Hazards, Disasters And Your Community - United Nations ...

in financial mechanisms and social
security can cushion against vulnerability.
involvement in decision-making,
enhanced educational and health
capacity increases resiliency.
DISASTER LIMITS ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Disasters can wipe out the grains of economic development. Catastrophic disasters result in the
destruction of fixed assets and physical capital, interruption of production and trade, diversion and
depletion of savings and public and private investment. While absolute level of economic loss are greater
in developed countries due to the far higher density and cost of infrastructure and production levels, lessdeveloped
countries suffer higher levels of relative loss when seen as a proportion of Gross Domestic
Product (GDP).
At the local level, disasters can seriously impact household livelihoods and push already vulnerable
groups into poverty. The loss of income earners, through death or injury, the interruption of production or
access to markets and the destruction of productive assets, such as home-based workshops, are all
examples of ways in which disasters affect local & household economies. The capacity of a household or
local community to absorb the impact and recover from a major natural hazard will be seriously limited if
already weakened overtime by a series of smaller-scale losses.
DISASTER LIMITS SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
A population that has weakened and depleted by natural disaster, particularly when it coincides with
losses from malnutrition etc., will be less likely to have the organizational capacity to maintain irrigation
works, bunds in fields for water harvesting, hillslope terraces, shelter belts. Without these social assets
communities become more vulnerable.
In addition to the loss of social assets themselves, there are many examples of disaster events
destroying the gains of the health, sanitation, drinking water, housing and education sectors that underpin
social development. Examples include the Kutch-Bhuj earthquake in 2001, which completely damaged
district hospital, 992 primary schools & 18 secondary schools; or the cyclone that hit Orissa, India in
1999, which led to the contamination of drinking water wells and damaged many schools in the direct
impact of a single event.
Women suffer additional stresses in disaster situations and also bear a disproportionate burden of the
additional domestic & income-generating work necessary for survival following a disaster event. When
women are exposed to additional stresses, the level of social development is reduced.
DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS
Projects should take into account risk assessment at the appraisal stage. Environmental Impact Reviews
should systematically include a section on hazard proneness and consider disaster reduction measures
where appropriate, with particular regard to the protection of lifeline infrastructure and critical facilities. In
rural programmes and drought prone areas, specific regard should be given to food-security and
promotion of agriculture techniques and inter-cropping that reduce hazard-related agriculture losses.
Disaster reduction policies and measures need to be implemented, with a two-fold
aim: to enable societies to be resilient to natural hazards while ensuring that development efforts do not
increase the vulnerability to these hazards.
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