IPCC_Managing Risks of Extreme Events.pdf - Climate Access

Chapter 1Climate Change: New Dimensions in Disaster Risk, Exposure, Vulnerability, and ResilienceDisaster management refers to social processes for designing,implementing, and evaluating strategies, policies, and measuresthat promote and improve disaster preparedness, response, and recoverypractices at different organizational and societal levels. Disastermanagement processes are enacted once the immediacy of the disasterevent has become evident and resources and capacities are put in placewith which to respond prior to and following impact. These include theactivation of early warning systems, contingency planning, emergencyresponse (immediate post-impact support to satisfy critical humanneeds under conditions of severe stress), and, eventually, recovery(Alexander, 2000; Wisner et al., 2011). Disaster management is requireddue to the existence of ‘residual’ disaster risk that ongoing disasterrisk reduction processes have not mitigated or reduced sufficiently oreliminated or prevented completely (IDB, 2007).Growing disaster losses have led to rapidly increasing concerns for postimpactfinancing of response and recovery (UNISDR, 2009e, 2011). In thiscontext, the concept and practice of disaster risk transfer has receivedincreased interest and achieved greater salience. Risk transfer refers tothe process of formally or informally shifting the financial consequencesof particular risks from one party to another, whereby a household,community, enterprise, or state authority will obtain resources fromthe other party after a disaster occurs, in exchange for ongoing orcompensatory social or financial benefits provided to that other party.Disaster risk transfer mechanisms comprise a component of both disastermanagement and disaster risk reduction. In the former case, financialprovision is made to face up to the impacts and consequences of disasteronce this materializes. In the latter case, the adequate use of insurancepremiums, for example, can promote and encourage the use of disasterrisk reduction measures in the insured elements. Chapters 5, 6, 7, and 9discuss risk transfer in some detail.Over the last two decades, the more integral notion of disaster riskmanagement and its risk reduction and disaster management componentshas tended to replace the unique conception and terminology of ‘disasterand emergency management’ that prevailed almost unilaterally up tothe beginning of the 1990s and that emphasized disaster as opposed todisaster risk as the central issue to be confronted. Disaster as suchordered the thinking on required intervention processes, whereas withdisaster risk management, disaster risk now tends to assume anincreasingly dominant position in thought and action in this field (seeHewitt, 1983; Blaikie et al., 1994; Smith, 1996; Hewitt, 1997; Tobin andMontz, 1997; Lavell, 2003; Wisner et al., 2004, 2011; van Niekerk, 2007;Gaillard, 2010 for background and review of some of the historicalchanges in favor of disaster risk management).The notion of disaster or disaster management cycle was introducedand popularized in the earlier context dominated by disaster or emergencymanagement concerns and viewpoints. The cycle, and the later ‘disastercontinuum’ notion, depicted the sequences and components of so-calleddisaster management. In addition to considering preparedness, emergencyresponse, rehabilitation, and reconstruction, it also included disasterprevention and mitigation as stated components of ‘disaster management’and utilized the temporal notions of before, during, and after disaster toclassify the different types of action (Lavell and Franco, 1996; vanNiekerk, 2007).The cycle notion, criticized for its mechanistic depiction of the interventionprocess, for insufficient consideration of the ways different componentsand actions merge and can act synergistically with and influence eachother, and for its incorporation of disaster risk reduction considerationsunder the rubric of ‘disaster management’ (Lavell and Franco, 1996;Lewis, 1999; Wisner et al., 2004; Balamir, 2005; van Niekerk, 2007), hastended to give way over time, in many parts of the world, to the morecomprehensive approach and concept of disaster risk management withits consideration of distinct risk reduction and disaster interventioncomponents. The move toward a conception oriented in terms of disasterrisk and not disaster per se has led to initiatives to develop the notionof a ‘disaster risk continuum’ whereby risk is seen to evolve andchange constantly, requiring different modalities of intervention overtime, from pre-impact risk reduction through response to new riskconditions following disaster impacts and the need for control of newrisk factors in reconstruction (see Lavell, 2003).With regard to the influence of actions taken at one stage of the ‘cycle’on other stages, much has been written, for example, on how the formand method of response to disaster itself may affect future disaster riskreduction efforts. The fostering of active community involvement, theuse of existing local and community capacities and resources, andthe decentralization of decisionmaking to the local level in disasterpreparedness and response, among other factors, have been consideredcritical for also improving understanding of disaster risk and thedevelopment of future disaster risk reduction efforts (Anderson andWoodrow, 1989; Alexander, 2000; Lavell, 2003; Wisner et al., 2004)(high confidence). And, the methods used for, and achievements with,reconstruction clearly have important impacts on future disaster riskand on the future needs for preparedness and response.In the following subsection, some of the major reasons that explainthe transition from disaster management, with its emphasis on disaster,to disaster risk management, with its emphasis on disaster risk, arepresented as a background for an introduction to the links and optionsfor closer integration of the adaptation and disaster risk managementfields.The gradual evolution of policies that favor disaster risk reductionobjectives as a component of development planning procedures (asopposed to disaster management seen as a function of civil protection,civil defense, emergency services, and ministries of public works) hasinevitably placed the preexisting emergency or disaster-response-orientedinstitutional and organizational arrangements for disaster managementunder scrutiny. The prior dominance of response-based and infrastructureorganizations has been complemented with the increasing incorporationof economic and social sector and territorial development agencies ororganizations, as well as planning and finance ministries. Systemic, asopposed to single agency, approaches are now evolving in many places.35