in the lake could trigger an explosion.

Both the lake and volcano are located on Africa's continental Rift zone, where the Earth's tectonic plates are very slowly being pulled apart.

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60 dead in Burundi flood disaster

Google – AFP, Esdras Ndikumana (AFP), 10 February 2014

People look at destruction caused by heavy landslides on February 10, 2014

in Bujumbura (AFP, Esdras Ndikumana)

Bujumbura — At least 60 people perished in flooding and landslides in a night of torrential rain in the Burundi capital that swept away hundreds of homes and cut off roads and power, officials said Monday.

Police in Bujumbura said the toll was the highest in living memory from a disaster caused by freak weather, with scores of people injured.

"The rain that fell in torrents overnight on the capital caused a disaster," Security Minister Gabriel Nizigama told reporters.

"So far we have registered 60 people killed, 81 wounded and more than 400 houses destroyed," said Alexis Manirakiza, a spokesman for the Burundi Red Cross, adding that most of the victims were children.

People stand next to a road after a heavy

 landslide that destroyed houses on

February 10, 2014 in Bujumbura (AFP,

Esdras Ndikumana)

He said three other provinces close to the capital -- Cibitoke, Bubanza and Bujumbura Rural -- had also been affected by torrential rain and said the nationwide toll could yet rise further.

Torrential rains began battering the city late Sunday and houses in the poorer parts of town are often built from mud bricks, which offer no resistance to torrents of water and mud.

"It's the first time in the history of Bujumbura that we have seen damage on this scale," Bujumbura mayor Saidi Juma said, calling for "solidarity on a national and international scale" to help the city cope.

In the district of Kinama in the hardest hit north of the city, a stream broke its banks, with waters rising to shoulder level in some places.

By midday the flooding had subsided, leaving scenes of devastation.

Zawadi, a mother-of-five, stood in the ruins of her Kinama home, feeding her five-month-old baby surrounded by jerry cans and muddy clothing.

"I heard the children shouting during the night," she said, recounting how she had gone into their room to find them standing up on their bed, which was already under water.

The whole family was able to run outside before the walls caved in, but one neighbouring family was less fortunate, with the parents and their three children crushed to death.

On the western outskirts of Bujumbura, residents told similar stories.

"Around midnight we heard something cracking and we all ran outside for fear the house would fall on us," said Gaudence Nyandwi, whose father Venant was being transferred from an improvised stretcher to a car, his face contorted in pain.

'No space for bodies'

"My father went back inside to see if he could save anything and the house fell on him. We think he might have a broken leg," Nyandwi told AFP.

The bodies of people who perished in

flooding and landslides in Bujumbura are

laid on the ground before being transported

to morgues (AFP, Esdras Ndikumana)

Burials of the victims began Monday.

Nizigama said this was because there was not enough space for their bodies in the capital's mortuaries.

He was speaking at a police station in the worst affected northern part of Bujumbura, where an AFP journalist saw 27 bodies covered in white sheeting.

Nizigama, touring the disaster zone with other ministers, promised food aid to those who lost their homes and said the government would bear the cost of burying relatives and would provide new housing.

Torrential rain fell solidly for 10 hours overnight, causing power cuts in whole areas of the city which lies on the northeastern shore of Lake Tanganyika.

The road leading out of the capital to neighbouring Rwanda was blocked because of a landslide while a bridge was washed away on the road to the Democratic Republic of Congo.

UN: Floods displace 70,000 and kill 36 in Mozambique

BBC News, 25 January 2013

Many thousands are in temporary shelters in Mozambique's Gaza province
but many others appear to be without any shelter and aid at all

Related Stories

• 'Night hunt' for SA crocodiles
• Rising sea levels: A tale of two cities
• Mozambique country profile

At least 36 people have died and nearly 70,000 displaced because of flooding in Mozambique, the United Nations says.

The number of people affected by the flooding could reach 100,000 as flood waters continue to rise in the coastal city of Xai-Xai, the UN added.

The UN said it would appeal to its donors for additional funds to deal with the emergency.

Days of torrential rains across the south-east of Africa have caused sea levels to rise to dangerous levels.

Neighbouring South Africa, Zimbabwe and Botswana have also been hit by severe flooding.

Eating grasshoppers

The United Nations in Mozambique said in a statement that 36 people had died so far across the country - 26 of them in the worst hit province, Gaza, in the south.

Some 65,000 people in Gaza alone had been affected by the floods, with nearly 50,000 seeking refuge in six temporary shelters in the worst-hit districts of Chokwe and Guija.

Overall, nearly 85,000 people have been affected by the floods and 67,995 have been temporarily displaced, the UN said.

"Together with government, we are rushing in clean water, food, shelter, and humanitarian supplies to Gaza Province, and are ready to send more as needs become clearer," Jennifer Topping, UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Mozambique, said.

The UN has staff on the ground in the worst-affected areas where food distribution has begun, and is setting up water supply structures, but Ms Topping said that: "We will be appealing to our donors to make additional funds available immediately to help deal with this emergency."

But it appears that aid has not yet reached many of the displaced. An AFP reporter in Gaza saw tens of thousands of people camping out at roadsides, some forced to eat grasshoppers to survive.

And officials are warning of a looming disaster in the city of Xai-Xai, with waters as high as eight metres (26 ft) expected to hit.

Severe flooding in Xai-Xai would sever the main road connection between the north and south of the country, the AFP reports.

Floodwaters in South Africa have claimed several lives and left hundreds stranded after the Limpopo river burst its banks on Monday.

A crocodile farm in the far north of South Africa was forced to open its gates because of the flooding, letting loose some 15,000 crocodiles - only a few thousand of whom have so far been found.

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Deadly earthquakes hit Iran

Deutsche Welle, 11 Aug 2012

Two powerful earthquakes have hit Iran just minutes apart, killing at least 80 people and injuring hundreds. Rescue efforts have been hampered with downed telecommunications.

Two strong earthquakes struck the northwest of Iran on Saturday killing at least 80 people and injuring 400 across dozens of villages, the head of the regional natural disasters center, Khalil Saie, told Iranian news agency ISNA.

Officials said panicked residents fled into the streets as the powerful 6.2-magnitude quake hit at 4.53 p.m. local time. An aftershock, measuring 6.3 on the scale was reported 11 minutes later according to measurements taken by the US Geological Survey.

The quake, which hit near the city of Tabriz, home to 1.5 million people, managed to escape relatively unscathed except for a few obvious cracks in buildings, said officials at Tehran University's Seismological Center.

The epicenter was 60 kilometers (40 miles) from Tabriz, close to the town of Ahar.

Six villages had been completely destroyed in the quake, local officials said, with scores of other severely damaged.

Regional Govenor Ahmad Alireza Beigi told state media "nearby villages were a source of concern," as the earthquake broke telephone communications, making the rescue effort problematic.

A lack of communication forced rescue personnel to use radio and to send helicopters to some of the isolated villages to assess the extent of the tremor.

Iran straddles several major fault lines and has suffered several quakes in recent times, the last struck the city of Bam in 2003 when more than 25,000 lost their lives.

jlw/ng (Reuters, AP, dpa)

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Hundreds feared dead as mudslide hits Ugandan villages

Deutsche Welle, 25 June 2012

A mudslide has destroyed three villages in eastern Uganda, with hundreds of people feared dead. The slide followed heavy rains in an area where deforestation is thought to contribute to the problem.

The death toll remains unknown after the incident at around lunchtime on Monday, though it was clear that a small group of settlements had been devastated.

"We know that at least 15 houses have been buried but we do not know how many people were inside them," said Uganda Red Cross spokeswoman Catherine Ntabadde, adding that rescue teams had been dispatched to the area.

Three villages in the Bumwalukani parish on the slopes of the extinct volcano Mount Elgon, near to the Kenyan border, were hit by the mudslides.

"We estimate that each village had about 100 people and so the number of people who died might reach 300," local parliamentarian David Wakikona said. "The areas around Bududa district have been experiencing heavy rains for days now and I am told the landslides started around midday [Monday] and that they're still going on."

It is the third time in three years that eastern Uganda has been hit by similar disasters. Two dozen people were killed last year when mud covered their homes in Mabono village. More than 300 people died in the same district when a mudslide hit the same district in 2010.

Thousands have been evacuated from the area as part a program to avert future disasters, although many have refused to move. Environmentalists claim the problem is exacerbated by deforestation, with the local soil very fine and prone to movement.

rc/msh (AP, dpa, Reuters)

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Eritrean volcanic ash cloud threatens air travel

Reuters Africa, By Aaron Maasho, Mon Jun 13, 2011

• Volcano spews ash cloud 13.5 km high - VAAC
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ADDIS ABABA, June 13 (Reuters) - A long-dormant volcano has erupted in Eritrea, monitors said on Monday, spewing a huge ash cloud across the Horn of Africa, threatening air travel and curtailing a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Dubbi volcano

The Dubbi volcano began belching plumes of ash at about midnight on Sunday following a string of earthquakes in the remote, arid region close to the border with Ethiopia, where Clinton wrapped up regional talks to depart early.

Dubbi is thought to have last erupted in 1861.

The U.S. Geographical Survey said the biggest quake had measured 5.7. Charts on the website of the France-based Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre (VAAC) showed the eruption throwing an ash cloud 13.5 km (8.4 miles) up -- a potential blight on airlines.

"It hasn't affected our operations yet, but we are observing the situation closely with experts at Addis Ababa University observatory," Ethiopian Airlines spokesman Getachew Tesfa said.

Germany's Lufthansa said on its website that it had cancelled a flight out of the Eritrean capital Asmara on Monday and another flight into Addis Ababa. It gave no reason for the cancellations.

U.S. officials said they had been told Ethiopia was considering shutting down Addis Ababa's main international airport as the ash cloud headed toward the capital. There was no immediate comment from Ethiopia's Civil Aviation Authority.

Satellite images suggested Sudanese airspace could also be affected.

Dubbi is located 350 km (219 miles) north of Asmara and 233 km (146 miles) east of the Ethiopian city of Mekelle.

The independent earthquake monitoring website earthquake-report.com said it might be another nearby volcano nearby known as Nabro that was erupting and carried testimonies from residents in the region confirming the ash cloud.

(Additional reporting and writing by Barry Malone in Kampala; Editing by Richard Lough and Dan Williams)

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South Africa Says Flood Death Toll Rises to 40

Bloomberg/businessweek, by Mike Cohen, January 17, 2011

Jan. 17 (Bloomberg) -- South Africa’s government said the death toll from widespread flooding has risen to 40 and that the army, police and disaster management services remain on full alert.

“The toll is unlikely to rise further,” Vuyelwa Qinga, a spokeswoman for the Department for Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, said in a telephone interview from a game lodge in the northern Limpopo province today. “The situation is stabilizing.”

Heavy rains have delayed trains, interrupting deliveries of coal from mines operated by Xstrata Plc, the biggest thermal coal exporter, and BHP Billiton Ltd. to South Africa’s Richards Bay Coal Terminal. About 20,000 hectares (49,200 acres) of agricultural land have been swamped, the Johannesburg-based South African Press Association cited Agriculture Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson as saying.

The government is due to hold a press briefing at 1:30 p.m. local time, when it will probably declare some of the flood- affected areas disaster zones.

The floods have hit the Gauteng region, which includes Johannesburg and the capital, Pretoria, the Northern Province, KwaZulu-Natal, the Limpopo province. In December, most of the country had more than double the normal volume of rain for the month, according to data on the South African Weather Service website.

The full extent of the damage is still being assessed, Qinga said.

--Editors: Philip Sanders, Heather Langan

To contact the reporter on this story: Mike Cohen in Cape Town at mcohen21@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Philip Sanders in London at psanders@bloomberg.net.