The adjective “UnNatural” in the title of this report conveys its key message: earthquakes, droughts, floods, and storms are natural hazards, but the unnatural disasters are deaths and damages that result from human acts of omission and commission. Every disaster is unique, but each exposes actions—by individuals and governments at different levels—that, had they been different, would have resulted in fewer deaths and less damage.
Prevention is possible, and this report examines what it takes to do this cost-effectively. The report looks at disasters primarily through an economic lens. Economists emphasize self-interest to explain how people choose the amount of prevention, insurance, and coping. But lenses can distort as well as sharpen images, so the report also draws from other disciplines: psychology to examine how people may misperceive risks, political science to understand voting patterns, and nutrition science. The report shows that growing cities will increase exposure to hazards, but that vulnerability will not rise if cities are better managed. The intensities and frequencies of hazards in the coming decades will change with the climate, and the report examines this complicated and contentious subject, acknowledging all the limitations of data and science.
Four main findings:
- First, a disaster exposes the cumulative implications of many earlier decisions, some taken individually, others collectively, and a few by default. A deeper questioning of what happened, and why, could prevent a repetition of disasters. Several factors usually contribute to any disaster, some less obvious than others. Symptoms are easily mistaken for cause: denuded hillsides may result from desperately poor people depleting the vegetation to survive or from logging concessions that encourage tree cutting but not planting. Effective prevention measures are therefore not always “obvious.”
- Second, prevention is often possible and cost-effective Studies for the report examined the costs and benefits of specific prevention measures that homeowners could take in hazard-prone areas of four low- and middle income countries. Prevention pays for assumed (but reasonable) costs and discount rates. Other prevention measures are embedded in infrastructure (such as adequate drainage ditches).
- Third, many measures—private and public—must work well together for effective prevention. That many measures do not work well together in poor countries explains why they have more disasters. The poor may know the hazard risks they face but depend more on public services that are often inadequate. They live near work on cheaper land exposed to hazards if buses are unreliable, while the rich with cars have better alternatives. The poor would willingly move to safer locations if their incomes rose or if public transport became more reliable. Many governments in poor countries struggle to provide such services, and until they do, the poor will remain vulnerable.
- Fourth, the exposure to hazards will rise in cities, but greater exposure need not increase vulnerability. Large cities exposed to cyclones and earthquakes will more than double their population by 2050. The increase will differ by country and region. Vulnerability need not increase with exposure if cities are well managed, but the projected increase in exposure underscores the enormous task ahead. Urban growth is not the only concern. Climate change has received much attention, and there are urgent calls for immediate action because the effects of climate change are cumulative and felt much later.
Four policy implications (plus one for donors):
- First, governments can and should make information more easily accessible. People are often guided in their prevention decisions by information on hazards, yet the seemingly simple act of collecting and providing information is sometimes a struggle. While some countries attempt to collect and archive their hazard data, efforts are generally inconsistent or insufficient.
- Second, governments should permit land and housing markets to work, supplementing them with targeted interventions when necessary. When land and housing markets work, property values reflect hazard risks, guiding people’s decisions on where to live and what prevention measures to take. But markets, when smothered, dampen the incentives for prevention, such as when property owners neglect maintenance for decades, so buildings crumble in heavy rains.
- Third, governments must provide adequate infrastructure and other public services, and multipurpose infrastructure holds promise. Much prevention is embedded in infrastructure, but effectiveness depends on quality. Infrastructure needs maintenance: fixing potholes in the road before the winter or the rains; painting steel bridges before they weaken through corrosion; inspecting and fixing cracks in concrete bridges. All engineers know this, but they do not always obtain budget appropriations.
- Fourth, good institutions must develop to permit public oversight. Good institutions both reflect and create prosperity, and one robust finding of this report is that countries with well-performing institutions are better able to prevent disasters, including reducing the likelihood of disaster-related conflict. But institutions transcend specific entities. Parliaments, media, business associations, and the like function differently across countries—even if they have similar legal authority and responsibilities.
- And fifth, donors have a role in prevention as well. The report’s overarching theme is that not enough is being done on prevention. Donors usually respond to disasters after they strike: about a fifth of total humanitarian aid between 2000 and 2008 was devoted to spending on disaster relief and response. Prevention activities often imply long-term development expenditures whereas the focus of humanitarian aid—already a tiny part of official development aid—is immediate relief and response. Donors concerned with prevention could earmark official development aid (rather than humanitarian aid) for prevention-related activities. And such aid, if used effectively, could reduce issues arising from the Samaritan’s dilemma: the inability to deny help following a disaster to those who have not taken sufficient prevention measures.
