Capacity building is an important aspect in mitigating disaster. Examine. Also explain the obstacles faced in capacity building.
Capacity–building is defined as the “process of developing and strengthening the skills, instincts, abilities, processes and resources that organizations and communities need to survive, adapt, and thrive in a fast-changing world.” Capacity building fosters a sense of ownership and empowerment, so that community partners gain greater control over their own future development
Importance of capacity building in disaster preparation:
- India’s capacity to manage disaster risk is challenged by its size and huge population. The country is likely to have the greatest exposure of any nation in the world to extreme weather and natural disasters by 2030.
- Capacity building is an ongoing process that equips officials, stakeholders and the community to perform their functions in a better manner during a crisis/disaster.
- Capacity-building should support the planning and implementation of actions across the full disaster management cycle.
- The primary focus of capacity building is selection and providing training to the people who are capable of planning, coordinating, acting and intervening where necessary.
- With better training local teams would be better prepared and able to respond to local disasters too.
Obstacles faced in capacity building
- Sometimes community partners simply want to get the work done and not spend time on making the changes that are sustainable over time.
- Capacity building requires a longer period of time to achieve and, as a result, does not necessarily lead to an immediate sense of satisfaction.
- Capacity building focuses on sustaining change, which often requires underlying, structural power differences to be addressed. Changing power structures is often more difficult than addressing a symptom caused by the underlying problem.
- it is often difficult to provide evidence of its results or to celebrate its impact.
Since, risk associated with natural disasters cannot be reduced due to the fact that natural disasters are certain to strike, but we can minimize the adverse effect of these disasters through maximizing our capacity. In other words, our vision should be to maximize our cope up capacity so that vulnerability can be minimized.