The region as whole is vulnerable to environmental hazards that may occur both as natural phenomena and human-initiated processes. The hazard itself is not as important as the chain of events that triggered by it, which often causes the most suffering.¹

During the years of transition the local population largely has lost the ability to cope with these “aftershocks” and is much more vulnerable to these hazards than before. The main reason is the drastically reduced coping capacity of both the population and governments due to insufficient financial and material resources at their disposal, dwindling infrastructure, institutional inefficiencies, wide-scale corruption, etc.

There are two distinctive models of coping with environmental hazards and their consequences in the region.

The Russian model is still based on the “paternalistic” approach to hazard mitigation inherited from the Soviet Union. It is based on the idea that the state should play the role of “insurer” for its subjects. It provides whatever protection possible against hazards undertakes emergency care and mitigates consequences. The system worked quite well as long as the country was strong and wealthy, especially in case of large-scale earthquakes like ones that took place in Ashgabad or Tashkent. It did not work as efficiently in the case of the large-scale natural hazards that took place in the South Caucasus in the 80s primarily because the USSR was already quite weakened and disorganised by then.

The Russian Federation still responds to hazards based on this model and is to some extent successful. Learning from the negative experience of the Spitak earthquake, it created the Ministry of Emergency Situations that has achieved wide acclaim as one of the most efficient rapid reaction forces world-wide. Thus, in the event of a real hazard Russians can receive assistance as quickly and efficiently as in any other developed country.²

The real problems begin during the stage of “aftershocks,” when it comes to evaluation of losses, planning and implementing reconstruction, paying compensation to the population etc. These kinds of activities usually are late and inefficient, if they are implemented at all. Insufficient resources, especially financial, are only part of the problem. Whatever compensation the population may be formally entitled to is usually extremely small—the maximum being a few thousand US dollars – absolutely not enough to cover property losses and especially loss of life. General institutional incapacity and universal corruption, especially on the local level, are the main obstacles to efficient hazard mitigation. There is no information available on how funds are allocated during natural hazards in North Caucasus, but according to numerous reports by various Russian TV stations, money allocated for reconstruction in Chechnya does not reach the target population. Since Russia remains a centralised country, such problems need interference from top-level officials, all the way up to the president, to find efficient solutions.³

Another emerging problem is managing the deteriorating infrastructure inherited from the USSR. For example, heavy mudflows in Tirnyauz in 2000, and constant interruption of traffic and loss of lives on Trans-Caucasus highway in North Ossetia due to avalanches. These are recurring events caused primarily by improper management and over-ambitious planning, which sacrificed economic and environmental considerations to political ones. The case of the Trans-Caucasus highway is an especially telling example. It was constructed on the present location mainly to provide a connection between Russia and Georgia, although this route was known to be hazardous from the beginning. How Russian authorities will cope with this situation and other similar ones is difficult to tell, give the country’s many other pressing problems. Most likely, it will take an event of truly catastrophic proportions to attract the attention of the central authorities and lead to some efficient mitigating measures.

The South Caucasus model of hazard mitigation is not based on Paterism d’etat approach due to the simple reason that the weakened governments of the three republics are unable to perform “parental” functions any more. The shortages of government resources, inefficient management and corruption have lead to situation where the governments if not formally, in effect, have transferred responsibility for hazard mitigation to international relief organisations as well as to the population proper. Although disaster mitigation authorities formally exist, the extent of their actual ability to cope with dangerous situations and operational efficiency are rather doubtful.⁴  NGO and public interest group activities at the community level are also close to non-existent.

The coping abilities of the modern Armenian government have been tested during its response to the consequences of the 1988 earthquake and have proved to be unsatisfactory. The regions, where the earthquake took place, are some of the poorest in the country; many people there are not re-settled yet and continue to live in private garages and shacks. Restoration work is carried out almost exclusively by international agencies or funded by the Diaspora. There is an analogous situation in Georgia, where thousands of families moved from Ajara in the 80s were conveniently forgotten by the authorities and continue to live under the most adverse conditions, even in places like cowsheds.

Thus, the population here is left with little or no efficient assistance from governments and very little if any information about potential hazards.⁵  Poor households are naturally the most vulnerable since virtually everything they possess is concentrated inside their homes. If something happens to a home in an earthquake, flood or mudflow, almost all family possessions are lost. Poor families can do little or nothing to avoid dangers, by moving, or making their homes safer; they are also the most helpless in dealing with government agencies and local administrations. In the absence of any government disaster insurance, there is no other form of insurance available to them. The emerging system of private insurance is naturally unattainable to poor and vulnerable people, but even the most affluent are still reluctant to insure their property. Credits when they are available are based on unrealistically high interest rates and most people have nothing to put up as collateral.

Thus, the population of the South Caucasus republics is more vulnerable to environmental hazards than it was before. People are usually left dependent on resources available to them, their families or kin; very little if any assistance comes from outside.

The most telling example of this is the series of earthquakes that shook Tbilisi in April 2002. The most damaging earthquake on April 25^th was estimated at an intensity 6-7 by the MSK scale adopted in the USSR. Quite fortunately, the loss of human life was minimal—only seven people were killed in a city of approximately 1.5 million inhabitants. However, the material damage was excessive. The most preliminary damage estimate was more than US$150 million; thousands of houses were damaged, many of them beyond repair.⁶  By the most optimistic calculation, at least 1,700 families need relocation. Whole neighbourhoods in Tbilisi were isolated, with many buildings on the brink of collapse.

The very first conclusion drawn from this disaster was that it damaged the poorest, old districts of the city where inhabitants were already the most vulnerable and had the least capacity to cope with its consequences.

It was obvious that the authorities had no contingency plan and were not ready to deal with emergencies like this. They acted spontaneously to provide help for victims during the very first, most difficult hours after the major tremor. Receiving hospitals had no emergency power supply and had to rely on portable electric generators (and fuel) provided by victims’ relatives; local TV channels were collecting information about hot-spots and passing it to authorities, etc. Representatives from the Emergency Situations Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which was created under an ambitious UNDP program and is formally charged with being the first to help and rescue, were simply nowhere to be seen.

All other activities undertaken since to mitigate consequences of the earthquake appear to be improvisation rather than some coherent plan. For instance, in a huge city like Tbilisi shelter could not be found for a few hundred homeless families and many of them were still living in tents by mid-May. Government stated that it would purchase flats for families whose houses were the most damaged and provide some monetary assistance. A detailed inventory and evaluation of damage was underway in May 2002, but there were obviously no funds available for reconstruction and no definite promises as to the exact time when it might take place. The prevailing mood of local authorities was such that President Shevardnadze during one of Cabinet meetings said that they preferred to “conveniently forget” the whole accident.

The only people who actually provided some real assistance to earthquake victims were local businessmen turned politicians who by mid-May 2002 managed to collect just over US$700,000. They donated about US$ 4,000 to each of the 38 poorest families among the victims and promised to extend this assistance to two more groups of roughly the same size.⁷  This may cover less than 10% of all the most affected families.

The vast majority of earthquake victims seemed to be left to their own resources for an indefinite time. Even more, this earthquake coincided with the beginning of local electoral campaign, one of the toughest in the modern Georgian history. This event promptly pushed the earthquake away from the attention of the local mass media and the population as a whole.

The main lessons learned:

Local developers emerged as net winners from this catastrophe. Now they will be able to build within the prestigious historical centre, which previously was off limits for new development, obtaining land at lower prices. It seems as if these are the people who will ultimately “solve” the problem of resettling earthquake victims by moving them to low quality, cheap housing at the city margins.

The main conclusion is that the Caucasus as a region (and the South Caucasus in particular) is still in a transition stage when authorities are loosing or have already lost their ability to efficiently manage disasters, carry out strategic planning and undertake preventive or mitigating activities. Emergence of new systems and policies may take a long time, considering the ongoing systemic crisis.

The population has basically lost its accumulated knowledge of dealing with nature, and is too weakened by current hardships to be able to cope efficiently with them. Absence of civil society and weakness of basic democratic institutions also keeps it uninformed or misinformed as to the type and scope of potential hazards, precluding it from organising to lobby its interests or take independent mitigating actions.

These aspects of vulnerability are unlikely to be ameliorated in the short to medium run. Only isolated cases of well-planned intervention by national governments, bilateral donors, NGOs and concerned citizens groups may produce positive results.