How can we ensure that the actions we know are required to strengthen resilience are actually taken? This report addresses this question by setting out a vision of a resilient future in Asia and the Pacific and then working backwards to identify potential pathways to its achievement. It highlights the importance of coordinated action, and the links between progress across different areas. It notes that there are no fixed rules on appropriate sequencing, nor particular instruments and mechanisms that are necessarily better than others.
The long-term rate of growth in disaster losses in Asia and the Pacific is apparently outpacing growth in GDP, making the need for strengthened resilience ever more urgent. A wide range of policy, capacity, and investment tools have been developed to help meet the core needs of risk assessment, risk reduction, and residual risk management:
- Policy: Setting the legislative, regulatory, practice, and process parameters for managing risk, including definitions of acceptable risk
- Capacity: Enabling individuals, communities, civil society, businesses, governments, and the international community to act to meet those parameters with appropriate skills and knowledge
- Investment: Ensuring adequate financing, human resources, and commitment to implement policy and to apply capacity.
Their relevance and potential of particular tools will be determined by the context and needs of individual countries and communities and the way in which they are bundled with other instruments and mechanisms.
The report provides specific suggestions for strengthened disaster resilience in five areas: livelihoods, land use, transport, education, and housing. It also considers disaster risk financing, suggesting that governments must accept the primary responsibility to develop ex ante structures that deliver rewards today for investments that also produce future benefits:
- Governments can provide short-term tax credits to individuals and firms for insurance costs or tax incentives for other DRR initiatives
- Premium taxes on property insurance can be eliminated, thereby eliminating a disincentive to investment in resilience
- Risk pools formed among local governments can bring forward benefits by demonstrating a tangible benefit to the regional economy—even though the disaster might have occurred in a single locality.
The report then identifies eight general ‘next steps’ toward strengthened disaster resilience, covering:
- Policy change: Governments can review disaster risk management laws and regulations to ensure clarity regarding the precise roles and responsibilities of households, communities, the private sector, governments, and the international community in strengthening resilience.
- Risk assessment: Governments can ensure that some form of disaster risk assessment is undertaken for all new investments in their countries.
- Financing: Governments can develop and implement comprehensive disaster risk financing strategies, provide for a range of disaster risk financing instruments, and – in cooperation with the international community – can establish public programs of financial support for community and local investment in risk assessment, risk reduction, and residual risk management.
- Private Sector Engagement: Governments, with the international community, can strengthen private sector understanding and appreciation of the commercial opportunities in strengthening resilience.
