- Conference
- 2006 National Black Members' Conference
- Date
- 14 September 2005
- Decision
- Carried as Amended
Conference notes the recent events in New Orleans and surrounding areas of the southern USA following the devastating impact of Hurricane Katrina. New Orleans is a graphic illustration of what happens when there is a lack of coordination in relation to emergency evacuation procedures.
‘Cuba can boast an impressive record in safeguarding its residents against natural disorders. Of the 14 hurricanes that have struck Cuba over the last 20 years, less than 40 people have died. Could this tiny communist (in spite of the immoral 43 year US trade embargo, severe petrol shortages and a poor public transport infrastructure) nation’s approach to disaster management be a lesson that its neighbours should study and implement? Disaster Management experts say that Cuba with its highly developed disaster preparations, is leading the region/world in its protection of its 11 million residents against predictable weather-related disasters.’
“The Cuban government’s zero-risk attitude to predictable disaster, its community mobilisation and awareness-raising programmes are leading the way in the Caribbean” said Xavier Castellanos, disaster preparations expert with the International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC). “The Cuban government will not wait 12 hours to act. Experts issue public warnings when storms are five days out to sea and the government is willing to evacuate people three days before a hurricane strikes land to avoid loss of life,” he said. According to a 2004 study by Oxfam America ‘Weathering the Storm; Lessons in Risk Reduction from Cuba’, Cuba has a strong well-organised civil defence, and early warning system, well equipped rescue teams emergency stockpiles and other resources. Cuba also has a superb approach to community mobilisation, solidarity, clear political commenitment to safeguard human life anda population that is ‘ disaster aware’ and educated (from primary school level) in the necessary action to be taken in the event of a disaster” Every year Cuba carries out exhaustive disaster-simulation exercises across the whole nation.
The Hurricane itself is part of a recent upsurge in natural disasters, which have focused minds on global warming around the world. Within this context it is a cruel irony, therefore, that the USA has still not signed up to the Kyoto Treaty on climate change and cutting fuel emissions.
This Conference recognises that global warming has a disproportionately detrimental impact on communities living in areas of Africa, the Caribbean, Asia and the South, who are already economically disadvantaged and overwhelmingly from Black and Minority Ethnic backgrounds.
Furthermore, Conference notes that Katrina has highlighted issues of racism that have been embedded in the southern USA for centuries. Vast numbers of those killed and made homeless by the hurricane were black people concentrated in ghetto- like conditions. Government policies do not appear to have fostered a positive living environment for these people in America (and if we look at the dispersal programme of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK, similar disadvantages come to the fore). Question marks remain as to whether the US government was so slow to react because the lives of a poor black people are worth less than those of white middle class people, who appear to have received preferential treatment.
It is clear that more resources are required to curb global warming and the issue needs to take on a higher profile amongst national and international media. Measures are required, particularly in those areas most likely to be affected, that are preventative rather than merely reactive.
Conference therefore calls upon the NBMC to work with the NEC and its links to the TUC International structures, UNISON’s local, regional and national level International Officer’s all regional and national structures of the CRE and REC’s local Victim Support networks, the Local Government Association, Association of Chief Police Officers and both the APF and GPF structures within UNISON and similar structures across the wider trades union movement to lobby the government to:
1.Highlight the dangers of global warming and promote a sustainable development agenda in UNISON’s work, as part of an attempt to raise awareness nationally and internationally of global warming and its likely consequences;
2.Encourage the UK government, which has its own Sustainable Development Unit within the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, to promote policies encompassing the equal promotion of economic, social and environmental issues in all government policies; and
3.Work to ensure that the slow response to the fall-out of the Hurricane in the USA, which will inevitably be seen as racist, is not replicated in the UK or other parts of the world.
4. Support the adoption of the Cuban Government system for effective disaster management in the US, Caribbean, European, Africian and Asian sub-continents through a partnership with the Red Cross, Oxfam and other International Rescue agencies.
5. Raise through the UK Ambassador to the UN the need for all preventative actions to be adopted in the US and other areas so reducing the loss of more black lives on the scale of the Katrina and Wilma hurricanes.