Living with Risk. A global review of disaster reduction initiatives

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Living with Risk: A global review of disaster reduction initiatives
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develop principles, guidelines and effective
strategies to better set their priorities.
Natural disaster concerns are more or less
identifiable in the above mentioned reporting
systems, links between environmental management
and flood damage (e.g. lack of integration
between water management, transport policy
and nature conservation objectives) being
most frequently described. However, they can
produce essential baseline and vulnerability
information on which to develop disaster
reduction policies (see boxexample from
Bangladesh).
Economic incentives/disincentives for disaster reduction
include:
• Tax incentives, subsidies and loans to compensate
landowners or discourage certain land uses
• User charges: fees for downstream beneficiaries
(domestic water use, agriculture, hydropower, fishery,
recreation)
• Transfer of development rights to avoid undesirable
development
• Easements: legal agreement to restrict type and amount
of development taking place on a property
• Land purchase/property rights: usually restricted for
exceptional lands (restricted land leases)
• Fines/liability system for damages caused to human settlements
or environmental services
• Pricing structures to discourage unsound use of
resources
Existing reporting guidelines could easily be
updated to include a requirement to systematically
report on the environmental features and
resource necessary to prevent environmental
degradation that will lead to an increase in disaster
risks. The process of environmental
reporting could also be designed to contribute
to the record of ways in which societies mitigate
risk by cultural adaptation and their
appraisal of natural resources.
Environmental mapping, in which community
members are asked to locate relevant environmental
features and resources on a self-created
map of their territory, could be used for risk
mapping. Maps representing physical features,
such as roads, houses, soil types and vegetation,
could include social and risk phenomena,
e.g., access to resources by specific groups or
household wealth. Community involvement in
map building provides an occasion to discuss
resource management issues.
Ecological and environmental economics
It is essential to obtain an accurate picture of
true health and wealth of the socio-economic
and socio-ecological situation of a nation in
assessing progress towards sustainable development.
Of the three interactive spheres of
sustainable development – social, economic
and environmental/ecological – economic considerations,
in many ways remains dominant,
both in influence and in its measurement.
Proving that disaster reduction integrating
sound environmental management makes economic
sense is a major challenge when confronting
decision-makers.
Environmental economics, also referred to as
ecological economics, provides a visible way to
link environmental management and disaster
risk reduction in sustainable development. It
utilizes the tools and mechanisms of economics
to measure in currency terms, the value and
costs regarding various aspects of the environment
such as well-functioning ecosystems,
prisitne environments, biodiversity and the
costs associated with resource and ecosystem
depletion.
In conventional economic frameworks, natural
resources, in terms of their worth for human
use, have been considered. Beginning in the
1970s, economic mechanisms began to be
adapted in order to measure more accurate representation
of the socio-ecological aspects of
the community.
Until quite recently, the study of environmental
economics has been predominantly in academia,
related research institutions, in multilateral
and bilateral organization and in the
large international environmentally-oriented
NGOs. As environmental issues become
increasingly everyday news, decision makers
world-wide have started to examine ways in
which socio-ecological values and costs can be
measured and incorporated into economic and
political discourse. There are numerous
national models, including the older forms of
National Resource Accounts (NRA), National
Systems for Environmental Accounting