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


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that include a five-year tax holiday, 50 per cent income tax relief for five years on items exported overseas and on reinvested profits from overseas exports, a five-year exemption from customs duties on approved products, and the granting of 30-year land leases.
Myanmar has an AAL of US$2 billion, which is mainly associated with tropical cyclones, floods and earthquakes. In 2008, Tropical Cyclone Nargis caused major devastation in areas not far from where the Thilawa Special Economic Zone (Figure 10.8) is being planned as a home to textile, manufacturing and high-tech industries as well as a deep-sea port.
Although an environmental impact assessment was carried out as part of the planning of the SEZ, the potential disaster risks to the zone and the businesses that invest there are not explicitly described (Myanmar and Japan Consortium for Thilawa Special Economic Zone Development Project, 2013

Myanmar and Japan Consortium for Thilawa Special Economic Zone Development Project. 2013,Environmental Impact Assessment Report, September 2013.. .
). It seems that the lessons from the Chao Phraya River floods in Thailand in 2011 may have not been fully internalized by potential investors.
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If governments, businesses and investors continue to ignore or to discount the consequences of further increasing the hazard exposure of the global economy, the consequences are likely to be more shocks of the kind that occurred in Japan and Thailand in 2011. For example, if the global economy were to grow at an average of 4 per cent per year for the next thirty years and the distribution of capital stock between hazard-exposed and non-hazard-exposed areas remains unchanged, by 2040 the volume of hazard-exposed capital stock and thus of intensive disaster risk would approximately double. If hazard and vulnerability also increase due to climate change and other risk drivers, then the risk could increase exponentially.
Most risk assessments still tend to be based on linear models with limited capacity to identify
and manage complex and interconnected risks (GAR 13 paperOECD, 2014a

GAR13 Reference OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). 2014a,Interconnected, Interdependent Risks, Background Paper prepared for the 2015 Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction. Geneva, Switzerland: UNISDR..
Click here to view this GAR paper.
). Despite the concatenated nature of many of the risk drivers, such assessments deal with hazard-specific risk in a way that ignores how different drivers affect each other and how impacts triggered by one hazard can prompt further impacts associated with another (Shimizu and Clark, 2014

Shimizu, M. and A. Clark. 2014,Interconnected Risks, Cascading Disasters and Disaster Management Policy: A Gap Analysis, Input Paper for the 2015 Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction. Geneva, Switzerland: UNISDR.. .
). This means disregarding much of what may not have happened yet but will surely happen in the future.
While there is certainly momentum in the global private sector to begin assessing risk to supply chains when making investment decisions, it is still unclear whether these efforts will be sufficient to manage the risks from increasing exposure due to economic concentration and investment. And it is even less clear whether the countries competing to attract foreign direct investment will begin to use effective disaster
Figure 10.8 Location of the Thilawa Special Economic Zone
(Source: UNISDR with data from UNOCHA, 2013

UNOCHA (United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs). 2013,Myanmar: A Country Prone to a Range of Natural Disasters, Infographic from OCHA September 2013.. .
.)
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