Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction 2015
Making development sustainable: The future of disaster risk management


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Preface
The 2015 Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction (GAR15), Making Development Sustainable: The Future of Disaster Risk Management, is the fourth in the series coordinated by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) in the context of the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015: Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities to Disasters (HFA). The HFA is an international framework adopted by 168 UN member States in Kobe, Japan in January 2005 to achieve an expected outcome of:
The substantial reduction of disaster losses, in lives and in the social, economic and environmental assets of communities and societies.
Every biennium governments have self-assessed their progress towards the achievement of this outcome using the online HFA Monitor. In 2007 UNISDR published Disaster Risk Reduction: Global Review 2007, which assessed progress in the first two years of the HFA. Shortly afterwards, work began on the first edition in the GAR series, which has compiled and analysed data and information on disaster risk patterns and trends, government self-assessments of progress, and critical challenges to disaster risk reduction since 2009.
GAR09, Risk and Poverty in a Changing Climate, provided evidence that disaster risk is disproportionately concentrated in lower-income countries with weak governance. Within countries, it showed how underlying drivers such as badly planned and managed urban development, vulnerable rural livelihoods, environmental degradation, poverty and inequality further generate and accumulate disaster risk in low-income communities and households. GAR09 highlighted that the relationship between disaster risk and poverty is bidirectional. Unless poverty and underlying inequality are
addressed, disaster risk will continue to rise. At the same time, disaster losses aggravate the depth and breadth of poverty and undermine any progress towards poverty reduction and sustainable development. GAR09 made the case for action to address the underlying risk drivers through aligning the efforts pursued under the disaster risk reduction, climate change and poverty reduction agendas.
The findings of GAR09 flowed into GAR11, Revealing Risk, Redefining Development, where the focus shifted to identifying effective public policies to address the disaster risk–poverty nexus. GAR11 analysed the political and economic imperatives and constraints for increased public investment in disaster risk reduction. Using innovative hybrid probabilistic risk models, GAR11 produced risk profiles for a number of countries in order to demonstrate how a risk-layered approach to managing disaster risks could maximize benefits while reducing costs. GAR11 also built on the recommendations of GAR09, highlighting opportunities to integrate disaster risk reduction into existing development instruments and mechanisms in the urban, environmental, social and economic sectors.
In GAR13, From Shared Risk to Shared Value: The Business Case for Disaster Risk Reduction, the focus shifted once again, this time from public policies and investment to the largely unexplored nexus between private investment and disaster risk. In most economies, public investment represents only 15-30 per cent of total capital formation. How disaster risk is addressed in the other 70-85 per cent of capital investment is therefore critical. GAR13 showed how businesses can invest in managing their disaster risks to reduce the costs and interruptions represented
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