Global Report on Human Settlements 2007 - PoA-ISS

Policy responses to disaster risk
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to foster trust and collaboration between stakeholders.
• The criteria for identifying beneficiaries must be clear.
In developmental approaches, consideration is given to
supporting those vulnerable households who were not
affected by the disaster.
• Involving local participation in the selection of resettlement
sites improves final choices and increases
acceptability.
• Information dissemination systems can regularly report
on progress directly to affected families and individuals
in order to reduce stress and tension.
• Reconstruction is a prime opportunity to enhance
women’s property rights. This has been done by giving
new ownership titles jointly to husband and wife or in
the name of the female head of household in single
parent families.
• The best building design is flexible. Families use houses
differently and have diverse traditions of design and
use. Those who will live in houses should be allowed to
contribute in the design stage in order to diversify and
make appropriate use of architectural styles. Where
vernacular housing design has proven resilient to
hazards, this should be given preference.
• Particularly when large contracting firms are used, the
most successful projects have built-in mechanisms for
community oversight.
• Reconstruction provides a great opportunity to support
the local economy. Local craftspeople should be
employed or trained in preference over external firms.
Traditional materials and technologies can be used.
• The environmental impact assessment (EIA) of
reconstruction is seldom taken into account and, in
large schemes, can be considerable, including the
generation of local hazard (e.g. by felling mangrove
stands or construction in low-lying places). The best
EIAs include not only damage onsite, but also the
carbon costs of sourcing and transporting materials.
The following discussion analyses in greater detail the roles
that can be played, in particular, by local authorities in prodevelopment
disaster response and reconstruction.
Disaster response
Effective disaster response rests on having a prepared and
rehearsed plan with clearly identified responsibilities. The
stakeholders involved in response are broadly similar for
natural and human-made disasters. Initial response includes
neighbours and community organizations, emergency
services and civil defence. Emergency response can overlap
with development, so that, increasingly, development actors
(including those with experience in urban planning and
construction), along with international agencies such as UN-
Habitat, become involved.
In those cities and parts of cities where municipal
resources are limited, self-organized and community-based
response plans can save many lives. Residents of Los
Manguitos, an informal settlement in the city of Santo
Domingo (the Dominican Republic) did not receive government
or NGO support for two weeks following Hurricane
Georges in 1998. Pre-disaster social organization enabled
community members to undertake social care, policing and
housing repairs during this period of uncertainty. 88
More broadly, the state has responsibility for
maintaining the rule of law and to protect property and
people from looting and violent crime during disasters. This
is a major task during reconstruction. There may be a role for
civil society groups or international observers to oversee
activities or work in partnership with security agencies, such
as the army, police or civil defence. This is particularly the
case in cities where the state or para-statal groups have had a
violent relationship with citizens pre-disaster.
Some people are more at risk than others of being left
out of relief and response programmes. Women, children
and orphans, the elderly and those who are marginalized
because of language, culture or social class are especially
liable to not having their entitlements met during relief and
response. The social pressures that create pre-disaster
inequality underpin how people fare during disaster
response. This is a particular challenge because it means that
it is not sufficient to follow local demands and directions on
aid distribution. These must be questioned in light of the
prevailing development context. Accounts from the South
Asian earthquake in 2005 note that women were largely
dependent upon men for access to relief. Few women
received tents or food or came forward to participate in food
or cash work programmes. Even when this gender disparity
was recognized by agencies, it was difficult to find skilled
women, underlining the influence of pre-disaster inequalities
on post-disaster work that aims to build back better. 89
Security is also a concern if temporary shelter is
provided in camps. Women are often most at risk from
violence, but also suffer from a lack of privacy and from
inadequate provision for personal hygiene. 90 In Sri Lanka,
after the Indian Ocean Tsunami, women were seldom found
among the managers of camps. Indeed, the Sri Lankan
Parliament Select Committee on Natural Disasters,
mandated to assess disaster preparedness and mitigation,
had only 2 women out of its 22 members. Many tent villages
set up after the South Asian earthquake have been reported
to have little or no functional security. 91
Careful coordination of response activities can help
families to stay together, and to protect women, children and
the aged. But this relies on pre-disaster registration and on
safe record-keeping. Birth registration forms and formal
identification documents are often lost in disasters; but are
essential tools for protecting individuals’ rights, including
access to relief and in reuniting families. 92 The best relief is
a product of pre-disaster training and preparedness based on
local decentralized control.
Reconstruction for risk reduction
Strong local government is needed to oversee reconstruction
and to help control profiteering over land held for resettlement.
93 Reconstruction is a period when urban land rights
are often contested or fought over by competing interests. It
is not uncommon for those with only usufruct or customary
Reconstruction
provides a great
opportunity to
support the local
economy
…where municipal
resources are
limited,
self-organised and
community-based
response plans can
save many lives