Blogs

Whether it is building safer schools or deploying early warning systems, disaster risk management is an integral part of caring for our most vulnerable, combating poverty, and protecting development gains.

Would you rather lie on the sand at the beach, or steal it? In Mauritius, some people chose the latter. For the small island state, illegal beach sand mining was a big problem. Companies used the sand to manufacture concrete for construction, leading to severe erosion that undermined the integrity of the entire coastline—a particularly important natural barrier for Small Island Developing States (SIDS).

In disaster risk management, the main bottleneck to risk reduction is usually not the lack of information, but rather how this information is communicated and perceived. Building on recent collaborations with artists and designers, several creative approaches were explored to engage FbF stakeholders, including games, art, and virtual reality.

Without access to affordable and well-located housing alternatives, households have no other option than to build informally, and in areas most prone to natural disasters. The World Bank organized a discussion on “Improving Housing Policies to Increase Affordability and Mitigate Climate and Disaster Risks” in Washington D.C. on March 22-23.

We may not know exactly what the world will look like in two decades, but we know this: it is going to be a world of cities. Each year, urban areas are growing by an average of more than 75 million people – more than the population of the world’s 85 smallest countries combined.

In many communities along the West African coast, it is becoming increasingly dangerous, and in some cases impossible, to live close to the sea, because the beach is disappearing at an alarming rate.

While stuck in I-66 traffic one morning, a colleague and I had a vigorous debate on the merits of open-source versus proprietary (commercial) software. I was left with the realization of how much misinformation still persists about this particular subject.

If we focus 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. We largely ignore the plight of poor people, who are, and always have been, those who suffer the most.

Geosynthetic Reinforced Soil (GRS) abutments allow for rapid and resilient construction of bridges using locally available materials, without specialized equipment. With GRS, bridges can be constructed in as little as five days and at a cost 30-50% lower than traditional approaches.

Since 2002, more than 260,000 kilometers of road were constructed or rehabilitated by World Bank supported projects. For these investments, and future Bank transport investments, to really realize their intended impact, we believe it is critical that they are resilient to climate and possible climate change.