Economics DisciplineKhulna University – 9208, Bangladesh

Md. Firoz AhmedAssistant Professor

E-mail: firozecon@gmail.com

Course Code: MDS 5305Course Title: Climate Change and Disaster Management

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Disaster risk, climate change and international development: scope for, and

challenges to, integration

--- Lisa Schipper and Mark PellingDisasters, 2006, 30(1): 19−38.

 

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Climate change and natural hazards play significant roles, just as the state of development influences their ramifications for society and the environment.

This paper compares the policy agendas on climate change and disaster risk.

Climate change is contributing to raising disaster risk, measures to mitigate the risk need to focus on reducing vulnerability in the context of development efforts.

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The main technical discrepancies between adapting to climate change and disaster preparedness are:

• Climate change policy deals exclusively with climate-related hazards and their impacts;

• The time frames for reactive adaptations to climate change and disasters are distinct— disaster impacts are relatively immediate and concentrated, whereas the consequences of climate change may evolve, along with social change, over a longer time scale; and

• Disaster risk reduction has to date focused on the local and national scales— root causes of human vulnerability emanating from the global political economy have not been adequately analyzed—while climate change policy has so far prioritized mitigation, which has been predominately global in scope.

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Lack of scaled integration has produced particular challenges, including the use of mitigation in disasters policy to indicate work seeking to contain local hazards (slope stabilization or river embankments, for example) and in climate change policy to describe efforts to change human behavior underpinning anthropocentric climate change at the global scale.

Disaster risk reduction is largely a task for local actors, though with support from national and international organizations, particularly in humanitarian action.

Meanwhile, climate change policy is driven by the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)—an interational agreement ratified by 189 countries that sets out a global policy framework for climate change mitigation and adaptation with principal actors at the national level.

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There is relationships between disaster risk management, global and national climate change agendas and national development policy.

Successful mitigation of anthropogenic climate change can decrease disaster risk directly -– by reducing weather-related uncertainty and hazard, and – by diminishing the threat of asset depletion among vulnerable

natural resource dependent societies;

Indirect influence comes from the impacts of climate change on – national development and, – consequently, the asset base available for building resilience

and coping with disasters

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Disaster risk management and developmentDisasters and development 

The unequal burden of disaster mortality on low-development countries has recently been demonstrated.

For example, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) calculates that while only 11% of those people exposed to droughts, earthquakes, floods and windstorms live in low-development countries, they account for 53% of the people who lose their lives (UNDP, 2004). 

Direct economic, physical and human disaster losses constitute the mainstay of disaster impact assessments, yet they only incorporate a fraction of total loss.

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• Ppurely economic standpoint, direct losses can be overshadowed by indirect impacts, a result of lost production time or market share, and secondary losses, which are felt by the regional or national economy, such as increased indebtedness or inflation.

• In 1998 flooding in Bangladesh, for instance, the government borrowed USD 309 million (Pelling, Özerdem and Barakat, 2002).  

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Disasters and the Millennium Development Goals • MDG1 - demands the eradication of extreme

poverty and hunger. It is undermined by the direct impact of disasters on livelihood sustainability and the indirect impacts on macroeconomic growth and social support.

• MDG2 - calls for universal primary education. Not only do disasters damage educational infrastructure and result in population displacement and the occupation of schools due to a lack of other temporary shelter, but they can also lead to an increased need for children to work and a reduction in household assets, making schooling more expensive.

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• MDG3 - promotes the empowerment of women. During disasters, though, it is often women and girls who primarily have to withstand greater workloads or decreased entitlements to food within the household.

• MDG4 - seeks to reduce child mortality. Not only are children vulnerable to injury due to hazards, such as flooding, temperature stress and food insecurity connected to drought, but undeveloped immune systems make children (and the elderly) the most susceptible to post-disaster disease. Furthermore, disasters put children at risk in societies already experiencing extreme poverty, armed conflict and/or the spread of chronic diseases like the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

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• MDG5 - aims to improve maternal health. Disasters that damage health infrastructure and erode household assets or produce shocks and stresses that impact on pregnant women prevent this goal from being met.

• MDG6 - seeks to combat chronic diseases like HIV, malaria and tuberculosis. Cases of diseases related to environmental quality, such as malaria and tuberculosis, may increase in places prone to weather-related hazards. The risk of disease and diseaserelated mortality will be higher among people whose health or livelihood have already been weakened by disaster. Disaster and health risks can create vicious cycles of harm, as the individual, household and public coping capacity is eroded by repeated stresses and shocks.

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• MDG7 - aspires to ensure environmental sustainability. The consequences of weather related disaster can be devastating for aquatic and land-based ecosystems. Urban infrastructure can reduce disaster risk, but in many cities where drainage, drinking water, sanitation and solid waste management are inadequate, they compound risk, while being further eroded by floods and storms.

• MDG8 - calls for a global partnership for development. Among others, it identifies small island developing states (SIDS) as a special case. The future of many SIDS is threatened by sea-level rise and increased storminess associated with global climate change.

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Challenges to integrating disaster risk reduction into development planning

 • Disaster risk management most regularly refers to

both disaster risk reduction (prevention, preparedness and mitigation) and humanitarian and development action (emergency response, relief and reconstruction).

• The low visibility of disaster risk reduction work in comparison to emergency relief has made it unattractive for governments chasing votes and international recognition and for nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) dependent on disasters for funding.

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• Development specialists confront challenges in carrying out effective disaster risk reduction on the ground because their attention is inevitably focused on more immediate needs.

• Another assumption about disaster risk reduction is that it is already incorporated into pro-poor development.

• Finally, too many development actors believe that, by definition, disasters are beyond human control, a perspective resulting in powerlessness (Cannon, 1994).

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Climate change and developmentClimate change is frequently cited as one of the most

serious environmental problems confronting human development.

Four main issues characterize the relationship between climate change and development:

• the role of industrialization in causing climate change and the differential responsibility of developed and developing countries;

• the inequitable impact of climate change on developing countries;

• the significant role of development issues in influencing climate change policy and political negotiations; and

• the way in which climate change interacts with other forces affecting development, such as globalization.

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• Anthropogenic climate change is a consequence of industrialization.

• According to the ‘polluter pays principle’, the developed courtries should either take action to reduce its own emissions, or provide the financing necessary to achieve this.

• Conflict between developed and developing countries over the right to develop is therefore a standard element of climate negotiations under the UNFCCC. 

• Impacts of CC penetrate all aspects of environment, society and economy, other global trends influencing development will reinforce the adverse effects of climate change.

• A supportive institutional and policy environment at the state and international level can enable local adaptation. 

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Linking climate change and disaster risk

Climate change affects disaster risk in two ways:

Short-term climate variability and its extremes influence the range and frequency of shocks that society absorbs or adjusts to,

Whereas longer-term variability can lead to changes in the productive base of society, particularly in natural resource dependent economies.

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International policy processesThe United Nations Framework Convention on

Climate Change (UNFCCC)

• The UNFCCC sets out basic principles, commitments and institutional and procedural mechanisms for its implementation.

• UNFCCC states parties adopted the Kyoto Protocol to enforce reductions of greenhouse gas emissions— developed countries are to attain a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of at least five percent of combined emissions levels during 1990 in the period between 2008 and 2012.

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International disaster reduction policyThe international agenda on disaster reduction has

emerged from concern about the rising economic and human costs of disasters and their association with inappropriate development.

Current policy frameworks were shaped during the UN’s International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR) (1990–99), which was prompted by mounting human casualties and property damage.

IDNDR objectives - to reduce through concerted international action, especially in developing countries, the loss of life, property damage and social and economic disruption caused by natural disasters.

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Policy processes and alternative approaches • Under the UNFCCC, disasters are only mentioned in

relation to consideration of countries that are the most vulnerable to climate change—these include nations with disaster-prone areas.

• Many vulnerable countries have disaster management offices, focal points or ministers. These individuals often do not see climate change as an important topic requiring their consideration.