Lessons From Kobe

Tsunamis travel over deep ocean at up to 500mph. Earthquake waves travel through bedrock at speeds of 2,000mph or more. But radio signals travel at the speed of light: 186,000 miles a second. So even in the most sudden disasters, warning is possible. And even a minute's warning could save thousands of lives.

But that is true only if the people who get the warning can pass it on to those most at risk - and then only if they know what to do to save themselves, their children, their livestock and their homes. But knowledge alone is not enough. Every community must have places - schools, hospitals and so on - designed to withstand flood, hurricane, giant wave or shaking earth, and to which villagers and townspeople can turn. So survival depends not just on open lines, wakeful authorities and an educated public, but educated planners, builders and building inspectors as well. Constant vigilance is the price not just of liberty, but of human life.

Today the world's disaster professionals - seismologists, oceanographers, wind engineers, planners, doctors, relief workers, civil servants and government ministers - are meeting in Kobe, Japan, to discuss a safer and better world. Kobe is just the place to concentrate minds: it was here on January 17 1995 that an earthquake killed more than 5,000 people, injured 41,500, destroyed 100,000 homes and left 300,000 people huddled in tents. In all, the quake cost $100bn: the costliest natural disaster in history.

Earth scientists record more than 30,000 quakes a year, of which, on average, one is hugely destructive. In any year, there are 50 eruptions from the world's 500 active volcanoes; potentially an estimated 500 million people are in the firing line. In the past decade hurricane, typhoon and cyclone damage has increased: 2004 was the costliest year yet for insurance companies, even before the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 26 that claimed 150,000 lives.

In that decade, the number of lives lost to natural disaster fell, but the economic losses, and the number of homes, farms, and livelihoods harmed, have soared. So as well as saving lives, any coherent preparation for calamity could save billions of dollars and alleviate the suffering of hundreds of millions of people.

The Kobe earthquake was a national disaster. The Indian Ocean tsunami was an international one, washing over the shores of 11 countries and claiming victims from at least 50. If ever there was a stimulus for the UN Kobe disaster conference, it was the December 26 disaster.

So will things change? The disaster professionals know what they want their own governments to do and have drafted a set of promises that all nations could endorse. Good intentions are fine, but the challenge is in the delivery. In March, the first draft of the good intentions carried some concrete targets for action with a timetable attached, and the whole package was linked to UN goals to halve poverty, double access to clean water and so on. By December the specific targets and links to other programmes had gone.

"We're left with nothing but a vague framework and a wishlist," says Ben Wisner, a visiting professor of environmental studies at Oberlin College, Ohio. "We all began with high hopes for something substantial from Kobe. But under pressure from the American government - which doesn't want to be tied to a real programme for real action - we could end up with empty promises and wishful thinking. The people in the way whenever a real disaster happens, the poor, the weak, the hungry, deserve better."

Salvano Briceno, of the UN inter-agency secretariat of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction - one of the architects of the conference - sees good things coming anyway. He wants humanitarian donors to earmark 10% of relief money after any disaster for steps to reduce future calamity. He wants to see a culture of prevention, at every level. It's just a matter of changing attitudes, and Kobe could help. "You may remember that 30 years ago nobody would think of disease prevention," he says. "Nowadays everybody knows that by eating better and taking more exercise, you can prevent illnesses. The same theme needs to be developed for natural hazards."

Technology is not the problem. The problem is getting the message to the vulnerable, the people living on mud flats, in small villages, in shanty towns, in rebel-held areas. Peter Walker, once of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and now directing the Feinstein international famine centre at Tufts University, in Massachusetts, is worried that the Kobe resolution will do little to address questions of governance, globalisation, conflict, climate change and the globe's swelling cities, and if it does, there will be no targets set for states to reach: lots of rhetoric, but not much to be held accountable to. "That was indefensible before Christmas," he says. "But now it is near immoral."

· Tim Radford is science editor of the Guardian and was a member of the UK committee for the International Decade of Natural Disaster Reduction