No shortcuts in Pakistan
Poverty is the enemy of preparedness, experts on the Pakistan floods said Thursday (Oct. 14) at Harvard’s Center for Government and International Studies. Poverty not only forces administrators to choose between meeting immediate needs or spending resources on future catastrophes that may or may not happen, it also puts the most vulnerable people in harm’s way. Crisis expert Herman Dutch Leonard said that when looked at from a risk management perspective, poverty forces people to choose riskier options in life, such as living in remote or dangerous areas, because they tend to be cheaper. As a consequence, millions of poor Pakistanis live near the Indus River and its tributaries, whose risk of flooding creates an alley of poverty along its banks. Leonard spoke at a panel discussion on the Pakistan floods. The talk drew an audience of about 50 that packed the seminar room. The event, “The Floods in Pakistan: Acute Catastrophe, Long-Term Disruption,”...