Africa Institute of Graduate Studies

Master of Disaster Risk Management and

Sustainable Development

Climate Change and Disaster Risk Reduction (DRM 114)

Assignment:
Disaster risk reduction: A development concern

by;

1. Abdifitah Mohamud Abdullahi Aigs/114/2016

2. Hassan Mukhtar
3. Ahmed Ismael
4. Khadar Shakaal
5. Khadar Hassan
6. Muhumed Mohamed Abdi Aigs/102/2016

Instructor: Dr. R. U. Reddy

Jigjiga Ethiopia

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Table of Contents

Contents
Table of Contents.................................................................................................................I

Why should disasters be a development concern?..............................................................1

Disasters hold back development....................................................................................1

Disasters are rooted in development failures...................................................................2

Disaster responses can themselves exacerbate risk.........................................................3

Making development ‘disaster proof’: what are the gains?.............................................3

Why does development tend to overlook disaster risk?......................................................4

Incentive, institutional and funding structures.................................................................4

Assumptions about the risk-reducing capacity of pro-poor development.......................5

References............................................................................................................................7

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Why should disasters be a development concern?

Disasters hold back development

Disasters hold back development and progress towards the Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs). Many countries are not on course to meet MDG1, the prime goal of
halving extreme poverty and hunger by 2015. Country progress reports on MDGs
frequently note progress on MDG1 being affected by disasters. While these effects are
difficult to quantify, increases in numbers below poverty thresholds following a disaster
have showed up in aggregate national statistics in many cases – for example, following
climatic effects of El Niño in Ecuador (1997-1998) and loss of agricultural output after
Hurricane Mitch in Honduras (1998).

Disasters affect poverty reduction in several ways. They have macroeconomic impacts,
directly through physical damage to infrastructure, productive capital and stocks, but also
indirectly and in the longer term by affecting productivity, growth and macroeconomic
performance. These hit the poor hardest for several reasons, including loss of tax revenue
and diversion of resources into disaster response affecting basic state services or
increased price (especially food price) inflation. Moreover recent studies suggest that
both governments and donors tend to fund disaster relief and rehabilitation assistance by
reallocating resources from development programmes. This can be expected to affect the
poor disproportionately through adverse effects on poverty reduction efforts.

Impacts on poverty and food security at the sub-national level and on communities and
households can be much more severe and may not appear in national statistics. Disasters
stretch coping strategies to breaking point, have long term effects on livelihoods and
often tip the poorest into destitution. High frequency hazards such as drought trigger
immediate food crises, but can also have longer-term ‘ratchet’ effects which impede
recovery in interim periods, especially when combined with other pressures such as poor
governance and conflict.

in a host of ways, disasters impact upon progress towards the remaining MDGs. Schools
may be destroyed or closed down by earthquakes or floods, but an equally important

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impact on education (MDG2) can come via inability of families made poor and hungry to
send children to school. Disasters leave women and girls – including mothers – with
heavier responsibilities and workloads and poorer health, and in a number of studies have
been associated with increased domestic violence and sexual harassment (MDG3&5).
Children are in greater danger in floods and drought, through drowning, starvation and
disease (MDG4). Disease risks and damage to health infrastructure can directly follow
disasters, but indirectly the poverty and malnutrition to which disasters contribute bring
lowered disease resistance, and may le (DFID, 2004)ad women and girls to resort to sex
work and risk HIV infection (MDG4&6). Disasters can increase rural-urban migration,
and in cities disproportionately affect slum dwellers (MDG7). Storms and tidal surges set
back gains from partnerships with small island states (MDG8). Such diverse
consequences tend to go far beyond the immediate impacts which make media headlines
and international disaster statistics, suggesting one reason why their role in holding back
development may be much underestimated.

Disasters are rooted in development failures

Disasters do not just happen – they result from failures of development which increase
vulnerability to hazard events. Failure of institutions governing development can be
found at all levels, from local and national institutions weakened by skills shortages or
corruption to institutions of global governance influenced by powerful countries and
powerful interests within them. This global context influences disaster frequency and
severity in many indirect ways. For example, the mushrooming of ‘new wars’ is a feature
of the post-Cold War global political economy, but is also a significant issue for disaster
risk reduction because violent conflict and instability interact with natural and biological
hazards such as drought and HIV/AIDS in Africa, with devastating consequences.

Development processes can lead to disaster more directly, by increasing exposure or

susceptibility to hazard. Increased exposure can result from global level influence of
greenhouse gas emissions on the frequency and severity of weather-related disasters,
down to local level projects involving destruction of mangrove stands which protect
coasts from tidal storm surges to make way for shrimp farms, or rapid urban growth
which increases exposure to landslides, earthquakes or fires. Increased susceptibility
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results from development measures which erode capacity to cope with and recover from
hazard impacts. The running down of state-run social protection schemes, or the decline
of informal safety net mechanisms associated with some development projects, can have
the same effect. Poorly planned attempts to reduce risk can make matters
worse.

Attempts to reduce risk without adequate planning can be counterproductive.

Spontaneous or government-led resettlement of populations out of drought- or flood-
prone areas, for example, has a long history of poor planning of vital services in areas of
resettlement resulting in the creation of new risks. Similarly, large-scale engineering
approaches to minimising flood hazards have sometimes, as in Bangladesh, increased risk
for people living elsewhere. Poor quality and poorly maintained infrastructural
developments – schools, hospitals, flood defences etc. – may even lead to higher
casualties when they fail than if they had not been constructed.

Disaster responses can themselves exacerbate risk.

Responses to disasters can themselves prolong crises or create new risk. Humanitarian
programmes, in particular, are indispensable in saving lives and relieving suffering in
emergency situations, but may sideline local leadership, governance and technical
capabilities which are needed for long-term resilience. Patterns of donor resourcing –
poorly matched to needs, often unpredictable and sometimes politically motivated – can
be detrimental. There tends, for example, to be an inappropriate emphasis on food
assistance relative to other short- and longer-term needs for sustaining both lives and
livelihoods. 4

Making development ‘disaster proof’: what are the gains?

Integrating disaster risk reduction into development has the capacity to transform
‘vicious spirals’ of failed development, risk accumulation and disaster losses into
‘virtuous spirals’ of development, risk reduction and effective disaster response. Gains
include positive direct and indirect impacts for each of the MDGs. Alongside
humanitarian and social arguments for investing in risk reduction initiatives, there are
many cases where economic benefits appear to have been convincingly demonstrated,

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although a more systematic approach to appraising costs and benefits of risk reduction
activities is badly needed.

Why does development tend to overlook disaster risk?

If disasters are a major threat to and are partly rooted in development, why the apparent
lack of commitment to reducing disaster risk? The Study found the most important
factors relate to incentive, institutional and funding structures, assumptions about the
riskreducing capacity of pro-poor development, and inadequate exposure to and
information on disaster issues.

Incentive, institutional and funding structures

There is a perverse architecture of incentives stacked against disaster risk reduction. It is
generally a long-term, low-visibility process, with no guarantee of tangible rewards in the
short term. Media interest is low. In contrast, disasters themselves are headline news
when they strike, at least for a short period. Politicians in affected countries can gain
kudos from being associated with humanitarian response, but are less interested in
longer-term prevention and preparedness unless prodded by popular anger. Yet where the
political will exists, results can be impressive. India has largely contained famine since
Independence; Cuba kept deaths down to just five when Hurricane Michelle struck in
2001.

Governments find donors reluctant to fund risk reduction, yet when they declare a
disaster the funds flow freely. Conditionality associated with the Poverty Reduction
Strategy (PRS) process has meant countries like Mozambique effectively having to
choose between social spending and risk reduction. Experience suggests that donors also
respond to media pressure, but when the story ceases to be news, interest in funding post-
disaster rehabilitation and building resilience to future hazards wanes.

There is an institutional gulf between agencies’ humanitarian and development wings.

While in many agencies efforts have been made to close this gulf, uncertainty at the
interface between humanitarian and development assistance remains. Separate

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humanitarian and development funding streams add to the complication. Pressure to
focus on the MDGs may lead development specialists to see disasters as of largely
tangential concern in all but the most hazard-prone countries. Disaster risk reduction
therefore tends to be left to the humanitarian side – even though it is not primarily a
humanitarian issue. Where crises are concerned, conflict have tended to crowd out
attention to ‘natural’ disasters. Thus exhortations by disasters specialists to ‘mainstream’
yet another issue, especially when delivered with more missionary zeal than convincing
evidence, often fail to generate enthusiasm.

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) do not face the same institutional barriers and
pressures, and so generally find it easier to span the humanitarian-development divide.
Yet they naturally follow the priorities of bilateral donor agencies that fund them.
Furthermore, both donors and NGOs are under pressure to disburse and expend funds
efficiently and within relatively short time-spans, while disaster risk reduction is a
longer-term, lower-cost but relatively staff-intensive process.

Assumptions about the risk-reducing capacity of pro-poor development

The aforementioned links between poverty and vulnerability may lead to an assumption
that development that aims to reduce poverty will automatically address vulnerability.
This brings a danger that the role of risk reduction in actually achieving genuine pro-poor
development will be overlooked. Much development is still not leading to true,
sustainable poverty reduction, and this limited progress can partly be explained by its
failure to take proper account of disaster risk. This requires systematic assessment of
exposure and susceptibility to hazards for different groups of people, and explicit
attention to options for reducing this vulnerability, to be part of the process of designing
development interventions.

Where disasters are frequent and affect large sections of the population, risk reduction
begins to force itself onto the development agenda, as illustrated in the relative success of
Bangladesh in implementing flood risk reduction measures. There are early signs of a
parallel process in southern Africa and Ethiopia, with unprecedented efforts by
humanitarian and development agencies to collaborate to find ways to move away from

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reliance on shortterm emergency responses to food insecurity to a longer-term
development-oriented ones which involve closer partnerships with governments.
Inadequate exposure to and information on disaster issues

Because disasters are often seen as an exclusively humanitarian concern, development

professionals are rarely exposed to disaster risk reduction issues. There was a UN
International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR) (1990-1999), but this
achieved only a modest profile and tended to focus narrowly on technical (science and
technology) aspects of hazard management. More recent work has enhanced our
understanding and knowledge of how to design policies and programmes which tackle
the governance and socio-economic aspects of disaster risk. There is also an international
database on disasters, but much remains to be achieved in improving the quality and
coverage of the data.

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References
DFID. (2004). Disaster risk reduction: A development concern depertment for
international development.

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