2009 Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction - PDF document

2009 Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction Risk and poverty in a changing climate Disaster risk drivers: the deadly trio – made deadlier by climate change Three major factors, individually and in combination, drive disaster risk and contribute to catastrophe, especially in impoverished communities. 2. Vulnerable livelihoods – a catalyst for poverty and disaster risk in rural areas Many rural people’s livelihoods still depend heavily on agriculture and other natural resources where access to the range of subsistence necessities, including land, labour, fertilizers, irrigation facilities, infrastructure and nancial services, is heavily constrained. Approximately 75% of the people living below the international poverty line of US$1.25 per day are found in rural areas – 268million in sub-Saharan Africa; 223million in East Asia and the Pacic and 394million in South Asia. Disaster losses affect huge numbers in poor rural areas. In sub-Saharan Africa, during the 2001–2003 drought, an estimated 206million people, or 32% of the population, were undernourished, only slightly less than the total number of rural poor in the region. Historical patterns of land distribution and tenure tend to discriminate against the impoverished, who may only have access to marginal and unproductive land, prone to ooding, or with erratic or minimal rainfall. Rural livelihoods that depend on agriculture and other natural resources are vulnerable to even slight variations in weather and are thus particularly sensitive to climate change, which may lead to even lower agricultural productivity; more widespread disease vectors may further diminish resilience. Inadequate infrastructure, including housing, schools and other public buildings, is too often a fact of rural life and is exacerbated by disaster: the collapse of heavy earth walls led to the destruction of 329,579 houses in the 2005 Kashmir earthquake, while the lack of protection offered by wattle and daub and thatch houses contributed to the deaths of 140,000 people in the 2008 cyclone in Myanmar. 1. Unplanned urban development – the gateway to poverty and deprivation By 2008, over half the world’s population was living in urban areas and on current projections, by 2010, some 73% of the global non-rural population and most of the largest cities will be in developing countries. The failure of many city governments in developing countries to ensure a supply of safe land for housing, infrastructure and services in line with population growth, or to create a planning and regulatory framework to manage the associated environmental and other risks has led to a profusion of shanty towns and slums, euphemistically designated ‘informal settlements’. Approximately one billion people worldwide live in such areas – a gure rising by an estimated 25 million every year. Poor people in urban informal settlements have higher levels of everyday risk. Cities in high-income countries typically have under-ve mortality rates of less than 10 per 1,000 live births. In contrast, many developing countries have far higher rates. In Nairobi, Kenya, for example, under- ve mortality rates were 61.5 per 1,000 live births for the city as a whole in 2002, but approximately 150 per 1,000 in informal settlements. Evidence from conurbations in Africa, Asia and Latin America shows that the inhabitants of informal settlements are also increasingly at risk from weather-related hazards. Urbanization per se tends to increase the intensity of run-off during storms leading to heavy ooding, often due to an underinvestment in building and maintaining drains. In fact, many oods are caused as much by decient or non-existent drainage, as by the intensity of rainfall itself. Invest today for a safer tomorrow 3. Ecosystem decline – harsh realities are already apparent Ecosystems and the services they provide – including energy, water and bre – are the very stuff of life: their preservation is essential for the survival of the planet. However, because they produce many ecosystem services simultaneously, an increase in the supply of one, such as food, can frequently lead to a reduction in others, for instance ood mitigation. Worryingly, the supply of approximately 60% (15 of 24) of the ecosystem services recently scrutinized by the Millennium Assessment was found to be deteriorating, while for over 80% consumption was on the rise. Put simply, the ow of most ecosystem services is increasing at the same time as the total available stock is falling. People have modied ecosystems to increase their outputs of certain services but these modications have catalysed unregulated behaviour – for example, deforestation for agricultural purposes and the destruction of mangroves to create shrimp ponds. While such changes in the distribution of ecosystem services benet specic economic interests, the costs are often borne by poor urban and rural households. In Peru for example, the opening of new roads down the eastern slopes of the Andes and into the central jungle in order to extend the agricultural frontier has led to a notable increase in the number of reported landslides in that region since the 1980s. Climate change: while the rich consume, the poor pay the price Exacerbating this deadly trio is the established and omni-present threat of climate change, impelled by greenhouse gas emissions generated by afuent societies and individuals, with the resulting burdens falling on developing countries and their poorest citizens. It is already well established that a surface temperature rise in the planet of 2°C from pre-industrial levels has the potential for catastrophic collapse in ecosystems with a disproportionate impact on the most impoverished. Adverse changes are already occurring in the amount, intensity, frequency and type of precipitation, leading to drought, oods and tropical storms. In ‘warmer’ years – as measured by sea surface temperature (SST) – there is a marked rise in the number of Category 3 and 4 (more intense) cyclones. Even a 1°C increase in SST is predicted to lead to a 31% annual rise in the global frequency of Category 4 and 5 cyclones. Signicantly, any escalation in the severity of cyclones will magnify the unevenness in the distribution of risk. For example, it is estimated that 1.9% of the GDP of Madagascar is threatened annually by Category 3 cyclones but only 0.09% of the GDP of Japan. If these cyclones were to increase to Category 4 storms, 3.2% of the GDP of Madagascar would be endangered but only 0.16% of the GDP of Japan.