Impacts of Disasters on the Education Sector in Lao PDR
ADPC: Impacts of Disasters on the Education Sector in Lao PDR
Published on: 02/28/2008
Language: English
Author(s): Asian Disaster Preparedness Center
Department: Safer Development Planning and Implementation
Type: Technical Papers
File size: 2.71 MB
Lao PDR is vulnerable to all kinds of disasters, e.g., fires, floods, droughts, land slides and
erosion, typhoons, pets’ epidemics, earthquake etc. In the past due to impact from disasters
the country had observed great losses both in physical and social economic structures. Lao
PDR is yet to be strong enough to prevent and mitigate any sort of disaster. Therefore, in order to combat forthcoming disasters government along with international bodies will have to work together on both structural and non-structural measures.
Realizing the importance of integrating disaster risk reduction (DRR) into development
sectors, the Regional Consultative Committee on Disaster Management (RCC) program on
Advocacy and Capacity Building for Mainstreaming Disaster Risk Reduction into Development (MDRD) was launched at the 4th Meeting in Bangladesh in March 2004. The program focuses on two separate approaches relating to mainstreaming DRR, namely, i) into over-all national development planning and ii.) into specific priority sectors such as Agriculture, Health, Education, Infrastructure, Housing, and Financial Services.
Cambodia, Lao PDR and Philippines have expressed their interest to initiate priority implementation projects to mainstream disaster risk reduction in education sector by integrating DRR modules into educational curriculum. The MDRD Education project includes four main activities, namely;
i) Initiating Mainstreaming of Disaster Risk Reduction into Secondary School Curriculum,
ii) Study on Impacts of Disasters on Education Sector,
iii) Advocacy Workshop on Mainstreaming Disaster Risk Reduction into Education Sector, and
iv) Stakeholder consultation as follow up to the Advocacy Workshop.
This study on impacts of disasters on education sector in Lao PDR aims to build an evidence-based rationale to raise awareness on integrating DRR concerns into education policies and to advocate for changing practices in school construction especially in incorporating disaster risk resilient features in new school construction.