Disaster Risk Management


The countries of Latin American and Caribbean are no strangers to the devastation brought on by floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, landslides, volcanic eruptions and drought. In the last ten years alone, natural hazards resulted deaths of more than 45,000 people, affected 40 million people and caused over $32 billion in damages.

The countries are gradually shifting from disaster response to a more proactive approach to disaster management. This is becoming evident also in the demand for IDB funding. Between 1996 and 2002, the Bank committed $3.2 billion to disaster related financing. The analysis of loan portfolio shows that some 41 percent of the project cost has been related to prevention and mitigation, 6 percent to emergency response through the Bank's Immediate Response Facility and 53 percent to rehabilitation and reconstruction.

The increase in the frequency of disasters and their associated damages in the region is part of a worldwide trend, which results from growing vulnerability and may reflect changing climate patterns. While global risks seem to be increasing, the overall level of assistance available for emergencies in the world has been shrinking since 1992. These trends make it all the more necessary for the region to break the cycle of destruction and reconstruction and address the root causes of vulnerability, rather than merely treating its symptoms when disasters happen.

A closer analysis of what transforms a natural event into a human and economic disaster reveals that the fundamental problems of development that the region faces are the very same problems that contribute to its vulnerability to the catastrophic effects of natural hazards. The principal causes of vulnerability in the region include rapid and uncontrolled urbanization, the persistence of widespread urban and rural poverty, the degradation of the region's environment resulting from the mismanagement of natural resources, inefficient public policies, and lagging and misguided investments in infrastructure. Development and disaster-related policies have largely focused on emergency response, leaving a serious underinvestment in natural hazard prevention and mitigation.

A proactive stance to reduce the toll of disasters in the region requires a more comprehensive approach that encompasses both pre-disaster risk reduction and post-disaster recovery. It is framed by new policies and institutional arrangements that support effective action. Such an approach involves the following set of activities:

The Inter-American Development Bank is calling for concerted actions to address the root causes of the region's vulnerability. Its new focus would place disaster prevention and mitigation at the forefront of the region's development agenda. Building on its mandate to promote sustainable development in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Bank will help countries integrate risk reduction in development planning and investments, as well as build a permanent technical and operational capacity to manage risk reduction more effectively in the future.