As the number and intensity of disasters rises, poor countries and poor communities are disproportionately affected. So-called ‘natural’ disasters often have their roots in past development failures. Disasters threaten achievement of the Millennium Development Goals yet development professionals are rarely exposed to disaster risk reduction issues. Disasters must become a core development issue.

A study from the UK Department for International Development explores evidence on links between poverty alleviation, development and disaster risk reduction.

Disasters – including the everyday small-scale ones that go unnoticed by the outside world – not only damage infrastructure but have long-term impacts on productivity, growth and macroeconomic performance. When governments lose tax revenue, and have to divert resources into disaster response, state provision of welfare services often declines.

Damage to housing and loss of savings and productive assets reduces livelihood sustainability. For poor households clean water, food and medicine are less affordable after disasters. Forced sale of remaining productive assets by vulnerable households pushes many into long-term poverty and increases inequality. Emergency programmes may reinforce power structures which exclude women.

More than half of disaster deaths occur in countries categorised by the United Nations as having a low human development index. Both governments and donors tend to fund disaster relief and rehabilitation by reallocating resources from existing development programmes. Humanitarian responses to disaster impacts now cost the Development Assistance Committee donors an annual US$ 6 billion, which is seven percent – and rising – of total official development assistance.

Development processes may increase vulnerability to disasters in two ways. Firstly, increased exposure to hazard can be the result of, for example, climate change on a global level worsening extreme weather events, or destruction on a local level of mangroves – which protect coasts from tidal storm surges – to make way for shrimp farms. Rapid urban growth may increase exposure to landslides, earthquakes or fires. Secondly, increased susceptibility to hazard – an erosion of people’s ability to cope with and recover from hazard impacts – can result from such processes as rapid liberalisation of agricultural markets, the running down of state-run social protection schemes, the undermining of informal safety nets, poorly built or maintained infrastructure, chronic illness or conflict.

Many impacts of disasters go unnoticed by media headlines and international disaster statistics:

• Families hit by disaster often do not send children – especially girls – to school.
• Disasters leave women and girls with heavier workloads and often poorer health and at increased risk of domestic violence and sexual harassment.
• Children are in greater danger in floods and drought, through drowning, starvation and disease.
• Disasters directly cause disease and damage to health infrastructure, while indirectly lowering disease resistance and heightening malnutrition.
• Disasters can lead women and girls to resort to sex work and risk HIV infection.
• Disasters may increase rural to urban migration, and in cities disproportionately affect slum dwellers.

‘Disaster-proofing’ development – integrating disaster risk reduction into development policy and practice – will require:

• donors to promote greater political will for disaster risk reduction within partner countries
• improved cross-sectoral communication and new ways of working at the humanitarian-development interface
• encouraging national and international media to take a greater interest in risk reduction
• ensuring that disaster risk reduction is included in Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers
• better systems for the collection and analysis of information on disaster impacts and links with climate change, health, livelihoods and governance
• developing performance targets and indicators to assess progress in integrating disaster risk reduction into both humanitarian and development policies.

Source(s):
‘Disaster risk reduction: a development concern. A scoping study on links between disaster risk reduction, poverty and development’, UK Department for International Development, by Philip White, Mark Pelling and Kunal Sen, 2005 Full document.
'Disaster risk reduction: a development concern' - full report 2004

Funded by: UK Department for International Development (DFID)

id21 Research Highlight: 16 November 2005

Further Information:
Philip White
107 Union Road
Sheffield S11 9EJ
UK

Tel: +44 (0) 114 2553885
Contact the contributor: philip@rauwhite.freeserve.co.uk

Mark Pelling
Department of Geography, Strand Campus
Kings College, University of London
London WC2R 2LS
UK

Tel: +44 (0) 20 7848 2462
Fax: +44 (0) 20 7848 2287
Contact the contributor: mark.pelling@kcl.ac.uk

Department of Geography, King's College London, UK

Kunal Sen
School of Development Studies
University of East Anglia
Norwich NR4 7TJ
UK

Tel: +44 (0) 1603 592807
Fax: +44 (0) 1603 451999
Contact the contributor: k.sen@uea.ac.uk

School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia, UK

Other related links:
'Preparing for natural disasters makes economic sense'

'Risks of disaster and climate change'

'Disasterproofing: reducing the impact of natural disasters'

'Learning to live with natural disasters: roadmap to a safer world?'

'Disaster mitigation and preparedness: too important to be left to governments?'