Global Report on Human Settlements 2007 - PoA-ISS

180
Natural and human-made disasters
Box 7.5 Urban land markets and flooding in Argentina
In Argentina, land market agents have tended to oppose any legislation
that might constrain their actions on areas prone to
flooding. The consequence has been that across Argentina, in
Buenos Aires, Santa Fe and Greater Resistencia, the state has
allowed the division of land in flood-prone areas into lots for sale.
In Greater Resistencia, despite existing legal instruments, the
Resistencia City Council has consistently voted for exceptions to
regulations if they hinder construction plans. Development in areas
prone to flooding has not only generated new hazard, but has also
caused changes to land drainage, placing previously safe developed
areas at risk.
Flood risk has had a detrimental effect on land values in
Buenos Aires. A study in the Arroyo Maldonado area found that
land values in this middle- and low-income community fell by 30
per cent following two years of consecutive flooding. Land at risk
from flooding is cheaper and can be purchased by low-income
households, as has happened in parts of Buenos Aires such as
Matanza-Richuelo and Reconquista, and in Resistencia along the
course of the Rio Negro. In Resistencia, middle-income households
are also at risk from flooding, but can often evacuate to family or
friends in higher (more expensive) neighbourhoods. This option is
less available to the poor, who rely on state or non-governmental
organization (NGO) shelters.
In middle- to high-income areas, real estate agents have
been found to mask flood risk. In housing developments at
Colastiné and Rincón, Greater Santa Fe, land was purchased in the
belief that it was flood secure. Unfortunately, this was not the case,
with purchasers feeling cheated. The state was implicated in this,
having failed to regulate against granting development in floodprone
locations. In already built-up areas in Buenos Aires (e.g.
Belgrano on Avenida Cabildo), flooding is also effectively masked,
with no discernable change in the market price of flats except for
temporary decreases following severe flooding.
On the whole, middle- and high-income populations, as
well as estate agents and land developers, have successfully masked
flooding to avoid possible land and property value losses. This also
reflects the higher resilience of areas occupied by middle- and
high-income households and associated commercial activities that
are able to cope better with flooding than low-income households
and marginalized commercial activities.
Source: Clichevsky, 2003
Especially in poorer
countries, women
and children tend to
be most affected by
disasters
housing market values are equally sensitive to disaster risk
(see Part III of this <strong>Global</strong> <strong>Report</strong> on security of tenure).
Box 7.5 examines the history of urban land development
and the impact of flooding in Argentina. It illustrates
the negative spiral of flood-prone land having a reduced
value and therefore being affordable to low-income households,
but also increasing exposure to flood hazard among
this group, who has the least resources to cope with or
respond to flood hazard.
Social and political impacts of disaster
The social and political impacts of disaster are less easy to pin
down than the direct economic impacts of disaster. The social
impacts of disaster are determined by those institutions and
processes in society that shape differential access to
resources. These include cultural, ethnic, religious, social,
and age- and disability-related causes that lead to segregation
and exclusion. Every urban community is structured by a
myriad of social relationships, obligations, competitions and
divisions that shape the particular social characteristics
associated most with vulnerability and loss. 36 Despite checklists
of vulnerability routinely including social characteristics,
rigorous research is relatively limited, with most of the resulting
knowledge focusing on gender inequalities. A common
theme is that where inequality has generated disproportionate
vulnerability for a specific social group, higher losses
during disaster and reconstruction serve to deepen inequality,
thus creating vicious cycles of loss and vulnerability.
Political impacts of disaster are often determined by
the pre-disaster political context. Post-disaster, political
leaders have a remarkable ability to deflect criticisms and
survive, or even benefit from disaster notwithstanding any
role their decisions might have played in generating disaster
risk.
This section examines the ways in which vulnerability
to disaster impacts is shaped by gender, age, disability and
political systems. On the ground, the many social and
economic roots of vulnerability interact. For simplicity, social
characteristics are discussed in turn; but any individual may
experience more than one form of social exclusion and this,
in turn, may be compounded or relieved through economic
status. Economic poverty – for example, experienced
through homelessness – is not discussed here as a separate
social pressure, but is a theme that runs throughout the
analysis of disaster risk in this and subsequent chapters.
■ Gender and disaster
Gender is a social variable that shapes vulnerability and is
reflected in disaster impact statistics worldwide. Especially
in poorer countries, women and children tend to be most
affected by disasters. 37 The 1991 cyclone in Bangladesh
killed 138,000 people and mortality among females over
ten years of age was over three times that of males over ten
years old. 38 Following the Maharashtra earthquake in India,
in 1993, while less women than men were affected (48 per
cent), more women than men were killed (55 per cent). 39
In addition to differential death and injury rates from
the direct impacts of natural and human-made hazards,
women are at risk from indirect impacts. Four pathways for
this inequality have been identified: 40
• Economic losses disproportionately impact upon
economically insecure women (e.g. when livelihoods
traditionally undertaken by poor women rely on assets
at risk, such as peri-urban agriculture, or the destruc-