Shazia is a banana and chilli grower in Bangladesh. Her crop may be small but it allows her to earn enough money to provide for her family. The great threat, constantly hanging over her head, is the risk of her land being eroded away by flood waters. If she loses her land, she has no livelihood and no source of income.

Shazia is not alone in having a livelihood that is threatened by natural hazards. Across Asia and other parts of the world, hazards are a constant stress on people’s source of income, particularly the poor. Livelihoods are fundamental for ensuring people can meet their basic needs such as providing food and water for their family, and if we want to make these livelihoods sustainable, it is important that we make them disaster resilient.

Livelihood programs need to consider disaster risk

Livelihood programs often invest extensively into providing households with assets or capital, which the household can then use to create a sustainable livelihood – one that the program no longer needs to support.

For these interventions to be truly sustainable and in order to permanently lift these households out of poverty, there is a need to comprehensively assess the disaster risks the households face and put measures in place to mitigate the impact of future hazards.

The consultations on the post-2015 framework for disaster risk reduction demonstrated gradual progress in almost all of the five priority areas of the Hyogo Framework for Action. However, countries reported relatively less progress in Priority for Action 4 on reducing the underlying risk factors and tackling the causes of risk creation, especially unequal economic development as well as poor resilience of households and communities and their livelihoods.

Working towards resilience – together

Considering the increasing vulnerability of people to natural hazards – particularly in the developing countries – it will be essential that while the disaster risk reduction community builds the resilience of households, it also addresses the challenge of securing their livelihoods.

It is not a new idea to combine the concepts of disaster risk reduction and livelihoods, but it is not yet a standard to combine interventions on these two topics either.

It will be of great importance to continue reducing the vulnerability of households and securing their livelihoods as part of the new global framework for disaster risk reduction. For this to work, it will be essential for disaster risk reduction practitioners to work in partnership with their counterparts in the field of livelihoods.

The blog was originally published on the WCDRR website.
 

At the same time, however, the past decade also offers useful insights vis-�-vis risk- and climate-sensitive development, predominantly in the perspective of Asia. In this regard, Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC) initiated a 10-year flagship program on Mainstreaming DRR into Development (MDRD) in 2004, with support from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Government of Australia. Based on learning from the MDRD program, which was implemented in more than 15 countries throughout the region, some interesting issues and options are outlined below – many of which may be considered for wider discussion at the upcoming WCDRR and made part of the post-2015 framework.

First, development is too political, and at times, constituency-driven. More often than not, the political or elected leadership of a country dictates development decisions be it a macro program or a small project or scheme. Politicians (read policy- and decision-makers) have their own time-bound agendas, political commitments, priorities and limitations, which leave little room for them to participate in DRR and climate change discourse. It is, therefore, critical for the development partners, academia, media, and civil society organizations to consciously engage with the political leadership for the sake of making risk-inclusive development an integral part of their thinking as well as the development decision-making process.

Second, governance systems are usually intricate along with the development planning and implementation processes. Without fully understanding and analyzing the governance system of a country within which overall development takes place, identification of appropriate DRR and climate change entry points will continue to be a challenge. Also, it would be useful to appreciate the fact that each country has its own governance and development dynamics, which may require country-specific approaches to risk-inclusive development rather than applying a standard framework.

Third, public-sector development planners, financial controllers and disaster managers find it challenging to make a convincing point for the policy and decision-makers with regard to investing in DRR and climate change in the absence of a solid evidence of ‘returns.’ For this to occur, the development of country-specific frameworks for assessing the impact of such investments both in qualitative and quantitative terms seems to be critical. These impact assessment studies can always serve as useful policy advocacy tools. That is also where we can potentially see a role for the mainstream, local and alternative media, which can effectively help exert pressure through public discourse on the subject.

Fourth, over the past ten years, the HFA has successfully laid down the foundation for implementing more specific actions under the post-2015 framework in terms of mainstreaming DRR and climate change considerations into development planning. In this direction, a robust needs assessment of key sectors at national and sub-national levels may prove to be handy for the resilient development agenda to prosper.

Fifth, risk assessment has almost become a buzzword and a number of countries have carried out risk assessments of varied categories and types in one way or the other. The fundamental challenge, however, is on the usability of such risk assessments. Perhaps, more emphasis needs to be placed on making the risk information usable for the development planning officials. It would require the development of tools and methodologies for processing and packaging the risk information compatible with the development framework of a country.

Sixth, HFA helped promote the implementation of Community-Based Disaster Risk Management (CBDRM) at a much wider scale. Building on it further, it would be best to explore the technical and operational possibilities of linking the CBDRM framework and its outputs with the local-level development planning institutions. It will not only help sustain the community-level initiatives, but also contribute to introducing and strengthening the resilient development agenda at the local level.

In addition to the above six points, it would be an opportune time for the post-2015 framework to encourage national governments to opt for a robust accountability mechanism. This will lead to a more transparent assessment of their efforts, which in turn will contribute to better risk governance.

The blog was originally published on the WCDRR website.