Here's how to prepare for disasters, not just react to them

Disasters triggered by natural hazards were once seen as inevitable.

However, we now increasingly understand them as preventable or potentially much less harmful. Incorporating disaster risk management, particularly disaster risk reduction, into development programs can mitigate the impacts of these damaging events.

Disasters tied to development

Disasters are not natural. They are closely tied to development activities. They are the undesired outcomes of poorly planned development policies, decisions and practices. 

Financial and infrastructure losses related to disasters triggered by natural hazards have grown substantially in many countries.

Disasters can severely threaten efforts to eliminate poverty and those who have recently climbed out of poverty can easily find themselves destitute once again after a calamity. 

Poorer people often live in more disaster-prone areas, with inadequate infrastructure and weak coping capacity, both financially and technically. They are therefore highly vulnerable to the impact of disasters. 

Such vulnerability is even more pronounced for medium-sized and small businesses, especially micro-enterprises, which are often unable to pay their debts when their assets are destroyed.

Interrupting reactive responses

Historically, disasters were considered unpreventable natural events and the approach to disaster management has been predominantly reactive, focusing on managing the impact through immediate relief and recovery assistance. 

This traditional disaster management tends to be passive, costly, insufficient and inefficient, failing to address the root causes of disasters.

Considerable research has revealed that relying solely on post-disaster response consumes substantial human and financial resources, often in repetitive cycles of recovery and loss. 

The fact is the cost and needs of disaster responses cannot be met in a growing number of countries, where the impact of earthquakes and floods that occurred years ago are still visible today. 

Taking a proactive stance

In contrast to traditional disaster management, disaster risk reduction adopts a proactive stance.

Disaster risk management begins with disaster risk reduction, which aims to prevent or mitigate the impacts of disasters before they occur and should be fully integrated into the development process, according to the Asian Development Bank's (ADB) 2021 Revised Disaster and Emergency Assistance Policy.

Effective disaster risk reduction strategies encompass a variety of interventions, including hazard mitigation, exposure control, and vulnerability reduction.

These strategies are implemented through structural measures — such as flood defences and earthquake-resistant buildings — and non-structural measures, including comprehensive land-use planning and stringent building codes. 

When disaster risk reduction strategies are no longer cost-efficient, disaster risk management seeks alternative solutions that focus on preparedness and response to manage residual risks.

That's where disaster risk financing instruments can come into play to transfer extreme and unabsorbable disaster risks to the insurance industry or capital markets.

Social protection network

Additionally, a robust social protection network is critical to ensure that support is promptly delivered to affected individuals and businesses.

An asset registry system helps guide the distribution of post-disaster support, along with multi-level coordination among different stakeholders and responders. This helps verify disaster impacts and reduces errors in targeting those most needy during post-disaster relief efforts.

Disaster risk management requires a proactive, integrated approach that prioritises preventive measures and builds resilience to mitigate the impacts of natural hazards on development and vulnerable populations.

Allocating resources efficiently

Development decisions should be made carefully, sufficiently exploring and considering major risks due to natural hazards.

Failure to consider the full range of disaster risk management measures often leads to inefficient allocation of resources, overlooked synergies, and the introduction of new threats to that very same development process. 

Decision makers need to adopt a cost-effective approach to consider the full range of disaster risk management measures within a limited budget, prioritising those that can yield high direct benefits (loss reduction) as well as co-benefits such as economic development and improvements in environmental, social, and governance aspects. 

Deliberations on disaster risk management measures should not be driven solely by reducing asset losses, as this is unfair to the poor, who possess fewer assets. 

Instead, decision-making on disaster risk management measures should prioritise reducing harm to welfare, taking into account the impact of disasters on public and household consumption. 

Making responses inclusive

Vulnerable groups, including the poor, elderly, children, disabled individuals, and women, face disproportionate challenges before, during and after disasters.

Therefore, disaster risk management measures must be inclusive, starting with comprehensive disaster risk identification and assessment—a step often overlooked due to the lack of proper indicators and data. 

Failing to protect these groups can lead to imbalanced development, social instability, and the erosion of efforts towards poverty eradication and sustainable development.

Disaster risk management aims to build resilience to natural hazards and prevent disasters. Resilience is gauged by the ability to reduce immediate losses and recover swiftly.

With disaster risk reduction fully implemented in the development process, after a period of recovery and reconstruction, society will fully return to pre-disaster conditions or even better. 

Due to long-practiced risk-insensitive development, the generation of increased disaster risks is threatening sustainable development goals by 2030. 

Each society faces different challenges due to geographic and economic differences and the impacts of climate change. 

A full range of disaster risk management measures needs to be available to reduce disaster losses and generate development benefits in a cost-effective way.

Implementation of an integrated approach for cost-effective disaster risk management requires coherent policy and regulations, vigorous information exchange, and adequate financial and human resources, which remains limited and far from becoming the mainstream of development processes.  

The coordination of agencies

A particularly daunting challenge is achieving well-coordinated action among agencies in charge of disaster emergency management and the various development sectors.

To achieve sustainable development, it is paramount to build strong competencies and capacities in disaster risk management among various actors. 

Lastly, as disasters often transcend geographic and political boundaries, regional collaboration allows countries and regions to leverage shared resources, knowledge, and strategies, addressing common risks and challenges. 

By working together, countries and organisations can leverage each other's strengths and avoid duplicating efforts, while sharing the costs of developing and implementing resilience-building initiatives. 

This article first appeared on the Asian Development Bank blog and is reproduced here with permission.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Asian Development Bank, its management, its Board of Directors, or its members.