Global Report on Human Settlements 2007 - PoA-ISS

Mitigating the impacts of disasters
287
Box 12.8 Elements of successful reform for disaster risk reduction legislation
A recent study by Tearfund has reviewed the processes leading to
the successful reform of national disaster risk reduction legislation.
The following recommendations draw from this report, and
together emphasize the need for strong leadership, a commitment
to participation in the process of drafting legislation, and clarity in
the required roles and outcomes of local-level actors, who include
local authorities:
• Reform requires sustained high-level political support.
• Reform is greatly facilitated by high-level political support and
a well-placed policy champion with technical knowledge, skill,
commitment and creative initiative.
• The leadership of the reform process must be explicitly
committed to broad stakeholder consultation.
• Review of the pre-reform policy and legislative context is
necessary to understand the pre-existing mandates of
agencies. As far as possible, legislation should fit into existing
government planning cycles and procedures for implementation
and monitoring.
• External facilitators can enable the reform process. Since
disaster risk reduction is a fairly new policy area, it can easily
be perceived as a threat or as duplicating existing policy and
Source: Pelling and Holloway, 2006
budget lines. In addition, the need to build high-level and crosssectoral
support is challenging for sectoral actors.
International expertise or neutral, but informed, national
actors, such as academics, may be well placed to act as technical
advisers for dialogue.
• Create a clear identity for disaster risk reduction. Disaster
risk reduction is developmental and should clearly be seen as
a separate policy area from relief-oriented disaster management.
• Align new legislation with international best practice and use
terminology consistent with contemporary global thinking.
• Develop an implementation plan during the development of
legislation. This should clearly demarcate responsibilities,
timelines for action, agreed benchmarks and protocols for
review.
• Legislation must explicitly state required outcomes at the
community level, such as local early warning systems or
community-based disaster-contingency plans.
• Monitor performance and implementation. As risk changes in
character, the nature and tasks of frontline policy actors will
also change and legislation needs to be able to reflect this
change to empower disaster risk reduction.
Disaster risk
continues to grow
despite existing
legislative
frameworks for
urban risk reduction
(through legislation) and in enabling learning (through international
and South–South partnerships).
Many cities have a solid base of legislation for urban
risk management, including legislation to enforce land-use
planning, construction standards and industrial risk management.
The challenge at this level is to implement and
enforce legislation. It is at the level of national legislation for
disaster management policy and planning where there is
most scope for clarifying legislation that can support citylevel
planning.
A review of legislation in Central America found that
while progress was made after Hurricane Mitch, in 1998, in
introducing new legislation, urban concerns were not fully
addressed. 26 In particular, links between disaster management
and urban management were not strong, leading to a missed
opportunity to enhance urban planning as a risk reduction
tool. Coordination across levels and sectors of government is
essential to prevent blind spots in national or urban risk
assessment and policy development that would cause unseen
risk to accumulate, often at the local scale. Box 12.8 presents
recent work by Tearfund that identifies common characteristics
of successful legislative reform processes.
Disaster risk continues to grow despite existing
legislative frameworks for urban risk reduction. This is a
direct product of failure to implement legislative duties.
This, in turn, is a product of financial and human resource
shortages, as well as cultural norms, which undermine the
effectiveness of legal regimes. There are a number of ways in
which implementation can be maximized. Those who will
eventually have responsibility for policing or implementing
urban planning law should be consulted in the drafting of
legislation.
Urban- and national-level legislative reform has
usefully engaged with international forums for risk reduction.
The Habitat Agenda, which promotes the need to
improve the quality of human settlements through solidarity,
cooperation and partnerships, and the ISDR, which can act
to provide information on good practice or facilitate
South–South learning, are examples of this.
Regional cooperation can be similarly useful in
promoting successful reform and implementation of risk
reduction in urban planning. The Asian Urban Disaster
Mitigation Program (AUDMP) 27 and the African Urban Risk
Analysis Network 28 have been instrumental in sharing information
on risk reduction and building communities of
practice for urban professionals working on risk reduction in
their respective regions.
DESIGNING DISASTER-
RESISTANT BUILDINGS AND
INFRASTRUCTURE
US$1 invested in construction saves US$40 if
the building has to be rebuilt after an earthquake;
US$1 invested in retrofitting saves
US$8. 29
This estimate of the economic benefits of safe construction
and retrofitting in Turkey is compelling. Technological and
engineering expertise is available in most cities to design
buildings and infrastructure for disaster-proofing. When
development projects fail, this is more a reflection of failures
Technological and
engineering
expertise is available
in most cities to
design buildings and
infrastructure for
disaster-proofing