World Disasters Report 2010 - International Federation of Red Cross ...

For many cities, including those mentioned in Box 7.2, disasters are not new. They have
a record of disasters at different scales. The cases mentioned highlight institutional incapacity
to address urbanization issues from different angles. When combined with lack of
accountability to citizens and little scope for citizen participation, this means little action
to reduce risks in urban areas, especially where low-income groups live. For much urban
expansion, the ‘solution’ to the lack of institutional capacity to manage land use has been
to be outside the legal framework of building codes and land-use regulations, and outside
the scope of officially recorded and legally sanctioned land transactions. In many cities,
some high- and middle-income groups also occupy dangerous land sites but the possibility
to reduce risk and receive emergency assistance and insurance coverage is much
greater. City and municipal governments can thus be key players in disaster risk creation
and amplification or in disaster risk reduction. This has been acknowledged for some
time by the development and disaster response community, and several governments at
national and regional levels have designed structures to support local governments.
Box 7.2 Latin American cities expand over high-risk areas
Much of the housing in Caracas, Venezuela,
is built on slopes crossed by gorges that lead
to the Guaire, the city’s main river. Low-income
groups have settled on unstable land and in
gorges, where their houses often act as barriers
to natural water run-off. In December
1999, Venezuela experienced one-in-100-year
rainfall and this caused massive landslides and
floods that killed hundreds of people.
After the floods in the city of Santa Fe,
Argentina, in 2003 and again in 2007, city
authorities recognized that for the last 50 years
there had been no urban land policy and that
people settled where and how they could,
prioritizing proximity to workplaces or social
networks.
Managua, Nicaragua, is located on a strip
of land where there are 18 active faults and a
chain of volcanoes. In this city of 1.4 million
The local nature of disaster risk
people, 79 per cent of the houses are of bad or
mediocre construction quality and 18 per cent
need complete renovation. About 45,000 families
live in 274 informal settlements, which lack
access to water, sanitation and electricity. It is
estimated that each year in Managua 3,000
homes are built without authorization and thus
with no oversight of the quality of construction.
During Hurricane Mitch in 1998, the cities
of Tegucigalpa and Comayaguela in Honduras
were seriously affected. Most damage was concentrated
around the four rivers that cross these
cities. Inadequate city infrastructure, especially
water, sanitation and drainage, lack of zoning
codes, the concentration of services and infrastructure
in only a few areas, lack of official prevention
and mitigation strategies, together with
an inappropriate management of river basins
contributed to the vulnerability of these areas.��
It is at the local level that disasters materialize: lives and livelihoods are lost, houses and
infrastructure damaged and destroyed, health and education compromised. This is also
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