The Ganges is
India’s most iconic river, flowing from the Himalaya to the Bay of Bengal, and
its massive river basin is one of the most fertile and densely populated
regions in the world. The Ganges flows through 29 cities with a population over
100,000, 23 cities with a population between 50,000 and 100,000, and close to
50 towns.
But someday – perhaps tomorrow or perhaps in 100 years – a massive
earthquake will hit the region, and the consequences could be catastrophic: as
many as a million lives in the Ganges river basin could be at risk, primarily
because buildings have not been constructed to be earthquake resilient, despite
the fact that the relevant building codes are in place. Of course, earthquakes
don’t respect borders, and India is not alone in being at risk due to poorly
constructed buildings.
Northern India lies in the Alpine–Himalayan earthquake
belt, which stretches from the Mediterranean to the Pacific. It is the
second-most seismically active region in the world, and responsible for around
20% of the world’s largest earthquakes. The belt is being created by ongoing
plate tectonics: as the African, Arabian and Indian plates continue to move
northwards, they collide with the Eurasian plate. The earthquake belt includes
the most famous of the great trade routes, the Silk Road, which follows the
edges of deserts and mountains, and high plateaus like Tibet.
The landscape of
the Silk Road has been shaped by earthquakes over millions of years: forcing
mountains upwards and making life in the desert possible by controlling where
water comes to the surface. As the earthquake faults grind rocks together they
make an impermeable clay, which often forces water to the surface along spring
lines, determining where people live.
To the casual observer, it seems as if
the major earthquakes in this part of the world often seem to ‘target’ towns
and cities but, in reality, people are often simply living where the water is,
which is also where earthquakes happen. Between 2 and 2.5 million people have
died in earthquakes since 1900. Approximately two thirds of those deaths
occurred in earthquakes in the continental interiors – places like northern
India. Over that time, advances in the scientific understanding of earthquakes
have been translated into impressive resilience in places where the hazard is
well understood, which are mainly on the edges of the oceans.
Comparable
advances have not, however, taken place in most parts of the continental
interiors, where the hazard is still much less well identified and poorly
understood. “Earthquake science has progressed so that we’re now much better at
recognizing the signals in the landscape that tell us whether a particular
place is dangerous,” says Professor James Jackson, Head of Cambridge’s
Department of Earth Sciences. “We can’t tell you exactly when an earthquake is
going to happen, but we can say it will happen, not least because it’s happened
before. If it’s happened before, it will happen again. What we can do, however,
is to understand earthquakes better and use that knowledge to help make
buildings safer.”
Four years ago, with funding from the Natural Environment
Research Council, Jackson and colleagues from other universities in the UK
established Earthquakes Without Frontiers (EWF), an international partnership
bringing together earthquake scientists from across the great earthquake belt,
from China to Italy, in order to share expertise. “But it soon became clear
that the project was about much more than earthquake science, and the real
issue was how to translate science into effective policy, which requires an
understanding of the social context in which people live,” says Jackson.
With
additional funding from the Economic and Social Research Council, EWF expanded
to include social science and policy dimensions. The project, which runs until
2017, has three overarching objectives: to increase knowledge of earthquake
hazards across the region; to establish greater resiliency against these
hazards; and to establish a well-networked interdisciplinary partnership to
support local earthquake scientists.
Within Asia, there are more than 50
national level stakeholders who are working with EWF on earthquake risk
reduction. Across much of the earthquake belt, people live in large cities,
mostly in poorly built apartment blocks and buildings that have not been
designed to withstand earthquakes. Large cities such as Tehran, Almaty and
Bishkek have all been destroyed multiple times by earthquakes, and it’s only a
matter of time before the next one hits.
The problem that EWF faces is
convincing the public and policy makers of the importance of making towns and
cities more earthquake resilient. “In these big cities, everyday life is
difficult enough: they’re very congested, they have huge problems with traffic,
air quality, water quality, food supply and poverty,” explains Jackson. “And
quite understandably, the risk of an earthquake seems quite remote compared to
daily worries. But that doesn’t make the threat go away.” “We face two main
problems: the first is that there is a lack of awareness of the fact that
seismologists cannot predict earthquakes – it’s just not something we are able
to do or will be able to do,” says Dr Supriyo Mitra of the Indian Institute of
Science Education and Research Kolkata. Mitra obtained his PhD at Cambridge,
and is now one of the key Indian academic collaborators on the project,
primarily working in Indian-administered Kashmir. “The other problem is that
there is a lot of resistance to making buildings safe. It is an additional
cost, but it’s a necessity and we need to get that across to people.”
Perhaps
the most important change that can be made to increase earthquake resilience in
these areas is the enforcement of building codes. The building codes in Los
Angeles and Tehran are similar, but the difference is that in Los Angeles, most
buildings are constructed according to those codes, while in Tehran most are
not, so as a result, Los Angeles is highly resilient to earthquakes, while
Tehran remains very vulnerable. “Enforcement comes not just from legal
enforcement, but education,” adds Jackson. “People are really starting to
realize that this is important. And once you educate the public, it rises up
the agenda because the public insists that it does. “There are going to be
around a billion new homes built across Asia over the next 10 years – let’s
build them so they are safe.”
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