Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction: Risk and Poverty in a Changing Climate

This overview and analysis of disaster risks represents the first biennial report of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (IDSR). A central finding is the nexus between disaster risk and poverty, and the report suggests that addressing risks can simultaneously reduce poverty, promote development, and help adapt to climate change. Risks are intensively concentrated and unevenly distributed in poorer countries, with low-income communities usually bearing the brunt of weather-related disasters. The report identifies underlying factors in disaster risks, such as vulnerable rural livelihoods, poor local governance and ecosystem decline. Moreover, climate change will only exacerbate the disproportionate risks facing poor nations and low-income communities. Yet the report emphasizes that political will and coordinated policies can effectively reduce these risks. Significant resources are required but investments in disaster risk reduction can also provide large savings by avoiding losses and reconstruction costs.

The introduction is followed by two chapters summarizing global and local disaster risks, and Chapter 4’s analysis of underlying risk drivers contains a thorough discussion of risks in cities. Urbanization generates new patterns of extensive risk, such as flooding, as well as an intensification of risks associated with earthquakes, cyclones and other hazards. These extensive and intensive risks can often devastate the urban poor’s assets and livelihoods. However, good urban governance can help break or limit the link between poverty and disaster. Chapter 4 also discusses the other major disaster risk drivers – ecosystem decline and vulnerable rural livelihoods – that interact with climate change to magnify low-income people’s vulnerabilities.

Chapter 5 reviews progress at the national level in implementing the Hyogo Framework for Action, in which 168 countries committed to reduce their disaster risks by 2015. According to interim reports for 2007–2009, disaster preparedness and early warning systems have been strengthened in many nations. But more action is needed to address underlying risk factors and foster resilience to disaster. In Chapter 6, the report discusses how these risk drivers may be tackled. Improved natural resource management, infrastructure development and basic services provision are critical to strengthening rural livelihoods. In addition, innovative partnerships and decentralization can promote responsive urban governance. Some promising innovations in microfinance and micro insurance have already helped increase resilience to disaster. Community and local level approaches provide a vital thread between reducing disaster and promoting social capital and sustainability.

Underscoring the imperative for proactive and harmonized policies, the report closes with 20 key recommendations. Governments must forge an overarching policy framework to coordinate projects for poverty reduction, climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction. Action is also needed to reduce new disaster risks, and major investments in risk reduction will promote a safer future for vulnerable communities. By avoiding losses and reconstruction costs, these investments can actually lower the real cost of poverty reduction while addressing underlying risk factors. A more holistic, far-reaching policy of risk reduction can thereby combat poverty, help adapt to climate change and protect human development.