chapter 4 - DRK

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Strictly under embargo until Wednesday 22 September at 00:01 GMT (02:01 Geneva time)The management of the major hazard installationregulations (which govern the notification, riskassessment and emergency planning requiredof new and existing hazardous installations) alsoneeds improvement.5. Hosting a disaster managementsummit. To help raise the profile and awarenessof the disaster management MAP includingdisaster risk reduction.What has emerged from the developmentof the disaster management MAP is the soberingrealization that despite the serious risksposed by climate change, basic institutionaland resource challenges within local governmentare delaying appropriate planning andresponses. These challenges will have to bemet but they inevitably depend on political willand the ability to access additional funding.Land-use management and disaster riskFor almost all urban centres, it falls to local government to manage land use and thisshould ensure that dangerous sites, such as flood plains, are not built on, that there isadequate provision for schools and other services, that open space for parks and playgroundsis protected and that watersheds and natural coastal protective defences, suchas mangroves and dunes, are preserved in an ecological manner. Land-use managementalso has to ensure that sufficient land with infrastructure is available for housing andenterprises. Local regulations on site development and buildings should ensure thatnew buildings meet health and safety standards. All this helps to reduce risks fromeveryday hazards and from disasters, especially when combined with the provision ofessential infrastructure and services. Indeed, they help stop extreme weather eventsbecoming disasters. They should also be the means by which risks from earthquakesare much reduced. However, it is hard for any politician to gain votes by pointing toa disaster that did not happen and it is difficult, or even impossible, for the agenciesconcerned with disaster response to get attention paid to these deficiencies.Informal settlements in a city are a reflection of governance failures – especially inland-use management. They reflect a failure of local authorities to ensure sufficientland with infrastructure is available for new housing in appropriate locations. Veryoften this is linked to the lack of power and resources available to city governments andthe disinterest of national government and international agencies in addressing cityproblems. The results are visible in almost all cities in low-income nations and mostcities in middle-income nations: urban expansion is haphazard, determined by wheredifferent households, residential areas, enterprises and public sector activities locateand build, legally or illegally. There is no plan to guide this process or if there is, it isignored. There are usually many regulations to prevent this but these are avoided orbypassed by politicians and real estate interests.As cities expand in an unplanned patchwork of high and low density, this greatlyincreases the costs of providing risk-reducing infrastructure and services. It also meansthe segregation of low-income groups in illegal settlements on the most hazardous sitessuch as those affected by periodic floods, sea surges, seasonal storms and land subsidence.142
Strictly under embargo until Wednesday 22 September at 00:01 GMT (02:01 Geneva time)For many cities, including those mentioned in Box 7.2, disasters are not new. They havea record of disasters at different scales. The cases mentioned highlight institutional incapacityto address urbanization issues from different angles. When combined with lack ofaccountability to citizens and little scope for citizen participation, this means little actionto reduce risks in urban areas, especially where low-income groups live. For much urbanexpansion, the ‘solution’ to the lack of institutional capacity to manage land use has beento be outside the legal framework of building codes and land-use regulations, and outsidethe scope of officially recorded and legally sanctioned land transactions. In many cities,some high- and middle-income groups also occupy dangerous land sites but the possibilityto reduce risk and receive emergency assistance and insurance coverage is muchgreater. City and municipal governments can thus be key players in disaster risk creationand amplification or in disaster risk reduction. This has been acknowledged for sometime by the development and disaster response community, and several governments atnational and regional levels have designed structures to support local governments.Box 7.2 Latin American cities expand over high-risk areasMuch of the housing in Caracas, Venezuela,is built on slopes crossed by gorges that leadto the Guaire, the city’s main river. Low-incomegroups have settled on unstable land and ingorges, where their houses often act as barriersto natural water run-off. In December1999, Venezuela experienced one-in-100-yearrainfall and this caused massive landslides andfloods that killed hundreds of people.After the floods in the city of Santa Fe,Argentina, in 2003 and again in 2007, cityauthorities recognized that for the last 50 yearsthere had been no urban land policy and thatpeople settled where and how they could,prioritizing proximity to workplaces or socialnetworks.Managua, Nicaragua, is located on a stripof land where there are 18 active faults and achain of volcanoes. In this city of 1.4 millionpeople, 79 per cent of the houses are of bad ormediocre construction quality and 18 per centneed complete renovation. About 45,000 familieslive in 274 informal settlements, which lackaccess to water, sanitation and electricity. It isestimated that each year in Managua 3,000homes are built without authorization and thuswith no oversight of the quality of construction.During Hurricane Mitch in 1998, the citiesof Tegucigalpa and Comayaguela in Honduraswere seriously affected. Most damage was concentratedaround the four rivers that cross thesecities. Inadequate city infrastructure, especiallywater, sanitation and drainage, lack of zoningcodes, the concentration of services and infrastructurein only a few areas, lack of official preventionand mitigation strategies, together withan inappropriate management of river basinscontributed to the vulnerability of these areas.The local nature of disaster riskIt is at the local level that disasters materialize: lives and livelihoods are lost, houses andinfrastructure damaged and destroyed, health and education compromised. This is alsoWorld Disasters Report 2010 – Focus on urban risk143
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The International Federationof Red
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