Blogs

On January 22, 2012 at 6:00 am in the morning, Ethiopians living in the Efoyta Market neighborhood in Addis Ababa woke up to a burning five-story building. More than 13 hours later, the fire had killed two people, destroyed 65,000 square miles including several homes and businesses, and produced damages amounting to ETB 20 million ($1 million).

In disaster risk management, we often pay close attention to the latest technological boosts to better understand risks and help communities prepare for the next disaster. While such efforts are commendable, I noticed that insightful messages from our ancestors can also help us better anticipate tomorrow’s disaster risks.

As a country that is particularly vulnerable to flooding, Malawians know that they cannot halt the forces of nature, but they can prepare and plan for their impacts – and they did. Supported by the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) and the World Bank, the Government of Malawi undertook a series of community mapping activities in which it collected data about the environment for a flood risk modeling exercise and other preparedness activities.

Natural disasters do not discriminate, affecting coastlines and mountain villages, prairies and plateaus, major and minor cities—in corridors largely populated by the poor. Committing financial resources before potential disasters, recent research at The World Bank Group indicates, is smart. An impact evaluation of Mexico’s fund for natural disasters found that it increased post-disaster gross domestic product by 2–4 percent, a big benefit.

Japan’s success in building resilience and disaster risk management has also been helping the Philippines build up its strategies to protect people and assets from harm.

Venice may seem like an unlikely location for an international development conference. But even though the Italian city is best known for its touristic appeal, it also turned out to be the perfect setting for the Understanding Risk Forum 2016.

Without action, parts of Jakarta, Ho Chi Minh City, Bangkok and numerous other coastal cities around the globe will continue to sink faster than the sea level rises. But a new report, The Making of a Riskier Future: How Our Decisions are Shaping Future Disaster Risk, documents that the threat to some of the world’s coastal megacities comes not as much from the sea but from within.

We at the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery are excited this week to launch ThinkHazard!—a tool that will get natural disaster information into the hands of the people who really “need to know”.

Climate change is making the risk landscape more dynamic. It will take smarter, faster, innovative analytical tools to create the kind of up-to-date analysis of natural hazard risks that policy makers need to make long-term, risk-informed decisions.

One year ago today, the first in a series of massive earthquakes rocked Nepal. Nearly 9 thousand people lost their lives in the disaster. Over 20 thousand people were injured – many critically. As many as 450 aftershocks have shook the country since.