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Disaster risk: Conditions, trends and impacts189in the same sites without risk reduction measures, lossesrecur. A great lesson was learned in Rio de Janeiro whenlocal landslides caused 1000 deaths in 1966, after whichhouses were reconstructed at the original sites and 1700people were killed the following year. 96 Relocating disastersurvivors away from hazardous sites is also problematic.Social and economic networks are not easy to maintain afterrelocation, and the loss of these assets, combined withpotentially higher transport costs to find work or educationand health services, can put an additional strain on individualsand households, thus undermining resilience.International development policy andurban disaster riskUrban planning is influenced by national and internationaldevelopment frameworks and priorities. The MillenniumDevelopment Goals (MDGs) have had a great impact onprioritizing the international development agenda. The mosturban focused goal, target 11 of MDG 7, demands that asignificant improvement in the lives of at least 100 millionslum dwellers is achieved by 2020. This is an importantmotor for pro-poor urban planning, and efforts to improvethe lives of slum dwellers should take natural and humanmadedisaster risk into account. There is scope here forindicators of urban vulnerability to disaster risk to contributeto a more holistic assessment of quality of life.Meeting other MDGs will also be hindered if disasterrisk reduction is not made more prominent in urbanplanning. The great potential for disasters that hit urbanareas to destroy critical infrastructure and set back developmentgains can undermine progress in meeting MDG 1,which calls for the halving, between 1990 and 2015, of theproportion of people whose income is less than US$1 perday. MDG 2 calls for governments to ensure that, by 2015,children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able tocomplete a full course of primary schooling. A great deal ofinvestment has been made in building new primary schools;but only seldom are they designed to disaster-resistantstandards. The result is that more children are placed at riskand development gains are liable to be lost. In the Pereiraearthquake in Colombia in 1999, 74 per cent of the region’sschools were damaged. 97Urban risk accumulation was accelerated by the debtcrisis and subsequent structural adjustment programmes ofthe 1980s and 1990s that forced governments throughoutLatin America, Asia and Africa to slash subsidies on food,electricity and transportation and to retrench public-sectorworkers. The impact of these policies was perhaps mostvisible in the food riots of sub-Saharan Africa, triggered bythe removal of subsidies on the price of food. 98 Poor peopleresponded to the economic downturn by putting morefamily members (especially women and school-age children)into the labour market and by pulling back from long-terminvestments in children’s education and in housing improvement,in this way reducing long-term resilience to disaster.In addition, the cumulative impact of inequality and privatizationmay have further removed poor people fromaccessing legal land markets, leading to the proliferation ofinformal settlements, often in cheap and hazardouslocations.During the early 21st century, World Bank lending hasbeen repackaged, with the stated aim of enabling greatercountry leadership through national poverty reductionstrategies, initially proposed through national PovertyReduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs). Yet, little work hasexamined the consequence of the PRSP framework fornatural disaster reduction. One study found that fewnational plans mentioned disaster risk reduction beyond theneed for early warning. With many municipal and city administrationshaving uncomfortable political relationships withnational administrations, the extent to which PRSPs enableor constrain municipal government control over financialbudgets and access to international support will have aprofound impact on urban development and disaster riskreduction. This falls short of an integrated risk reductionapproach. 99Half of all post-disaster borrowing provided by theWorld Bank goes to housing reconstruction. A recent reviewof reconstruction financing argues that this practice exposesfunds to capture by local and national elites, thus contributingto urban inequality and vulnerability in ways that othertargets for reconstruction funds that would remain as publicgoods (such as critical infrastructure) might not. 100Opportunities for disaster reconstruction funding tocontribute to the building of urban resilience have too oftenbeen missed by urban, national and international agencies.Where national catastrophe funds are not available, fundsearmarked for development works are vulnerable to beingdiverted to finance reconstruction. This is a principalpathway for the indirect systemic impacts of disaster.International finance has similarly contributed in the past tothe perpetuation of cycles of urban poverty, environmentaldegradation and disaster through disaster reconstructionloan agreements that have increased indebtedness, reducingoptions for future economic growth or anti-poverty policy. 101COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OFGLOBAL TRENDSThis section provides a comparative analysis of urban disasterincidence and impact for each world region: Africa, theAmericas, Asia, Europe and Oceania. This scale of analysiscovers great diversity at the national and sub-national levels,but is useful in flagging the major natural and human-madedisasters affecting human settlements and the barriers todisaster prevention and mitigation specific to each region.AfricaFlooding is the most frequent natural disaster type in Africaand results in the highest mortality (see Table 7.9).Earthquakes, floods and storms cause the greatest economicloss and drought affects the most people. Food insecurityresulting from drought can affect urban societies indirectlythrough food price fluctuation and the in-migration ofrefugees. Economic loss to disasters is low for Africa,…efforts to improvethe lives of slumdwellers should takenatural and humanmadedisaster riskinto accountMeeting … MDGswill … be hinderedif disaster riskreduction is notmade moreprominent in urbanplanning