chapter 4 - DRK

Strictly under embargo until Wednesday 22 September at 00:01 GMT (02:01 Geneva time)6. “Urban development is opposed to ruraldevelopment.” Much of the demand thatproduces rural incomes comes from urbanpopulations and urban enterprises. Manyhigher-paying jobs in rural areas (includingoff-farm work) come from urban demand.Successful farmers depend on urban-basedfacilities and services – markets, banks,processing plants, cold-storage facilities,supply and repair of machinery and agriculturalinputs. Rural populations oftendepend on their local urban centre for accessto hospitals, secondary schools, postoffices and most consumer goods and services.Many low-income rural householdshave their incomes boosted by remittancesfrom a family member working in urbanareas.7. “Large and rapidly growing cities have theworst environmental problems.” Large citiesoften have better standards of environmentalhealth than most other urban centres intheir nation (and most rural areas). Wellgovernedcities have the world’s best qualityof life (and highest life expectancies).It is not the size and speed at which acity grows that determines environmentalproblems but the quality of its governmentand its relations with its low-income population.Disaster impacts in rural and urban areasDisasters have long had their largest impacts in rural areas in terms of deaths, seriousinjuries and impoverishment. In part, this was simply because most people lived andworked in rural areas but this is no longer the case. It was also partly because most ofthose with the least resilience to disasters lived in rural areas. This is changing withthe growth in what can be termed the ‘vulnerability gap’ in urban areas and as it does,it brings with it a need to consider why more disaster risk is in urban areas and whatthis implies for both development and disaster risk reduction. The vulnerability gap isproduced by two factors: the lack of knowledge and financial capacity (and sometimeswillingness) of urban authorities to reduce risks and vulnerabilities; and a high proportionof urban households and communities limited in their capacity to reduce riskby inadequate incomes, limited political influence, high land prices (often driven upby speculation) and corrupt practices in land-use management that combine to forcepeople to live in high-risk areas.The priorities for disaster risk reduction depend on how disaster risk is viewed. Ifdisaster risk is viewed in terms of economic impacts, the list of ‘vulnerable cities’ isdominated by wealthy cities in high-income nations. So in the index of risk to multihazardsin large cities developed by Munich Re, 17 of the 20 cities at highest risk arein high-income countries. This makes sense if gauging the risk for insurers and thusthe value of exposed assets but it makes very limited sense in terms of identifying citieswhere populations are particularly at risk from disasters.Cities in low-income nations do face very high levels of risk – not because of themonetary value of exposed assets, but due to the inadequacies in their infrastructure,the poor quality of the housing for much of the population and the weakness of city20