Preventive Resettlement of Populations at Risk of Disaster - GFDRR

Table 1.4 Indicators of Reducing Underlying Risk Factors
Disaster risk reduction is an integral objective of environment-related policies and plans, including for land use, natural resource
management, and adaptation to climate change.
Social development policies and plans are being implemented to reduce the vulnerability of populations most at risk.
Economic and productive sectoral policies and plans have been implemented to reduce the vulnerability of economic activities.
Planning and management of human settlements incorporate disaster risk reduction elements, including enforcement of building
codes.
Disaster risk reduction measures are integrated into post-disaster recovery and rehabilitation processes.
Procedures are in place to assess the disaster risk impacts of major development projects, especially infrastructure.
Source: HFA in UNISDR (2007)
3.1 Different Approaches and
Tools for Risk Management
Reducing these underlying risk factors necessarily involves
a discussion of disaster risk management and the
tools needed to implement it.
The risk management concept refers to an ongoing process
whose goal is predicting, reducing and controlling
risk factors. This process promotes, prepares, and implements
policies, strategies, instruments, and actions that
help society confront natural hazards and minimize the
losses/damage associated with their effects (Lavell 2008).
Disaster risk management may be corrective or prospective
(Lavell 2004). Corrective management takes its
point of reference from already existing risk, which is
the product of past social actions—for example, a settlement,
located in a flood zone, that was built with inappropriate
techniques; a hospital constructed without antiseismic
standards; a community built around a single
access road prone to recurrent landslides; or agricultural
activity ill-adapted to the climate and its extremes.
This corrective management approach may also be conservative
or progressive (Lavell 2009). The conservative
corrective model aims to reduce visible risk conditions
(by protecting housing, shoring up river banks or lots
on steep slopes, etc.) and to strengthen institutions so
they can respond more effectively to emergencies. The
underlying factors of existing risks—related to poverty
or power structures—are not considered.
The progressive corrective model combines reducing
existing risk factors with actions based more on
development objectives, in communities where risks
have been identified. The approach involves reducing
poverty, empowering people and planning, and adopting
development goals by attacking the underlying causes of
risk.
Unlike corrective management, prospective management
works with risks that have not yet presented
themselves but could nevertheless be generated by new
investments and development initiatives, whether by
governments, the private sector, NGOs, development
associations, families, or individuals.
Prospective risk management is therefore an integral part
of development planning, investment project planning,
and environmental management. It implies practices that
avoid repeating past errors that led to the existing levels
of risk. The strategies or other specific tools for prospective
risk management are largely similar to those appropriate
for corrective management, although the timing
and orientation of the various activities differ.
Regardless of whether corrective and prospective risk
management succeeds, countries will always need to
respond to the crises triggered by extreme events. The
area of risk that cannot be addressed by either corrective
or prospective management is called residual risk,
and in this area, humanitarian responses will continue
to play a dominant role.
3.2 Risk Reduction Challenges
Risk reduction is increasingly important on the international
agenda, within a context where rapid urbanization
and environmental degradation combine with
Chapter 1 Global and Latin America and the Caribbean Natural Disaster Trends 15