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EMBARGO: 08H30 CET 17 MAY 2009
FINAL FOR PLACEMENT 05 MAY 2009
Risk and poverty in a changing climate:
Turning the global financial crisis to advantage for tomorrow’s world
Global financial instability like disaster risk comes in many guises but both are linked by a single
enduring consequence: whether the starting point of catastrophe is a broken banking system or a
Category Five tropical cyclone, it is poor and deprived communities and their inhabitants who suffer
most.
Agreements reached at last month’s G20 Summit in London appear to indicate that any optimism to be
drawn from the present world economic crisis centers on the prospective opportunity of implementing
much needed financial and institutional reforms and ‘fix the system’ for the longer term, thus enabling a
return to the perceived prosperity of recent years.
The wider implications of such thinking require careful consideration – especially for the estimated 1.4
billion people in the developing world (one in four) living on less than US$ 1.25/day, according to World
Bank figures.
Fiscal growth and stability do not automatically equate to risk-free development, particularly in low and
middle income nations. Brisk economic and urban development, as experienced by many Asian and
Latin American countries over past decades, has led to a growing concentration of people and
economic assets in hazard prone cities, fertile river valleys and coastal areas. Rapidly expanding
settlement patterns in vulnerable rural/coastal areas and urban informal settlements have not
necessarily been accompanied by adequate risk reducing capacities, responsive governance
structures, policies, planning and regulatory frameworks.
While the less advanced and poor countries and their communities suffer more in real and comparative
terms, their wealthier counterparts are not immune to this trend of increasing risk, as bush fires in
Australia and the recent earthquake in central Italy reminded us so tragically at the start of this year.
Floods, droughts, storms, earthquakes, fires, when combined with “risk drivers” such as increasing
urbanization, poor urban governance, vulnerable rural livelihoods and the decline of ecosystems, can
lead to massive human misery and crippling economic losses. The risks posed by the consequences
of global climate change such as rising sea levels carry additional grave implications for how we will
live in the near future.
The current rate of progress in addressing the underlying risk drivers is inadequate if we are to achieve
the substantial reduction of disaster losses called for in the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015:
Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities to Disasters (HFA) and in the Millennium
Development Goals by 2015. Fortunately, we know what to do – as the first Global Assessment
Report on Disaster Risk Reduction makes clear. This major UN publication launched in mid-May 2009,
comprehensively reviews and analyses disaster frequency, geography and impact – and is set to
become the primary reference document for the disaster risk reduction community.
Increasing vulnerability and emerging hazards can only be addressed effectively through disaster
reduction interventions at both national and sub-regional levels as demonstrated by the Heads of State
of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), in their adoption of the ECOWAS
Policy on Disaster Risk Reduction in 2007. The benefit of collaboration on trans-boundary risk
management is evident from the scope of this and other sub-regional frameworks that have been
adopted across Europe, Asia and the Americas in past years.
A number of countries are strengthening disaster risk reduction capacities through the creation of
national coordination structures - such as in the Kingdom of Bahrain where the National Committee for
Disaster Management (NCDM) was adopted in 2006 to define responsibilities for disaster risk
reduction at different levels of government. In Norway, 96 per cent of municipalities have conducted
local risk and vulnerability analyses while the Turkish government is collaborating with the private
sector to introduce a compulsory earthquake insurance pool to mitigate the potential consequences of
earthquakes.
Colombia, Iran, India, Peru, Vanuatu and Vietnam – to name but a few – provide instances of how
disaster risk reduction considerations can be explicitly included in national budgets, in addition to
regular allocation of contingency funds for emergency response and recovery. However,
mainstreaming risk reduction considerations into policy, plans and investments has still some way to
go in most countries.
EMBARGO: 08H30 CET 17 MAY 2009
FINAL FOR PLACEMENT 05 MAY 2009
The lesson is clear: responsive and capable institutions, integrated policy frameworks and planning
systems underpinned by increased investments for reducing risks to development and adapting to
climate change will be critical in the coming years.
To address the underlying drivers of risk – poor urban governance, vulnerable rural livelihoods,
ecosystem decline and weak social protection – on the scale necessary requires major investment.
Rather than a cost, this has to be seen as a prerequisite towards building a more secure, stable,
sustainable and equitable future.
In the context of the global economic crisis, increasing public spending as the catalyst for economic
stimulus packages has considerable merit provided, investment in risk-reducing infrastructure –
improved drainage, for instance – and other initiatives designed to mitigate risk drivers remain
fundamental to the overall package. Critical to the equation, however, is ensuring that established
disaster risk reduction measures are factored into all new development.
But this will only prove fully effective if governance arrangements and capacities for risk reduction can
be adequately strengthened. At that point, comparatively small expenditures will generate huge and
expeditious benefits.
In a nutshell: invest today for a safer tomorrow.
Margareta Wahlström is the United Nations’ Assistant Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction
and Special Representative of the Secretary General for the implementation of the Hyogo Framework
for Action.
(850 words)