chapter 4 - DRK

Strictly under embargo until Wednesday 22 September at 00:01 GMT (02:01 Geneva time)Urban disaster trendsIt is well known that more than half the world’s population lives in urban areas. Perhapsless well known is that most of the world’s urban population and most of its largestcities are now in low- and middle-income nations where an estimated 2.6 billion urbandwellers, out of an estimated 3.5 billion worldwide, live. This is unprecedented since,for millennia, most of the urban population and most of the largest cities have been inthe wealthiest nations. With one in three of the world’s total population now living incities and towns in low- and middle-income nations, attention should focus on howwell these cities and towns protect their inhabitants and enterprises from disasters. Itshould be borne in mind that even though the United Nations Human SettlementsProgramme (UN-Habitat) claimed earlier this year that 227 million people no longermeet the limited criteria for defining slum dwellers, it still acknowledged that theirnumbers had increased from 776.7 million in 2000 to 827.6 million in 2010, andthese people are among the most vulnerable to a wide range of urban risks stemmingfrom natural hazards, disease and inadequate support services in areas such as transportand health.One of the key elements to reduce disaster risk is to better understand how urban areasare at risk and how these patterns of risk differ from rural areas. Part of this risk profilerequires a detailed knowledge of past disaster-related events in the city in question,showing the spatial distribution of losses and damages. However, this information isavailable at the urban level in only a handful of cities. A part of the capability of governmentsand people to reduce risk and vulnerability is influenced by the availabilityof accurate information about the risks to their city and, at present, there is a greatdeficiency with regard to accurate monitoring and reporting of urban disaster trends.Urban growth and its relation to disastersFigure 2.1 shows the growth in the world’s urban population from 1950 to 2010 andthen what the United Nations (UN) projects for 2030. The projections suggest that,from 2010 to 2030, almost all the growth in the world’s population will be in urbancentres in low- and middle-income nations and that Asia will undergo massive urbangrowth. For many nations, the most recent data are from censuses held around 2000,as the results from the new round of censuses that took place in or around 2010 arenot yet available. So some of the projections may prove to be too high if, for instance,urban populations grow more slowly due to rates of natural increase decreasing morerapidly than expected or if economic stagnation or decline reduces or stops rural-tourbanmigration. But even if this happens, the scale of the change in less than a centuryis phenomenal:A global urban population that grew from 737 million in 1950 to around 3.5billion today and to an expected 5 billion by 2030.Photo opposite page:Slum dwellers in thecities of low- andmiddle-income nationsare among the mostvulnerable to risksstemming from naturalhazards, disease andinadequate supportservices. Rocinha,shown here, is thelargest favela, or slum,in the Brazilian megacity,Rio de Janeiro,and is home to anestimated 250,000people.© BenoitMatsha-Carpentier/IFRCWorld Disasters Report 2010 – Focus on urban risk31