Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction 2015
Making development sustainable: The future of disaster risk management |
|
132
Part II - Chapter 7
7.1 From Ratnapura to the Chao
Phraya River
Where risk awareness is limited, those exposed to hazards have limited motivation to invest in reducing their risk levels.
It is highly improbable that any resident of the District of Ratnapura, Sri Lanka, is unaware of disaster risk. Since 1990, Ratnapura has reported a staggering 2,601 extensive disaster events, an average of over 100 per year, which have damaged or destroyed 23,000 homes, affected over a million people and eroded essential local infrastructure.1 Ratnapura is a highly disaster-prone district which is particularly affected by floods and landslides (OXFAM, 2006
Oxfam International. 2006,Disaster Management Policy & Practice: Lessons for Government, Civil Society, & the Private Sector in Sri Lanka, Oxfam Humanitarian Field Studies. October 2006.. . Ratnapura is only one of thousands of municipalities around the world that experience recurrent extensive disasters. In general, the residents of these localities are fully aware of the risks they face. But their choice as to where to live and work is often constrained by social and economic factors, including a lack of access to safer land, the need to be close to employment opportunities, insufficient investment in risk-reducing infrastructure by local and national authorities, and sometimes discrimination. With constrained opportunities, people faced with recurrent extensive risk often have no choice but to live with that risk and periodically recover from disaster loss and damage.
In contrast to Ratnapura, it is probable that very few of the companies that built factories on the floodplains of the Chao Phraya River in Thailand before the massive flooding in November 2011 were fully aware of the risk they faced. Flood risk in the basin had never been modelled, and the scale of the disaster took global businesses, the government and the insurance industry by surprise. Rippling through global supply chains, the disaster affected production around the world and resulted in massive losses. The total loss of operating profit to Toyota and Honda alone was estimated at US$1.25 billion and US$1.4 billion, respectively (UNISDR, 2013a
UNISDR. 2013a,Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction: From Shared Risk to Shared Value: the Business Case for Disaster Risk Reduction, Geneva, Switzerland: UNISDR.. . Despite the scale of these losses, very few companies have decided to relocate to less hazardous areas of Thailand or to other countries. A survey conducted among Japanese businesses in Bangkok in 2012 showed that almost 80 per cent had decided to stay in the same locations, compared to 16 per cent that had already moved or were planning on moving to other locations in Thailand and 6 per cent that planned to move overseas (Government of Japan, 2012
Government of Japan. 2012,Floods in Thailand that caused a significant impact on trade environment, etc, of neighbouring nations/regions, including Japan. Section 3.. . Awareness, identification, understanding and estimation of disaster risks are all clearly fundamental underpinnings of disaster risk management. If those exposed to hazards are unaware of the risks they face, it is difficult to see how or why households, businesses or governments would invest in reducing their risk levels.
Investment in public awareness, education and risk assessment has increased. However, these efforts have rarely taken into account the social and economic constraints on disaster risk reduction or the opportunities sacrificed by not addressing that risk. As a result, the increasing volume of risk information available has not generally been translated into risk knowledge.
|
Page 1Page 10Page 20Page 30Page 40Page 50Page 60Page 70Page 80Page 90Page 100Page 110Page 120Page 122Page 123Page 124Page 125Page 126Page 127Page 128Page 129Page 130Page 131Page 132Page 133->Page 134Page 135Page 136Page 137Page 138Page 139Page 140Page 141Page 142Page 143Page 144Page 145Page 146Page 150Page 160Page 170Page 180Page 190Page 200Page 210Page 220Page 230Page 240Page 250Page 260Page 270Page 280Page 290Page 300Page 310
|
|