Rainstorms, hurricanes, earthquakes, and other weather phenomena can exact a devastating toll on property, human welfare, natural resources, and the economies of developing countries. For instance, more than 95 percent of all deaths caused by disasters occur in developing countries.

Factors that contribute significantly to the damage inflicted during a disaster event include the location of infrastructure and housing developments, how they are constructed, and how land use affects the natural environment. Low-income populations are also disproportionately affected by natural disasters as unstable natural resources use associated with poverty can exacerbate existing vulnerabilities.

In our region, increased population growth and urbanization, particularly in high-risk areas without adequate prevention planning measures, has left Latin America’s cities increasingly at risk of natural catastrophic events. Earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, volcanoes, wild fires and slow onset events such as drought and erosion lead to floods, landslides, fires and other disasters that claim many lives and create serious setbacks for economic development.

In fact, 40 percent of World Bank lending for urban development from 1978 to the 1990’s was either specifically aimed or redirected toward post-disaster reconstruction programs.

Given this precedent, our region has developed and put in place a strategy to reduce the impacts of natural events. Our disaster risk management team has identified a three-pronged approach to reduce vulnerability to natural disasters:

WORLD BANK SUPPORT FOR DISASTER RISK MANAGEMENT PROGRAMS IN LAC

An important part of the World Bank's mission to reduce poverty is providing assistance to prepare for and recover from natural or man-made disasters. As outlined above, poorly planned development can turn recurring natural phenomena into human and economic disasters. Allowing dense populations on a floodplain or permitting poor or un-enforced building codes in earthquake zones is as likely as a natural event to cause casualties and losses. Similarly, allowing the degradation of natural resources increases the risk of disaster.

In recent years, the approach to disaster management has evolved towards a broader concept of risk management. Instead of diverting financing from ongoing projects in order to finance recovery and reconstruction efforts, the Bank now provides investment lending for specific emergency response, as well as disaster mitigation, prevention, and vulnerability reduction projects.

Many developing countries have begun to take proactive measures to minimize the effects of natural disasters through a number of actions, including:

Institutional strengthening: An important factor in each disaster mitigation project is the strengthening of local and national disaster management groups, training of disaster management officials, support for institutionalizing building codes and land use planning, and the development of internal competencies to identify and mitigate risks. 

Risk identification: A thorough understanding of existing vulnerabilities, including their location and severity, is critical for the development and prioritization of investment programs in risk management. A broad range of activities contributes to the identification and understanding of natural hazard risks including hazard data collection and mapping, vulnerability assessments, risk assessments and post disaster assessments.

Risk reduction: Risk reduction activities are designed to mitigate damage from hazard events. Activities addressing existing vulnerabilities can take the form of retrofit, strengthening and relocation. Activities to reduce future vulnerabilities would typically include the development and enforcement of building standards, environmental protection measures, land use planning that recognizes hazard zones, and resource management practice, etc.

Risk transfer: It is not always possible to completely eliminate the vulnerability of key assets. In many cases, there may be critical components of a nation's infrastructure that remain at risk. Insurance mechanisms are used to transfer risks that cannot be mitigated through structural or ex-ante damage reduction measures, and against events that have the potential to cause large economic losses. These include standard insurance and reinsurance contracts as well as the creation of contingency funds to build up economic and fiscal resilience in the face of natural hazards.

The aim of these measures is to identify and reduce vulnerability before disasters occur. Risks are identified via mapping, technical studies and participatory workshops. Risk reduction entails financing vulnerability reduction investments and mainstreaming non-structural interventions such as enforceable building codes and land use planning techniques into municipal norms, standards and planning processes. Bank projects increasingly include risk transfer mechanisms including a catastrophic insurance and risk pooling mechanism in the Caribbean to shield governments and their populations from events that have the potential to cause large economic losses.

In this site we hope to share the lessons of our experiences and an understanding of the issues we still face in promoting the management and prevention of natural disasters in order to bring a greater awareness to this increasingly prevalent development topic.

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