Making Cities Resilient Report 2012

Measures for resilience building through urban planning can simultaneously improve the quality of life of
residents. Although some merely compare the cost of implementing resilience activities to the benefit of
saving lives and assets and conclude that investment after a disaster is more cost effective, the positive
effect of resilience measures is not only limited to saving lives and assets. Measures such as securing
access roads in informal settlements and upgrading and providing sufficient public space lead to overall
improvement in the quality of life of a city’s residents. Measures to build resilience not only help cities to
bounce back at the time of crisis, but also go hand in hand with bettering the quality of life of the residents,
thus making investment in resilience pay in the long run.
Measuring financing of DRR and budgets for DRR
Local governments cite the lack of adequate, sustainable resources, both human and financial, as a major
barrier to implementing disaster risk reduction plans. An analysis of cities involved in pilot testing the
self-assessment tool revealed that Essential 2, Financing and Resources, scored lowest across of all the
Essentials, meaning that this was the area in which cities felt they were making the least progress 20 .
Getting an accurate account of the total city budget allocated to disaster risk reduction is not a
straightforward matter, as much of the budget is mainstreamed into related programme areas, such as
major urban projects and critical infrastructure. Identifying dedicated financial resources for risk reduction
requires a sophisticated analysis of a city’s finances, as well as a deeper understanding of how national
governments allocate and tag related spending.
National studies are being conducted to track budgets related to disaster risk reduction in the Philippines,
India, Indonesia, as well as in cities in Latin America. The Government of Indonesia is proposing a set of
budget codes that would allow for tracking of different types of risk reduction activities and expenditures
at national scale.
In the context of city-level indicators, it is worth defining how municipal budgets that are owned by
different departments are being used for activities related to the Ten Essentials, in addition to dedicated
risk reduction budgets.
As evidenced by the on-going activities presented under Essential 2 in Chapter 4, cities have tapped into
different sources of financial support for disaster risk reduction (see a summary in Table 5.4). Municipal
budgets are a primary source of financing. In some countries, such as the Philippines and Peru, there are
national budgets for disaster risk reduction with dedicated, which can contribute to city-level budgets,
that can, in turn, be complemented by third-party funding sources, such as donors, the private sector,
humanitarian organisations and aid agencies. One difficulty detected at the municipal level is the lack of
knowledge to articulate and initiate requests to access available national funds. In terms of indicators, or
measurements of resilience, what is needed is an understanding of how budgets are being spent and how
effectively this spending contributes to reducing risk for all sectors of society.
20. Gawler, Steve and Alice Balbo (2011). Promoting Local Authorities Leadership for Urban Risk Reduction: ICLEI Final Project Report. ICLEI World
Secretariat, Bonn, Germany.
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