By supporting the work of building competence at the local level, the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute contributes to reducing the degree of damage caused by landslides in Central America.

The Norwegian Geotechnical Institute (NGI) plays the part as the executing technical institution in the project "Capacity Building on the Management of Risk Caused by Landslides in Central America" (referred to as RECLAIMM).

- Our long term goal is to reduce the vulnerability of exposed areas so that hazardous events caused by landslides in the Central American countries do not contribute to such level of damage as experienced over the last years, explains Bjørn Kalsnes, Deputy director at the International Centre for Geohazards and Senior Engineer at the Division for Natural Hazards at NGI.

Increased vulnerability to natural disasters

Because of its location and geographical prerequisites, Central America is extremely vulnerable to damages caused by natural disasters such as hurricanes and earth quakes. Over the last 30 years the region has experienced a large growth in the occurrence of such events, from 101 in the 70s and 80s to 418 in the period from 1980 to 2000. Between 1970 and 2000 the economic loss caused by these disasters is estimated to have reached an average of 318 million USD each year, something that obviously represents a great obstacle for the development of the region. Kalsnes refers especially to the cyclones Mitch and Stan, which in 1998 and 2005 respectively caused tremendous damages in the region, affecting millions of people and causing over 10 000 deaths in total. Mitch was the worse, causing alone an economic loss equivalent to 30% of the combined GDPs of the Central American countries.

The project was initiated in 2005 in the aftermath of these cyclones and receives funding from the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Centro de Coordinación para la Prevención de los Desastres Naturales en América Central (CEPREDENAC), a part of the regional institution Sistema de Integración de Centro América (SICA), is the local coordinator of the project, which in total comprises approximately 20 Central American institutions involving 50 scholars from a wide range of disciplines, among them geology, geography and the social sciences.

Weather stations and secured houses

- Strengthening the institutional capacity of CEPREDENAC, improving knowledge and skills of professionals in institutions focusing on prevention, warning and emergency rescue, enforcing regional cooperation and creating mechanisms for the dissemination of knowledge to a larger audience are our main objectives in this project, explains Kalsnes. One of the ways they are achieving this is by initiating demonstration projects aimed at showing what can be achieved with simple means such as building weather stations and securing houses located in steep terrain.

The project is currently (January 2009) in its finalizing stage, but Kalsnes and his colleagues hope to be able to expand it or initiate a similar project in the future. This was supposed to be discussed at a final meeting scheduled in Nicaragua later this month, but due to the recent earthquakes and landslides in Guatemala and Costa Rica the meeting is postponed.

- This only shows that our project is highly important and of current interest, but how it will develop in the future is still, unfortunately, uncertain, concludes Kalsnes.