World Disaster Report Focuses on Reducing Risk

June 20, 2002 —  Expectations for critical international development programs, such as halving world poverty and hunger, will not be met by the target year 2015 unless corresponding measures are taken to reduce the heavy toll of natural disasters on the poor, according to the latest World Disasters Report, an annual publication from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (Federation).

In disaster-prone Central and South America, failing to prioritize disaster preapredness and risk reduction will continue to have catastrophic consequences.

In a matter of minutes or hours, earthquakes, floods and other large-scale disasters are wiping out development gains that took years to achieve. In such cases, the culprit isn’t poverty or hunger; instead, it’s poor building codes, shoddy workmanship and bad planning for projects that aim to improve living standards but expose people to costly, yet preventable, dangers.

In its tenth year of production, this year’s World Disaster Report warns that spending huge sums on disaster relief operations makes little sense when a much smaller amount of money applied before the disaster ever occurs could prevent widespread death, human suffering and economic fallout.

With the number of natural disasters on the rise, having tripled since those experienced in the 1970’s, the report argues that any sustainable development gains are in danger of being reversed by the devastation of natural disasters.

The key, the report says, is for aid organizations and relief programs to work with policymakers and other leaders around the globe and to use an integrated approach to disaster mitigation. The goal: joining development goals with specific disaster risk-reduction targets such as a 50 per cent decrease in the number of people killed and affected by disasters.

"We cannot leave disasters to disaster managers alone. If 200 million people on average are being affected by disasters every year, their development is set back. Development experts must play a bigger role in disaster management and risk reduction and forging links between the two," said Federation President, Juan Manuel Suárez del Toro.

Another target might be increasing the number of governments with dedicated resources for risk reduction and disaster plans tailored to the types of disasters occurring in their region. Such programs could include safer public housing for earthquake-prone areas, planting trees to protect coastlines from typhoons, rainwater harvesting efforts in drought-affected regions and well-crafted evacuation plans, among others.

Devastating floods hit Mozambique in 2000 and 2001. Local boat owners, together with the Mozambican military and the Mozambique Red Cross rescued 65 per cent of the 53,000 people saved.

The report takes some humanitarian organizations to task for not spending more on disaster mitigation and focusing instead on high-profile relief operations. For example, though a strong supporter of disaster response efforts, the European Community Humanitarian Office (ECHO) spent just 1.5% of its aid budget on disaster preparedness last year.

Similarly, Mozambique, which suffered two years of record-breaking floods in 2000-2001, received only 15% of funds required to replace simple river and rain gauges which alert communities to danger and which were destroyed by the floods in 2000. This, even though $470 million were pledged for reconstruction and rehabilitation by the international community.

Not all information included in the report was negative, though. Despite the increase in the number of disasters, the amount of people killed each year has decreased. Worldwide, disasters both natural and technological, claimed one million lives from 1982-1991. This total fell by 40% to around 620,000 deaths from 1992-2001, largely due to an enormous drop in famine deaths in Africa.

Visit http://www.ifrc.org/PUBLICAT/wdr2002/index.asp for more information, including excerpts and graphics from the World Disasters Report.