What are the long-run economic and welfare impacts of disasters? What incentives—or, perhaps, disincentives—make disaster risk reduction a development priority for governments? Is there an economic bias against ex-ante risk-reducing measures? If so, what could be done to correct this bias?
An authoritative United Nations-World Bank assessment— Natural Hazards, UnNatural Disasters: Effective Prevention through an Economics Lens — will address these questions. The assessment will help judge, from an economic perspective, when disaster prevention is cost-effective. It will also identify how people make decisions individually and collectively at different levels of government. The assessment consists of six chapters examining the following subjects:
1. Disaster Data Patterns Revisited;
2. Measuring Disasters’ Many Effects;
3. Individual Prevention through the Economic Lens;
4. Prevention through Governments;
5. The Roles of Insurance, Remittances & Relief in Prevention;
6. Future Shock: Cities, Climate Change & Catastrophes.
After each of the six chapters the assessment reviews a “Spotlight” on a particular disaster and what happened in the country before and after. These include the 2007 Cyclone Sidr in Bangladesh, the 1999 earthquake in Turkey, the 2008 storm and hurricane season in Haiti, droughts in Ethiopia, and the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean.