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Speech by H.E. Mr. Masayuki Inoue
Ambassador of Japan to Bangladesh
At
the Seminar on Disaster Management and Preparedness
On
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Mr. Raja Devasish Roy, Honourable Special Assistant to
the Chief Advisor, Ministry of Chittagong Hill Tracts
Affairs and Ministry of Environment and Forests,
Mr. K.H. Masud Siddiqui, Director General, Disaster
Management Bureau
Mr. Md. Azmal Chawdhury, President, JICA Alumni
Association,
Mr. Ejar Uddin, General Secretary, JICA Alumni
Association,
Ms. Nobuko Suzuki Kayashima, Resident Representative,
JICA Bangladesh Office,
Distinguished speakers and participants,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Assalamu Alaikum and Good Morning,
It
gives me a great pleasure to be here today at this
Seminar on Disaster
Management and
Preparedness, organized by JICA and JICA Alumni
Association. For the development of Bangladesh, it is
indispensable for this country to find ways to cope with
natural phenomena as we humans do not have a control
over them. I truly respect the organizers for taking
initiatives to discuss issues which are of fundamental
importance to this country’s development and I sincerely
hope that the seminar will contribute to strengthening
the resilience to such natural calamities.
Last year, Bangladesh suffered from two floods and a
large scale cyclone.
The scale of the
damage was devastating and I would like to extend my
sincere sympathy to
the victims and their families, and to the country of
Bangladesh as a
whole. In response to these calamities, Japan provided
emergency relief
goods only a few days after the Sidr attack, and
additional emergency
grant aid of 3.67
million dollars through the UN agencies. Last month, on
the occasion of the
Honourable Foreign Advisor's visit to Japan, our two
countries agreed on
yen loan for reconstructing the country from the cyclone
and two
floods. It is
important to get the lives of those who suffered from
these disasters back to normal and Japan is ready to
provide support to Bangladesh when needed, but at the
same time, I believe that the time has come for
Bangladesh to take actions to prepare themselves to
future disasters.
For its geographical location, Japan too has been
vulnerable to natural
disasters for
centuries. Just like Bangladesh, Japan has historically
been
a victim of disasters
such as typhoons, floods and earthquakes. This is
reflected in a Japanese saying which describes the four
most frightening things in the world. It is "Jishin,
kaminari, kaji, oyaji." Its literal translation is
"earthquake, lightning, fire and father." Although most
Japanese believe that "oyaji" here refers to father, as
father has always been the scary one in family, it
actually is a shortened word of ooyamaji, meaning strong
winds
or typhoons, and it
comes from traditional Japanese theatrical song.
Therefore, the
correct translation would be "earthquake, lightning,
fire
and typhoon." As you
can see, Japanese people have always been frightened
of natural disasters
and things which they could not take control of.
Speaking of natural disasters, almost a half a century
ago, in September
1959, Isewan Typhoon
hit Mie and Aichi prefectures, killing more than 5,000
people and another 39,000 people were injured.
Approximately 40,000 houses were washed away and 210,000
hectors of land was destroyed, resulting to a loss of
500 billion yen, which is equivalent to 330 billion
taka.
In
order to make coastal towns less vulnerable to tidal
waves, which triggered floods creating devastating
damages in the case of Isewan Typhoon, seawalls were
built to prevent water from overflowing into towns and
villages as a part of disaster mitigation. An effort
simple as this contributed significantly to reducing the
damages. Furthermore, disaster prevention was
incorporated into education to raise the awareness of
ordinary people.
I
found it very interesting that although there is only
one word in Japanese to describe flood, in Bengali,
there are barsha for normal flood which comes
every year and banna and banya for
large-scale floods. We the Japanese, and this is also
true for English speaking cultures, do not use different
terms for flood depending on its scale. This reflects
the fact that people of Bangladesh have been living with
water and floods have always been there throughout its
history.
I
said earlier that we are helpless over natural
phenomena, but I would like to correct myself now.
Although we do not have the power to stop a cyclone from
emerging and redirect it to mitigate its damage, on
climate change issues, we do have knowledge and ability
to control them in some ways. Amount of rain falling on
Bangladeshi soil cannot be controlled, but we can try to
stop temperature from rising to prevent rise in water
level caused by ice melting from mountains.
Bangladesh is at low altitudes and numerous rivers run
throughout the country. Effect of water level rising has
significant and devastating impact on country like
Bangladesh. Placing tsunami warning alarms in the sea
and building cyclone shelters have succeeded in reducing
the damages over the past decades, but it is equally
important to tackle the issue together with climate
change.
One of the strength of Japan's ODA is, I believe, that
we emphasize the importance on handing
down the knowledge
and technology from person to person, and JICA and JICA
Alumni Association have been contributing significantly
in this process. I sincerely hope that from this
seminar, you will
exchange your views and knowledge on disaster
management and
climate change, and implement new ideas learnt here at
wherever you are. If all of you take the knowledge you
already have and new knowledge gained here back to your
work place and share them with those who are not present
here today, this process will have significant role in
building disaster-proof Bangladesh. We the humans will
never be able to take control over natural calamities,
but there are many ways in which we can mitigate the
damage through various preventive measures, while
tackling the issue of climate change at the same time.
Once again, I would like to congratulate JICA and JICA
Alumni Association for holding this meaningful seminar.
Thank you very much for your kind attention. |
