SIMILITUD GEOM´ ETRICA Y DIN ´ AMICA

Other important disaster management institutional forms are the Territorial Planning Instruments, or Instrumentos de Planificación Territorial (IPTs). According to the Ministry of Housing and Urbanisation, or MINVU (2015), the national legislation does not have an exact definition for IPTs: they are used interchangeably with ‘plan of urban development’, ‘plan of territorial ordering’, ‘regional plan of territorial planning’, among others (see the national legislation in MINVU, 1992a). An initial definition of IPTs offered by some official documents (MINVU, 1992a, 2015; UNDP and MINVU, 2014) would be that IPTs are documents that aim to advise the prioritisation of actions for the preparation of regional, provincial and municipal territorial plans. Likewise, IPTs aim to coordinate territorial planning with other authorities at different scales and engage with the community using participatory planning techniques.

One of the aspects of IPTs of importance for DRM and DRR is the identification of disaster-prone areas. IPTs have implicitly suggested since 1976 that local governments identify risk areas in their master plans (MINVU, 1976), but it was not until 1992 that DS Nº42 (MINVU, 1992b) began to impose risk assessments, making them a requirement. Such assessments are often assigned to private engineering contractors or consulting companies. In order to define and delimit the process of identifying risk areas, DS Nº42 (MINVU, 1992b) guides companies and institutions on what assessments should look at according to the following principles:

• Flood or potential flood areas due to the proximity of lakes, rivers, streams, creeks, un-channelled streams, ground water or wetlands.

• Avalanche-prone areas, boulders, landslides or accentuated erosion.

• Hazardous areas to be affected by volcanic activity, lava flows or faults.

• Hazardous areas generated by human activity or intervention.

Although disaster risk emerges as the result of combining hazards and vulnerability,21 _{the aforementioned principles reveal that, from a policy framework} perspective, risk is merely understood as hazards and, in some cases, exposure to hazards. In other words, so-called risk assessments do not make a comprehensive evaluation of risks but only of hazards, bringing to light the still dominant techno- centric approach that prevails. The problem with this is that governments are not using the full potential of risk assessments. Comprehensive risk assessments should look at vulnerabilities and their root causes with the same interest with which identify hazards: this may contribute to the production of plans and development paths for safer people and safer cities (UNISDR, 2015a, 2015b).

Table 4.9 shows how Chilean legislation has historically focused on the encouragement of risk assessments on master plans and land-use planning (MINVU, 1992a), confining the multi-scale complexity of hazards and vulnerability to the urban scale. I think that neglecting the analysis of risks on multiple scales 21 _{Hazard × vulnerability = risk → disaster}

simultaneously may limit the opportunity to reduce disaster risks substantially, as the root causes and dynamic pressures that produce vulnerabilities, and sometimes hazards too, are systemic and multi-scale (Wisner et al., 2004).

Table 4.9. Territorial Planning Instruments (IPTs) that encourage risk assessments

IPTs Regional area Urban area Rural area

Regional Plan of Urban Development - - - Regional Plan of Territorial Planning (PROT) since 2011 ✓ ✓ ✓ Inter-Municipal or Metropolitan Regulatory Plan - ✓ -

Municipal Regulatory Plan - ✓ -

Urban Boundary Plan - - -

Sectional Plan - - -

Compiled by the author (2017) Compiled by the author (2017) Compiled by the author (2017) Compiled by the author (2017)

In this sense, the Regional Plans of Territorial Planning, or Planes Regionales de Ordenamiento Territorial (PROTs), are a very interesting case. PROTs are the first IPTs that address risk assessments on the regional scale (SUBDERE, 2011a). Even more interesting about PROTs, but perhaps receiving less attention, is that they incorporate a guide to assess disaster vulnerability. When a regional government decides to initiate its own particular PROT, the SUBDERE —the promoter of regional development— delivers a document named Guidelines on Natural Risk Assessments for Regional Planning (SUBDERE, 2011b). This aims to orient regional governments in the evaluation of risks, including how to assess disaster vulnerability. However, this guide concentrates only on defining vulnerability assessments for regional critical infrastructures such as hospitals. It defines the identification of vulnerable factors in three areas (SUBDERE, 2011b, p.91):

• Analysis of the context. This refers to the study of the geographical location, including topographic, climatologic and other physical conditions.

• Local conditions. This refers to the study of infrastructure, such as buildings materials, foundations and the like.

• Functions. This involves an analysis of the services that the institution and infrastructure offer, its organisational structure, logistics and the like.

In the same vein, in July 2013, I interviewed a SUBDERE official who participated in the preparation of this guide. One aspect of the conversation was revealing about the assessment of disaster vulnerability:

“Vulnerability is [in the PROTs] considered only in physical terms such as on the quality of building materials, proximity to hazards, and lacking of evacuation routes”.

(Pablo Gonzalez, male, National government official, July 2013, interview) Here, Gonzalez and the analysis of the document reveal a fundamental aspect, a kind of trend that is repeated among the institutional forms reviewed so far: it is a techno-centric approach with a belief that by mastering only the physical dimensions of hazards and vulnerability, disasters and risks will be reduced. The international and historical experience has demonstrated the opposite (UNISDR, 2015a), as a comprehensive social and environmental analysis of hazards and vulnerability is needed, including the capacities and resiliency of men and women, communities and institutions, as well as the political, economic, governance and cultural dimensions of risks at multiple levels, and all this intertwined with the history that comes with it (UNISDR, 2015b). Another interesting aspect emerges from the way in which vulnerability is conceived in the guide mentioned above, and of relevance for the implementation of PROTs: vulnerability and risks are limited to circumstances and conditions at local levels —neighbourhoods, city. Effectively, when I reviewed the section on vulnerability (SUBDERE, 2011b, pp.14-15), only local unsafe conditions had to be identified, but not the drivers of such conditions — neither the linkages of such conditions with dynamic pressures nor the root causes that could have generated them in the first place. It is like all multi-scale relations are missing.

I also interviewed an executive member of the SUBDERE who shed light on a fundamental limitation of PROTs:

“Probably regional governments will commission PROTs to be prepared by private consulting companies in order to comply with the request. Then, I am sure, governments will archive the document [PROT] because there is no way to enforce regional governments to take actions in order to reduce detected vulnerabilities and risks [...] we must still work on that —that is, in policy terms”.

(Jorge Mardones, male, National government director, June 2013, interview) Although SUBDERE assigned PROTs to regional governments in 2011, only a few regional governments have prepared their PROTs, at least towards the end of the fieldwork in December 2014. This reveals another limitation of PROTs, as they are not binding planning tools, just advisory ones. This also applies to most IPTs, except the Municipal Regulatory Plan (MINVU, 1992b). Thus, what is the purpose of requesting more comprehensive risk assessments if the actions to reduce or mitigate risks may or may not be implemented? I think this is a disincentive for regional governments and municipalities, as is the top-down approach by which these IPTs are requested.

In January 2014, the MINVU and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) launched a document titled the National Strategy of Urban Development (UNDP and MINVU, 2014), with the intention that it should become a bill by 2018. This document deserves to be mentioned here because it aims to redesign IPTs in order to integrate them into a national strategy of urban, regional and national development. In doing so, the proposal points out “the importance of introducing the concept of DRM, DRR, and resilience into IPTs in a better way” (UNDP and MINVU, 2014, p.43). It recognises that DRM has to be integrated into development as a critical part of it. More importantly, this document recognises that the integration of DRM and DRR into IPTs “must consider inter and multi-scalar interdependencies among different political-administrative and spatial orders” (UNDP and MINVU, 2014, pp.56-57). In other words, the model of DRM and the reduction of vulnerability must be seen from a multi-scalar perspective. This somehow corroborates the relevance of the topics addressed in this thesis.

Before continuing with the final section of this chapter, I would like briefly to offer some reflections on the financing of and spending on DRM and DRR in Chile. I do so

because it has been demonstrated that financing and spending patterns within disaster risk management are equally important to the effectiveness of such processes (Kellett et al., 2014).

Financing of and spending on DRM and DRR

Unfortunately, comprehensive studies and analyses of the financing of and spending on DRM and DRR in Chile are absent in literature. However, some insights can be gained by reviewing the Law of Government Budget to Public Sector, or Ley de Presupuestos, for a given period —e.g. 2008-2013— and its expenditure on DRM institutions such as the ONEMI. According to this law in 2013 (Ministerio del Hacienda, 2013), the total budget to the public sector was US$ 58,964 million, while the budget of the ONEMI for the same period reached US$ 19.6 million, which represents 0.0071 per cent of the national GDP (World Bank, 2017).

Table 4.10. ONEMI’s annual budget in relation to the national GDP 2008-2013

2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

National GDP in US$ M 179,627 171,957 217,538 250,832 265,232 277,079 ONEMI budget in US$ M 7,998 10,194 11,755 9,942 13,464 19,628 % of the national GDP 0.0045% 0.0059% 0.0054% 0.0040% 0.0051% 0.0071%

Compiled by the author (2017), based on Ministerio de Hacienda (2013) and World Bank (2017) Compiled by the author (2017), based on Ministerio de Hacienda (2013) and World Bank (2017) Compiled by the author (2017), based on Ministerio de Hacienda (2013) and World Bank (2017) Compiled by the author (2017), based on Ministerio de Hacienda (2013) and World Bank (2017) Compiled by the author (2017), based on Ministerio de Hacienda (2013) and World Bank (2017) Compiled by the author (2017), based on Ministerio de Hacienda (2013) and World Bank (2017) Compiled by the author (2017), based on Ministerio de Hacienda (2013) and World Bank (2017) Table 4.10 excludes spending for mitigatory measures implemented by the Ministry of Public Works. Therefore, this can be seen as an interpretation of DRM spending only, and not necessarily representative of DRR actions. Nevertheless, this interpretation of DRM spending is valuable because the ONEMI is the most important state effort in DRM and DRR, and its budget includes spending for the promotion of resilience, preparedness and prevention, as well as emergency response and relief. Further investigations into this aspect could be particularly useful to give us insights into the prioritisation and/or marginalisation of certain projects, communities and social groups. This could lead to a more refined analysis of the model of managing disasters and reducing risks from a multi-scale perspective.

To conclude provisionally, the final section of this chapter aims to synthesise the key elements that have emerged so far and connect them with the analytical framework and objective of the thesis.