GAR 2015 Main Report

168

Part II - Chapter 8

compensate for losses quickly and resume their activities before these losses translate into negative and longer-term impacts on development. This issue is complicated because ultimately the recovery of households, businesses and government is interdependent. Restarting a business, for example, depends on restoring power, water, telecommunications and transport, which may be the responsibility of local governments or utility providers. The recovery of households is contingent on the recovery of the businesses that provide employment and income.

A second set of issues refers to prospective risk management: whether it is possible in the space or gap after a disaster to develop in a way that prevents the reconstruction of risks. By revealing risks, disasters uncover their underlying drivers and can provide an imperative for change. As highlighted in Chapter 1, there are numerous historical cases of changes in building practice or urban design, for example, in which risk-reducing measures have been introduced. However, for every case of positive change there seem to be many more cases where risk is rebuilt, sometimes literally brick by brick. Low-income households and small businesses in particular often face severe constraints in changing the way they manage their risks and may be averse to taking the risks to experiment. In the case of governments and businesses, it is not straightforward to change the administrative and planning structures and processes that existed before a disaster. Therefore, the default option is often business as usual.

Using the recovery space to transform development in a way that reduces future risks is complicated because it requires consensus amongst a large group of stakeholders, including government, international and regional organizations providing finance and technical advice, affected households and businesses, utility providers and others in order to move development onto a different track. International organizations,

bilateral and multilateral donors and non-governmental organizations also have their own agendas as well as client relations at the national level. In addition, there is a tension between the need for speed in order to close the gap between relief and recovery as quickly as possible and the need for careful planning in order to avoid the reconstruction of risk. The window of opportunity for innovative change starts to close quite rapidly after the initial impact of a hazard, and normal politics often takes its place. As such, in many instances the momentum to capitalize on disaster as an opportunity for wider transformation is lost ( GAR 13 paper

GFDRR, 2014c

GFDRR (Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery). 2014c,Resilient Recovery: An Imperative for Resilient Development, Background Paper prepared for the 2015 Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction. Geneva, Switzerland: UNISDR..
Click here to view this GAR paper.

; GFDRR et al., 2013

GFDRR (Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery), EU (European Union) and UN (United Nations). 2013,Post-Disaster Needs Assessment, Joint Declaration on Post-Crisis Assessments and Recovery Planning. Volume A: Guidelines. The World Bank, Washington, D.C.. .

; GFDRR et al., 2014

GFDRR (Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery), EU (European Union) and UNDP (United Nations Development Programme). 2014,Guide to developing disaster recovery frameworks, World Reconstruction Conference Version. September 2014. The World Bank, Washington, D.C.. .

Income and governance

Recovery processes in any country are heavily conditioned by factors such as income and governance. Following the earthquakes in 2010, the very different paths taken by the recovery processes in Chile and Haiti (Box 8.9) show that the way in which countries address the issues of both compensatory and prospective risk management in recovery processes depends far more on the strength of their economies and the quality of governance in normal times than on the volume of external assistance they receive.

Many of the continuing challenges in disaster recovery and reconstruction are related less to technical issues such as finance or the quality of data for assessments than to the pre-existing political and economic cultures in countries, which may include competing and opaque institutional mandates and the power relations between different social and economic groups. Coupled with nebulous and even conflicting objectives of administrative units and agencies, diverging national and sectorial interests can stand in the way of effective reconstruction and recovery ( GAR 13 paper

GFDRR, 2014c

This implies that countries that already have compensatory mechanisms such as effective

	168 Part II - Chapter 8 compensate for losses quickly and resume their activities before these losses translate into negative and longer-term impacts on development. This issue is complicated because ultimately the recovery of households, businesses and government is interdependent. Restarting a business, for example, depends on restoring power, water, telecommunications and transport, which may be the responsibility of local governments or utility providers. The recovery of households is contingent on the recovery of the businesses that provide employment and income. A second set of issues refers to prospective risk management: whether it is possible in the space or gap after a disaster to develop in a way that prevents the reconstruction of risks. By revealing risks, disasters uncover their underlying drivers and can provide an imperative for change. As highlighted in Chapter 1, there are numerous historical cases of changes in building practice or urban design, for example, in which risk-reducing measures have been introduced. However, for every case of positive change there seem to be many more cases where risk is rebuilt, sometimes literally brick by brick. Low-income households and small businesses in particular often face severe constraints in changing the way they manage their risks and may be averse to taking the risks to experiment. In the case of governments and businesses, it is not straightforward to change the administrative and planning structures and processes that existed before a disaster. Therefore, the default option is often business as usual. Using the recovery space to transform development in a way that reduces future risks is complicated because it requires consensus amongst a large group of stakeholders, including government, international and regional organizations providing finance and technical advice, affected households and businesses, utility providers and others in order to move development onto a different track. International organizations, bilateral and multilateral donors and non-governmental organizations also have their own agendas as well as client relations at the national level. In addition, there is a tension between the need for speed in order to close the gap between relief and recovery as quickly as possible and the need for careful planning in order to avoid the reconstruction of risk. The window of opportunity for innovative change starts to close quite rapidly after the initial impact of a hazard, and normal politics often takes its place. As such, in many instances the momentum to capitalize on disaster as an opportunity for wider transformation is lost (GFDRR, 2014c x GFDRR (Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery). 2014c,Resilient Recovery: An Imperative for Resilient Development, Background Paper prepared for the 2015 Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction. Geneva, Switzerland: UNISDR.. Click here to view this GAR paper. ; GFDRR et al., 2013 x GFDRR (Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery), EU (European Union) and UN (United Nations). 2013,Post-Disaster Needs Assessment, Joint Declaration on Post-Crisis Assessments and Recovery Planning. Volume A: Guidelines. The World Bank, Washington, D.C.. . ; GFDRR et al., 2014 x GFDRR (Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery), EU (European Union) and UNDP (United Nations Development Programme). 2014,Guide to developing disaster recovery frameworks, World Reconstruction Conference Version. September 2014. The World Bank, Washington, D.C.. . ). Income and governance Recovery processes in any country are heavily conditioned by factors such as income and governance. Following the earthquakes in 2010, the very different paths taken by the recovery processes in Chile and Haiti (Box 8.9) show that the way in which countries address the issues of both compensatory and prospective risk management in recovery processes depends far more on the strength of their economies and the quality of governance in normal times than on the volume of external assistance they receive. Many of the continuing challenges in disaster recovery and reconstruction are related less to technical issues such as finance or the quality of data for assessments than to the pre-existing political and economic cultures in countries, which may include competing and opaque institutional mandates and the power relations between different social and economic groups. Coupled with nebulous and even conflicting objectives of administrative units and agencies, diverging national and sectorial interests can stand in the way of effective reconstruction and recovery (GFDRR, 2014c x GFDRR (Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery). 2014c,Resilient Recovery: An Imperative for Resilient Development, Background Paper prepared for the 2015 Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction. Geneva, Switzerland: UNISDR.. Click here to view this GAR paper. ). This implies that countries that already have compensatory mechanisms such as effective	Page 1 Page 10 Page 20 Page 30 Page 40 Page 50 Page 60 Page 70 Page 80 Page 90 Page 100 Page 110 Page 120 Page 130 Page 140 Page 150 Page 158 Page 159 Page 160 Page 161 Page 162 Page 163 Page 164 Page 165 Page 166 Page 167 Page 168 Page 169 ->Page 170 Page 171 Page 172 Page 173 Page 174 Page 175 Page 176 Page 177 Page 178 Page 179 Page 180 Page 181 Page 182 Page 190 Page 200 Page 210 Page 220 Page 230 Page 240 Page 250 Page 260 Page 270 Page 280 Page 290 Page 300 Page 310