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Unbreakable: Building the Resilience of the Poor in the Face of Natural Disasters
Abstract
"Economic losses from natural disasters totaled 1 in losses does not mean the same thing to a rich person that it does to a poor person; the gravity of a $92 billion loss depends on who experiences it. By focusing on aggregate losses—the traditional approach to disaster risk—we restrict our consideration to how disasters affect those wealthy
enough to have assets to lose in the first place, and largely ignore the plight of poor people.
This report moves beyond asset and production losses and shifts its attention to how natural disasters affect people’s well-being. Disasters are far greater threats to well-being than traditional estimates suggest. This approach provides a more nuanced view of natural disasters than usual reporting, and a perspective that
takes fuller account of poor people’s vulnerabilities. Poor people suffer only a fraction of economic losses caused by disasters, but they bear the brunt of their consequences.
Understanding the disproportionate vulnerability of poor people also makes the case for setting new intervention priorities to lessen the impact of natural disasters on the world’s poor, such as expanding financial inclusion, disaster risk and health insurance, social protection and adaptive safety nets, contingent finance and
reserve funds, and universal access to early warning systems.
Efforts to reduce disaster risk and poverty go hand in hand. Because disasters impoverish so many, disaster risk management is inseparable from poverty reduction policy, and vice versa. As climate change magnifies natural hazards, and because protection infrastructure alone cannot eliminate risk, a more resilient population has never been more critical to breaking the cycle of disaster-induced poverty.
... Asia in particular bears a disproportionate burden, accounting for over 40% of flood disasters worldwide and over 90% of floodrelated deaths (Guha-Sapir et al 2004). As climate change intensifies, the economic losses associated with these events continue to rise, driven by the growing value of assets exposed to risk and the disproportionate impact on vulnerable populations and businesses (Kousky 2014, Hallegatte et al 2016, Hsiang 2016, Botzen et al 2019. Understanding the long-term effects of these disasters on industrial capital and labor is crucial for developing effective adaptation, mitigation, and resilience strategies ...
... The economic impacts of natural disasters, particularly floods, have received increasing attention as climate change intensifies their frequency and severity (Kousky 2014, Hsiang 2016, Botzen et al 2019. These events cause immediate destruction of physical capital and infrastructure, with impacts distributed unequally across rich and poor economies (Grames et al 2016, Hallegatte et al 2016. ...
... Vertical bars represent 95% confidence intervals, with additional markers at 80% and 90% levels. All specifications include firm and year fixed effects, facility level clustering, and the full set of controls described in table 2. on natural disasters (Pelli et al 2023), the longerlasting flood impacts likely reflect higher reconstruction costs and prolonged interruptions (Hallegatte et al 2016). ...
This study quantifies the dynamic impacts of floods on industrial capital and labor in India using a novel dataset combining geocoded flood events with firm facility-level data from 2000 to 2021. Employing a stacked difference-in-differences approach with carefully matched controls, we uncover persistent negative effects of floods on firms’ assets and employment, with striking heterogeneity across sectors and regions. In the post-flood period, we estimate declines from mean values in total assets of 46.1% (16.68 billion INR ≈ 225 million USD), employment of 49.0% (8.20 thousand workers), and the wage bill of 74.5% (5.52 billion INR ≈ 74 million USD). The sectoral impacts are highly varied: the information technology and communication, manufacturing, and utilities sectors experience significant declines in assets, while the financial services sector exhibits growth. Mapping the spatial distribution of flood events and industrial facilities reveals pronounced regional heterogeneity in flood exposure and economic impacts. Adding nuance to the empirical investigation of the ‘creative destruction’ hypothesis, we find limited evidence of systematic capital reallocation toward better-performing sectors, suggesting instead that floods generate sector-specific impacts with varying recovery patterns. These findings challenge assumptions of rapid post-disaster equilibration and have important implications for policymakers and firm managers in developing sector-specific strategies to mitigate the adverse impacts of floods in an increasingly climate-uncertain world.
... Tracking global progress on this goal demands an indicator that can be measured consistently across countries and over time. Existing approaches to measure climate risk or vulnerability typically model aggregate economic losses or combine country level metrics in an index 5,6,7,8,9,10 . Instead, we use a people-centric and threshold-based approach: we count people at high risk and produce a population headcount indicator similar to what is used to monitor global poverty 11 . ...
... While Fathom provides a defended option for fluvial flooding, it uses GDP as a proxy to set defense standards rather than the actual presence of flood defense structure. There is evidence that many low and middle-income countries do not have effective flood protection systems 6,18,60 . The Fathom data have global coverage between 56°S and 60°N. ...
Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. When these events occur, they threaten lives and livelihoods. Here we estimate the global population at high risk from climate-related hazards by examining household level vulnerability and local exposure to four types of events: agricultural droughts in rural areas, floods, heatwaves, and cyclones. Under current climate conditions, 4.5 billion people are expected to experience these hazards at intensities exceeding critical thresholds within their lifetime. One third of this population is considered highly vulnerable, based on seven dimensions that influence potential welfare impacts: income, education, access to finance, social protection, drinking water, electricity, and access to services and markets. Overall, we estimate that 1 in 5 people globally are at high risk from these hazards meaning that they are likely to experience them and would struggle to recover from their impacts. While the proportion of the population at high risk has nearly halved since 2010 due to decreased vulnerability, the number of people exposed has increased, and progress has been uneven across regions. This study offers a new global population headcount indicator based on household survey and high-resolution spatial data that will be used to track climate risks across countries and over time.
... This escalation is attributed to the synergistic effects of climate change, a burgeoning global population, and rapid urban development (Reichstein, Riede, and Frank 2021;Mehrabi et al. 2022). Extreme climate disasters have become a constant risk, causing direct asset losses averaging over $300 billion annually (Hallegatte et al. 2016;Smiley et al. 2022). The most significant proportion of natural disasters consists of floods caused by extreme rainstorms, resulting in substantial economic losses and severe socioeconomic development impacts (Hino and Nance 2021;Rentschler, Salhab, and Jafino 2022). ...
Understanding human mobility’s resilience during extreme rainfall is paramount for enhancing disaster response and urban resilience. Most studies, however, have overlooked the complexity of resilience patterns across scales, missing out on the varied spatial anomalies and their underlying causes. To bridge this gap, we propose a framework using massive individual trajectory data to dissect resilience patterns of human mobility across scales. By leveraging a dynamic network model, we quantify human mobility flows and employ resilience curves to determine resilience patterns at urban-agglomeration and regional scales. Our study, centering on the extreme rainfall from Typhoon Mawar, covers Osaka and Nagoya in Japan. The findings reveal a marked reduction in human movement, although the structure of mobility networks remains relatively unchanged. Based on the quadrant distribution of inflows and outflows, we reveal that the ratio of abnormal to normal resilience patterns in human mobility stands at approximately 3:2, a consistency maintained across both scales. Interestingly, abnormal resilience patterns are intricately linked to local geographical settings of the built environment, revealing disparities based on income, gender, and age. These insights are invaluable for policymakers to improve postdisaster recovery efforts and guide future urban infrastructure development toward greater resilience.
... Climate change and its associated impacts, particularly sea-level rise (SLR), pose significant global challenges, with natural disasters potentially causing annual direct asset losses of $300 billion, escalating to $520 billion when considering impacts on human well-being (Hallegatte et al., 2017). Floods, which inflict severe damage, are especially devastating in lower-income nations with underdeveloped infrastructure. ...
This paper evaluates the flood mitigation strategies employed by the Egyptian government to increase resilience to flooding. Existing literature in the field of disaster risk management highlighted the urge to shift the focus from response and recovery to mitigation. It is argued that in order for this shift to occur, it is necessary to integrate disaster management, community awareness and preparedness. Current practices in developing countries seldom reflect such a synthesis, and this is one of the reasons why hazard awareness is absent from local decisionmaking processes. Policy reviews and community initiatives are traced to explore the effectiveness of Egyptian’s system in reducing the impacts of flooding on vulnerable populations and its potential to increase the resilience of communities to future floods. Therefore, it highlights the government's challenges in implementing these strategies. We argue that realising the available resources and tools for flood mitigation strategies in developing countries requires different measures and procedures due to the magnitude of challenges facing the government, therefore, community resilience is one of the key factors in this process. Accordingly, this paper provides recommendations for further research and policy development.
... Global climate change is exacerbating extreme weather events, leading to catastrophic natural disasters that detrimentally affect ecosystems and human societies (Hallegatte et al., 2017;Magnan et al., 2021). Among various extreme disasters, floods result in huge losses owing to their vast affecting areas and high frequency, amounting to over $650 billion annually (Tellman et al., 2021;United Nations for Disarmament Affairs, 2020). ...
Compound flood‐heatwave extremes (CFHWs) have threatened the sustainable development of human society and ecosystems. However, the disproportionate risks in regions with different economic development under a warming climate have not been quantified. This study carries out a global investigation on the future CFHWs under three scenarios based on 11 models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6). Results reveal a 7.5‐fold increase in global annual CFHW days by 2100 under the intermediate greenhouse‐gas‐emission scenario SSP2‐4.5 compared to that in 1980. Under SSP2‐4.5, population exposure in low‐income countries in the late future (2071–2090) will be about 9‐fold higher than in high‐income countries compared to baseline period (1995–2014). Moreover, exposure of the poor groups living on less than $6.85/day will increase by nearly 28.1‐fold. Eastern Africa and South Asia are identified as particularly high‐risk regions, where large populations living in poverty face rapidly increasing CFHWs. These findings indicate that climate inequality will become more pronounced if climate warming continues without immediate effective measures. Our study also underscores the urgent need for mitigation and adaptation strategies against the future increasing CFHWs, especially for the vast low‐income and high‐risk regions.
... However, despite the obvious value of integrating IK with contemporary science-dominated DRRM interventions at all levels, its use remains peripheral in many countries throughout the world (Shaw et al., 2008). Lodhi and Mikulecky (2010) contend that failure to retain traditional knowledge exacerbates most communities' vulnerability to disasters and makes it harder for the community to recover and bounce back to normality (Hallegatte et al., 2016) or even to bounce forward (Manyena et al., 2011;Walsh, 2002). Scott et al. (2013) share similar views and state that the imposition of Western models in societies that have lived, adapted to and coped with hazards for millennia can result in the loss of IK, which may contribute to an increase in vulnerability of Indigenous communities. ...
Purpose
For millennia, indigenous or local knowledge (IK) has empowered rural communities particularly the most vulnerable and disadvantaged groups to prepare for, cope with and survive disasters instead of relying on external help only. However, this knowledge has been ignored by practitioners and policymakers in favour of Western science and technology-based methods of disaster risk reduction (DRR) and response. This paper proposes a framework for integrating IK into DRR because we believe the simultaneous use of IK and modern DRR measures could increase the resilience of rural communities.
Design/methodology/approach
The study finds solace in the pragmatism research philosophy which places emphasis on practical solutions and outcomes. The study followed a phenomenological approach of qualitative research with a total of 109 respondents participating in the study. The collected data were analysed thematically.
Findings
Participants in the study provided key insights into areas of interventions for improved integration of IK into DRR and these include, trust-building initiatives, recording and systematise traditional practices, developing localised, context-specific approaches to DRR planning and engaging traditional leaders, and increasing their participation in decision-making forums. We submit that the blending of modern and traditional techniques has the potential to create robust, adaptive systems for disaster preparedness, response and recovery, leading to safer and more resilient communities.
Originality/value
Pursuing an integrated approach to the use of IK and modern expert knowledge on DRR would be a step forward in addressing the fragmentation of the two knowledge systems.
... Knox et al. (2012) noted that climate change would decrease the yields of the main cereals such as wheat, maize, and sorghum by 15-17% during the 2000s in Africa. Hallegatte et al. (2017) projected that without an urgent action; the impacts of climate change could push an additional 100 million people into poverty by 2030 in Sub-Sahara and Asia. ...
... Extreme precipitation can lead to significant human and property losses, especially in countries ill-equipped to manage such risks (de Bruijn et al., 2019;De Silva et al., 2018;Hallegatte et al., 2016;Rentschler et al., 2022;Tanoue et al., 2016). For instance, the recent Storm Daniel disaster in Libya killed nearly 4,000 people, with 9,000 unaccounted for, dealing a severe blow to a country that has been entrenched in political crisis (https:// www.emro.who.int/lby/floods/index.html). ...
Extreme precipitation can lead to major flooding, impacting human health and safety. Thus, reliable projections of population and GDP exposure to future extreme precipitation are imperative. Here, we quantify future precipitation characteristics from robust emergent constraint relationships between historical and future monthly precipitation extremes (99th percentile) across 19 CMIP6 models (r² > 0.7 in 74–84% of 0.5° global land grids), and narrow uncertainty by 37.0–39.5% (absolute reduction being 0.753–0.774 mm/day). The constrained grid‐averaged future 99th percentile extreme is 6.96 ± 0.0059, 7.03 ± 0.0061, 7.11 ± 0.0063, and 7.29 ± 0.0067 mm/day, under SSP126, SSP245, SSP370, and SSP585, respectively, which exceeds historical extremes substantially in terms of intensity (12.9–19.7%) and frequency (1.6–2.3 times more). Future population and GDP exposed to 99th percentile extreme precipitation grow quickly, and are projected to exceed 1 million people in 27–40 countries and 10 billion USD (2005 Purchasing‐Power Parity) in 48–77 countries. Growth of future population exposure is dominated by an increase in extreme precipitation frequency rather than a rise in population, especially in developed countries. GDP exposure is controlled by the coupled effects of rapid socio‐economic development and significant shifts in precipitation frequency. Using indices of socio‐economic vulnerability, government effectiveness and economic freedom, we identify the unequal situation that high‐risk countries with high exposure are commonly characterized by low GDP per capita and high sociopolitical instability.
... Knox et al. (2012) noted that climate change would decrease the yields of the main cereals such as wheat, maize, and sorghum by 15-17% during the 2000s in Africa. Hallegatte et al. (2017) projected that without an urgent action; the impacts of climate change could push an additional 100 million people into poverty by 2030 in Sub-Sahara and Asia. ...
Scientifics evidences have highlighted the significant adverse impacts of climate change on agriculture sector. These impacts affect food production leading to food and nutrition insecurity, rural poverty and migration. Many development Institutions support developing countries in implementing various climate-smart agriculture (CSA) to cope with the adverse impacts of climate change. This study examined the returns of the most promoted and implemented CSA practices. Secondary data were used from various database for systematic review. The findings showed that most of CSA practices were implemented in order to improve crop yield and farming system's adaptive capacity, while reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The findings showed that most promoted CSA practices present several benefits such as ecosystem services optimization, income generation, agricultural cost effective and reduction of the use of chemical fertilizers, job creation, and strengthening social cohesion. Therefore, significantly contribute to the improvement of food security, poverty and rural migration reducing as well as decrease of social conflicts in rural areas. Consequently, the development Institution and policymakers should consider such practices in their agenda as key tool for livelihood resilience, poverty alleviation and rural youth migration. Résumé Des évidences scientifiques ont montré l'impacts du changement climatique sur l'agriculture. Ces impacts sur le secteur agricole sont les principales causes de la baisse de la production P a g e | 102 Actes du colloque scientifique international, REUNIR, 2024. alimentaire entraînant une insécurité alimentaire et nutritionnelle, la pauvreté et la migration des bras valides. De nombreuses institutions de développement soutiennent les pays en développement dans la mise en oeuvre de diverses pratiques d'agriculture climato-intelligente (ACI) pour faire face aux impacts négatifs du climat. Cette étude examine les retombés de ces pratiques les plus promues et mises en oeuvre. L'étude s'est basée sur la revue systématique des données secondaires. Les résultats montraient que la plupart des pratiques ACI visait à améliorer le rendement des cultures, la capacité adaptive des systèmes agricoles et à réduire les émissions de gaz à effet de serre. Ces pratiques présentent également plusieurs avantages tels que l'optimisation des services écosystémiques, la génération du revenu, la réduction du coût de travail agricole et l'utilisation d'engrais chimiques, la création de l'emploi vert, le renforcement de la cohésion sociale. Ce qui permet d'améliorer significativement la sécurité alimentaire des agricultures, la réduction de la pauvreté et l'exode rural ainsi que les conflits sociaux. Par conséquent, les institutions de développement et les décideurs politiques ayant ces objectifs, devraient considérer ces pratiques comme des outils clés dans les politiques et programmes en matière de la résilience des moyens de subsistance, la réduction de la pauvreté ainsi que lutte contre l'immigration au Sahel.
The World Bank lists flooding as one of the main pressures on a community. Flooding can affect development prospects and potentially reverse decades of progress in the alleviation of poverty and in development. Flooding-related information usually involves many stakeholders, objects, and significant details. We examined linkage between the density of 506 flood management keywords from documents found via Google Search and 32 macroenvironment indicators for 76 countries, developing 506 neural networks models. These models show that flood management keywords are interconnected with the environmental, social, economic, political, and cultural dimensions of the examined countries. The models demonstrate that improvements in a country’s sustainability and performance metrics are followed by an increase in flood keyword use. Microsoft Azure AI and ChatGPT were used to generate abstractive summaries for the 100 most dense and statistically significant flood management keywords and 28 macroenvironment indicators for the individual countries included in our analysis, and for the world. We reduced the number of flood keywords density variables from 506 to 100 by selecting only the most relevant ones in order to generate abstractive summaries. Our Web of Science Sentiment Analysis Articles Model and Map of the World demonstrates that nations with an unfavorable macroenvironment published disproportionately fewer papers on sentiment analysis. This research benefits stakeholders by providing comprehensive and holistic information and data analysis, focusing on evidence-based flooding information.
Supplementary Information
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1038/s41598-024-81562-0.
The welfare impact of a natural disaster depends on its effect on consumption, not only on the direct asset losses and human losses that are usually estimated and reported after disasters. This chapter proposes a framework to assess disaster-related consumption losses, starting from an estimate of the asset losses, and leading to the following findings. First, output losses after a disaster destroys part of the capital stock are better estimated by using the average—not the marginal—productivity of capital. A model that describes capital in the economy as a single homogeneous stock would systematically underestimate disaster output losses, compared with a model that tracks capital in different sectors with limited reallocation options. Second, the net present value of disaster-caused consumption losses decreases when reconstruction is accelerated. With standard parameters, discounted consumption losses are only 10% larger than asset losses if reconstruction is completed in 1 year, compared with 50% if reconstruction takes 10 years. Third, for disasters of similar magnitude, consumption losses are expected to be lower where the productivity of capital is higher, such as in capital-scarce developing countries. This mechanism may partly compensate for the many other factors that make poor countries and poor people more vulnerable to disasters.
With projected changes in climate, population and socioeconomic activity located in flood-prone areas, the global assessment of flood risk is essential to inform climate change policy and disaster risk management. Whilst global flood risk models exist for this purpose, the accuracy of their results is greatly limited by the lack of information on the current standard of protection to floods, with studies either neglecting this aspect or resorting to crude assumptions. Here we present a first global database of FLOod PROtection Standards , FLOPROS, which comprises information in the form of the flood return period associated with protection measures , at different spatial scales. FLOPROS comprises three layers of information, and combines them into one consistent database. The design layer contains empirical information about the actual standard of existing protection already in place; the policy layer contains information on protection standards from policy regulations; and the model layer uses a validated modelling approach to calculate protection standards. The policy layer and the model layer can be considered adequate proxies for actual protection standards included in the design layer, and serve to increase the spatial coverage of the database. Based on this first version of FLOPROS, we suggest a number of strategies to further extend and increase the resolution of the database. Moreover, as the database is intended to be continually updated, while flood protection standards are changing with new interventions, FLOPROS requires input from the flood risk community. We therefore invite researchers and practitioners to contribute information to this evolving database by corresponding to the authors.
This paper proposes a framework for ex ante evaluation of sovereign disaster risk finance instruments available to governments for funding disaster losses. The framework can be used by governments to help choose between different financial instruments, or between different combinations of instruments, to achieve appropriate and financially efficient strategies to fund disaster losses. In doing so, the framework takes into account the risk of disasters, economic conditions and political constraints. The paper discusses the framework in the context of a hypothetical country, with parameters selected to represent a disaster-prone small island state. The paper shows how a mix of instruments can be chosen to minimise the economic opportunity cost given the underlying disaster risk faced and prevailing economic and financial conditions. © 2017 The International Association for the Study of Insurance Economics
