Preventive Resettlement of Populations at Risk of Disaster - GFDRR

emarkable growth is not accompanied by the kinds of
policies such as those mentioned above, billions will be
exposed to disaster risks.
2. Disaster Risk Management
The cases also revealed how countries are introducing
risk management policies and improving their legal and
institutional frameworks for that purpose. Some of the
risk-management processes are fairly advanced, as in
Colombia, where a national emergency response and
prevention system exists that applies a comprehensive
approach. Here, authorities coordinate the efforts of
national, regional and local institutions and involve all
the relevant ones in the process. In addition, the country
has established financing mechanisms to respond to
emergencies and prevent disasters, and has integrated
risk management into land-use planning and development
processes.
Guatemala has also made major progress by establishing
the National Coordinator for Disaster Reduction and
adopting a comprehensive strategy that incorporates
risk prevention in the country’s strategic land planning
programs and investment plans.
In general, advanced risk-management strategies generate
harmonious institutional and legal frameworks that
facilitate planning, resource allocation, the monitoring
of risk management plans and ways to incorporate the
plans into development processes.
It is interesting to note that the countries with comprehensive
risk management policies are those that have
experienced major disasters. In both Colombia and
Guatemala, such events showed how vital it was to have
(a) a full understanding of hazards and of the population’s
vulnerability, (b) a national emergency prevention
and response system, (c) special financial instruments,
and (d) risk-management policies incorporated into
land-use planning and in national and local development
plans.
Another lesson is that prevention is the best investment
possible because responding to disasters has serious human
consequences and financial impacts on a country’s
development.
Community participation has also played an important
role in risk management, although this varies by country:
Guatemala is a good example of where transition
from vertical and authoritarian arrangements to participatory
practices that included cultural and genderrelated
variables, was extremely effective.
3. Resettlement as a Disaster
Prevention Measure
In each of the four cases, a different approach was adopted
when resettlement was used to reduce the risk of
disasters. In Colombia, such efforts are part of public
policies that were built into land use planning, with
specific rules and instruments, as illustrated in the case
of Bogotá—one of the cities that is more advanced in
terms of implementing this strategy. Its efforts include
creating (a) micro-zoning maps showing the location
of at-risk properties and families, (b) information systems
that store data and make it possible to monitor and
oversee new settlements, (c) financial mechanisms, such
as housing subsidies for at-risk families, and (d) institutions
specialized in resettlement.
In Guatemala, preventive resettlement was included in
the post-disaster reconstruction process when it was
found that families, while not affected by the disaster,
were living in high-risk areas and also needed to be resettled.
This strategy was included in the Government’s
Reconstruction with Transformation program, but has
not yet been converted into a public policy that is systematically
applied throughout the country.
In Argentina, resettlement programs targeted population
groups exposed to the risk of floods; these largely
depended on foreign loans, which made it more difficult
to ensure their continuity and sustainability.
In Brazil, resettlement is part of an attempt to recover
small urban watersheds but has not yet been incorporated
into public policies.
Thus, it can be concluded that resettlement must be
incorporated in comprehensive risk management policies,
which should (a) provide housing programs for the
poor, (b) adopt land-use planning, (c) identify at-risk
areas, (d) monitor human settlements in at-risk areas,
108 Preventive Resettlement of Populations at Risk of Disaster: Experiences from Latin America