The consequences of natural disasters on economic activities, property, human welfare and natural resources can be devastating. These events greatly affect the productive sectors of the economy, such as industries, agriculture and services, not to mention the impacts on communities, in particular, the poor.
 
With increasing frequency, countries are facing situations in which scarce resources that were earmarked to development projects have to be diverted to relief and reconstruction. Recent World Bank Study on Jamaica, Dominican Republic and OECS countries confirms that economic growth only recovers slowly from major natural disasters. Disasters directly impact on foreign exchange earnings capacity of countries, at a time when extra resources are needed to finance the necessary imports of food, energy and inputs for productive sectors. If sustainable development is to be achieved, countries will have to take effective measures to manage natural hazard risk.

Language
The language of the course is Turkish.
 
Course Format
The course consists of self-paced modules, discussion forums, exercises, readings, case studies, tests and learning via interaction with program faculty and peers. The course includes 6 audio sessions of expert lectures for 30–35 minutes each.
 
Course Expectations
Participants are expected to commit 8–10 hours per week in order to gain the most out of this course in addition to:

• Complete the required reading assignments
• Participate in all online activities. Participation involves posting a minimum of two messages per week that are substantive in nature. The message can be either a new topic or a reply to someone else's message.
• Participants are encouraged to post more often than twice a week in order to be involved more deeply into topics.
• Participate in videoconferencing and asynchronous chat sessions (if applicable)
• Complete assignments and end of course project
• Complete course evaluation at the end of the course
  

System Requirements of the Course

• Hardware: Pentium 166 or faster, 64Mb Memory, CD-ROM, Sound Card
• Software: Windows 95,98,ME,NT 4,2000 or XP Internet Explorer 4 or higher, Netscape 4 or higher Microsoft Office 2000 (Word, PowerPoint) Acrobat Reader 5  

The objective of Financial Strategies for Managing the Impact of Natural Disasters course is to develop a wider and increased understanding of disaster risk reduction practices and enhance their effectiveness. The course focuses on financial, macroeconomic and development impacts of disasters, trade-offs (costs and benefits) involved in disaster risk management, and offers strategies for reducing the impacts of natural disasters. This specialization course targets officials from finance ministries, planning organizations, public work agencies in order to improve the planning and budgeting processes, and macroeconomic projections.  

Course Overview
Disasters have a major impact on the living conditions, economic performance, and environmental assets of affected countries. Consequences may be long-term and may cause irreversible damages to environmental, economic and social structures.
Statistics show that disasters cause the most significant and irreversible damage in developing countries, where the poorest and most vulnerable population groups are disproportionately impacted. By contrast, in the developed world, a considerable degree of protection against disasters has been achieved, as a result of effective prevention, mitigation and planning measures that reduce vulnerability. But even with these impressive results, damages in these countries have risen due to greater concentration and value of societal activities.

To reduce the long-term impact of disasters, and to achieve sustainable growth, affected countries must (i) assign financial resources for prevention and mitigation of the foreseeable impact of disasters, and (ii) ensure that once disasters occur, reconstruction investments incorporate vulnerability-reduction measures. This latter point should be underscored in light of reconstruction efforts undertaken by many countries. In most cases, we observe that vulnerability is reconstructed along with destroyed assets, mainly because of scarce resources available beyond the emergency and humanitarian assistance stage. 

The course offers financing strategies for risk management. It focuses on financial, economic and development impacts of disasters, trade-offs (costs and benefits) involved in disaster risk financing and mechanisms for financing disaster risk in a developing country. The course provides policy makers and disaster managers with tools and institutional designs for improved planning and budgeting processes, and national macroeconomic projections. This specialization course targets central government policymakers, representatives of donor agencies and disaster management professionals. It consists of two modules and an end of course exercise.

• Module 1: Global Perspective
  
• Module 2: Turkey’s Perspective
  
• End of Course Project
  
  To meet the course completion requirement the participants are required to submit an end-of course case study/project. The project is aimed to prepare a financial natural disaster risk management plan for the participant’s country. The case study should draw upon information from the course materials; participants own experiences and should also include the financial aspect of risk reduction and post disaster reconstruction efforts.  
  

WBI is pleased to offer this training series as a result of partnerships with the Middle East Technical University, Istanbul Technical University, Bosphorus University and Gazi University.