From Poverty to Power Green, Oxfam 2008 - weman

FROM POVERTY TO POWERwhether in the process of preparing for disasters, or in the subsequentresponse and recovery process.Such an effort must combine empoweringpoor people and communities to become active protagonists inpreparing for, and coping with disasters, with building effective andaccountable state machineries for disaster management.Disasters strike in many forms, but (with the exception of the 2004Indian Ocean tsunami) the most deadly is drought and subsequentfamine, which accounted for nearly half of all disaster-relateddeaths in 1994–2003. Floods, earthquakes, and hurricanes and other‘windstorms’ accounted for the majority of the remainder.Every day, almost 200 people die as a result of a disaster, but thenumber of deaths has halved over the past 30 years, thanks to a combinationof more effective early-warning systems and better disasterpreparedness at the community level. 77 However, the total number ofpeople affected by disasters is rising, and almost doubled between 1990and 1999. Clearly, while public capacity to prevent deaths is improving,the vulnerability of people living in poverty remains, and is exacerbatedby issues such as increasing population in vulnerable areas and thedeterioration of the environment, including climate change. 78At a national level, poor countries and weak governments are lessable to protect vulnerable people. On average, the number of peopleaffected by disasters in developing countries is 150 times higher thanin rich countries, whereas the population is only five times greater.The corresponding economic losses are 20 times larger, whenexpressed as a percentage of respective gross national products. In2002, over a third of all ‘natural disasters’occurred in Africa, constitutingone of the region’s largest obstacles to reducing poverty, conflict, andfood insecurity. 79 Poor people in wealthy countries also suffer whentheir governments fail to invest in disaster preparedness or to maintainessential infrastructure, as became evident in the USA in the wake ofHurricane Katrina in 2005.Within all countries,marginalised people and communities are morelikely to be hurt than the powerful, with factors such as age, gender,disability, political affiliation, or ethnicity weighing heavily. Disastersalso have a disproportionate effect on women. In the wake of a disaster,women tend to have less access to health, social, and information servicesthan men, and therefore are less able to deal with further stresses.246