Chapter Summaries
Section One: Focus on Reducing Risk
Chapter 1 - Risk reduction: challenges and opportunities
Is the heightened interest in disaster risk and how we manage it just a passing trend or does it mean the world has become a more dangerous place? This year's World Disasters Report focuses on risk reduction - why it is needed, how to do it, and the challenges faced in achieving it. The introductory chapter outlines the threats posed by disasters and some of the obstacles to effective mitigation and asks: why isn't more being done to promote risk reduction when it clearly works? It concludes that disaster threatens development, while flawed development exacerbates disaster and it calls for risk reduction and disaster mitigation to be woven into all new development strategies.
Chapter 2 - Disaster preparedness: a priority for Latin America
On a continent where the full range of disasters are experienced, where are resources for reducing the risks from disaster best invested? What can be done to sustain development in a region where El Niño can wipe out 10 percent of countries' gross domestic product in one single stroke. Proactive mitigation strategies are available and in practice. Hurricane Michelle was the strongest storm to hit Cuba for more than half a century, but because local mechanisms were in place to evacuate people quickly, only five Cubans died and damage to infrastructure was minimized.
Chapter 3 - Preparedness pays off in Mozambique
How can donors be persuaded to invest more in disaster risk reduction programmes and take into account local expertise and knowledge in this area as well as in disaster response and rehabilitation? Should the Mozambican government be legally able to compel evacuation in the face of widespread flooding? Would secure safety zones for people, animals and goods work as a preparedness measure? These are some of the questions now being debated after the Mozambique experience of the past two years. This chapter observes that Mozambicans were much better prepared than predicted and in both years many more lives were saved by local people. It also highlights donors’ reluctance to fund disaster mitigation programmes.
Chapter 4 - Pacific Islands foretell future of climate change
Scientists describe climate change as inevitable - Pacific islands are on the front line. Over the next century, global temperatures are projected to rise faster than any time in human history and sea levels by up to 0.9 of a metre. Many Pacific island states will simply cease to exist. "Managed retreat" from vanishing shorelines buys time, but for some atolls there is nowhere to retreat to. The spectre of mass relocation, meanwhile, raises challenging questions: What legal status do environmental refugees have? What happens to an abandoned country's territorial waters and nationhood? This chapter looks at the life and death issues facing Pacific islands.
Chapter 5 - Reducing earthquake risk in urban Europe
What can be done to mitigate the earthquake disaster that seismologists predict is around the corner in south-east Europe? Mass evacuation is not an option - yet the actual impact of quakes on towns and cities must be reduced. But how? With a population well over 10 million, a direct hit on Istanbul would be catastrophic; one third of its 900,000 buildings could collapse. Far fewer people would have died in the 1999 Turkish quakes if the country had enforced its building regulations. But ensuring that best practice in the construction industry becomes commonplace is a major political and administrative challenge.
Section Two: Tracking the System
Chapter 6 - Assessing vulnerabilities and capacities during peace and war
Vulnerability and Capacity Assessments (VCAs) are a tool that aims from the outset to involve communities, local authorities and NGOs, not only to assess vulnerability but also to draw up an action plan to prepare for and respond to risk. It is a starting point in the fight back against disaster. This chapter looks closely at a VCA case study carried out by the Palestine Red Crescent Society, which was concluded shortly before the current cycle of violence began in 2000. It was described by a Red Crescent official as a "key catalyst" for strategic thinking and action to reduce risk.
Chapter 7 - Accountability: a question of rights and duties
This chapter asks: why is accountability important? Humanitarian actors have the power to decide who receives aid, what will be given, when and where. The chapter lists three specific components of accountability that are beyond doubt: agencies' obligation to keep affected people informed about aid operations and about their rights, to consult and listen to complaint, and to respond and report back. Agencies, the report says, must assume equal responsibility for what they do well and for what they fail to do.
Chapter 8 - Disaster data: key trends and statistics
This chapter features the latest reported data on disasters for the past decade. A selection of tables and graphics presents data not only by country and continent but according to levels of human development to highlight the relationship between development and disasters. They are also divided into hydro-meteorological and geophysical disasters to track the impact of weather-related hazards. In 2001, earthquakes proved to be the world's deadliest disasters but over the decade, weather-related disasters have claimed 71 per cent of all lives lost. Although the number of people affected by all types of disasters dropped last year to 170 million, the decade average is 200 million - nearly treble the figures of the 1970s.
