The 21st Century climate challenge

TECHNICAL NOTE 2Measuring the short and long-termeffects of climate-related disastersHuman development is about expanding freedomsand capabilities. Yet, as explained in chapter2, this process can be derailed by climate-relateddisasters. Besides their immediate costs interms of lives lost and livelihoods disrupted, climate-relatedshocks carry substantial intrinsiccosts that are likely to follow people throughouttheir lives, locking them into low human developmenttraps. Climate change promises to raisethese stakes for billions of vulnerable people.To capture the extent of the threat tohuman development that is embedded in climate-relatedshocks, the short and long-termeffects of being born in a disaster-affected areawere measured. More specifically, some criticaldeterminants of human development outcomeswere examined for children under five years ofage and adult women between the ages of 15and 30, and those who were affected by a disasterwere compared with those who were not.DataData for the research were derived from Demographicand Health Surveys (DHS) and the internationaldisasters database EM-DAT maintainedby the University of Louvain.Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS)Th e DHS are household and community surveysadministered by Macro International andpartly financed by the United States Agencyfor International Development (USAID).These surveys collect information on a widerange of socio-economic variables at individual,household and community levels, andare usually conducted every five years to allowcomparisons over time. DHS generally consistof a sample of 5,000–30,000 householdsbut are not longitudinal in design. The surveydesign is representative at national, urban andrural levels.Although their primary focus is on womenaged 15–49, DHS also collect information ondemographic indicators for all members of thehousehold. For children under five years of age,these surveys also collect such monitoring andimpact evaluation variables as health and nutritionindicators.International disasters database EM-DATThe EM-DAT is an international disasters databasethat presents core data on the occurrenceof disasters worldwide from 1900 to thepresent. Disasters in EM-DAT are defined as:“a situation or event which overwhelms localcapacity, necessitating a request to the nationalor international level for external assistance, oris recognized as such by a multilateral agencyor at least by two sources, such as national, regionalor international assistance groups andthe media”. For a disaster to be recorded in thedatabase, it has to meet one or more of the followingcriteria:• 10 or more people are killed;• 100 people or more are reported affected;• A state of emergency is declared;• An international call for assistance isissued.A key feature of this database is that it recordsboth the date of occurrence of a disaster—relativelyrecent ones—its location, andthe extent of its severity through the numberof people affected, the number of casualties andthe financial damage. 1Country selection criteriaFor the purposes of this study, only countrieswhere over 1,000,000 people were reported affectedby a disaster were selected. For children362 HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2007/2008