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Disaster risk, climate change and international development: scope for, and challenges to, integration

Lisa Schipper Post-Doctoral Fellow, International Water Management Institute, Sri Lanka, and Mark Pelling Senior Lecturer, Hazards, Vulnerability and Risk Research Unit, Department of Geography, King’s College London, UK

Reducing losses to weather-related disasters, meeting the Millennium Development Goals and wider human development objectives, and implementing a successful response to climate change are aims that can only be accomplished if they are undertaken in an integrated manner. Currently, policy responses to address each of these independently may be redundant or, at worst, conflicting. We believe that this conflict can be attributed primarily to a lack of interaction and institutional overlap among the three communities of practice. Differences in language, method and political relevance may also contribute to the intellectual divide. Thus, this paper seeks to review the theoretical and policy linkages among disaster risk reduction, climate change and development. It finds that not only does action within one realm affect capacity for action in the others, but also that there is much that can be learnt and shared between realms in order to ensure a move towards a path of integrated and more sustainable development.

Keywords: adaptation, climate change, development, disaster risk reduction, international policy frameworks, Millennium Development Goals, vulnerability

Introduction: three realms of action All around us, the environment is changing. The physical environment and resource availability are being affected by global environmental change, which in turn is being driven by human development and growth. It is becoming more uncertain whether in future we will be able to rely on natural resources for fundamental aspects of our livelihoods. The impacts of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita on world oil prices show how uncertainty is not restricted to local or agricultural economies. It feeds into cycles of resource degradation and poverty, affecting both human well-being and the environ-ment. In such cycles, climate change and natural hazards play significant roles, just as the state of development influences their ramifications for society and the environment. On a policy level, these three spheres of influence have become three realms of action; unfortunately, though, action often remains segregated both institutionally and from a disciplinary standpoint, thus not taking advantage of the interrelated nature of the realms. We seek to explore these relationships and to examine how and whether these realms of action can be integrated. In light of the World Conference on Disaster Reduc-tion (WCDR), held in Kobe, Japan, on 18–22 January 2005, and its outcome strategy, the ‘Hyogo Framework for Action 2005–15’, this paper compares the policy agendas

Disasters, 2006, 30(1): 19−38. © Overseas Development Institute, 2006Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA

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Lisa Schipper and Mark Pelling20 Disaster risk, climate change and international development 21

on climate change and disaster risk. It argues that both can learn from and strengthen each other by consolidating efforts to reduce effectively the risk posed by climate change and natural hazards, which will in turn support sustainable development processes. Mean-while, the development process needs to incorporate awareness and understanding of these risks in order to be sustainable. However, considerable challenges are evident. Climate change resulting from rising greenhouse gas emissions is expected to lead to increasing temperatures and changing rainfall patterns over the next century that will, among other things, significantly affect human livelihoods. Since the beginning of this millennium, natural hazards, such as hurricanes, have triggered disasters, which have reversed years of development work. Factors like changes in climate affect changes in the frequency and magnitude of hazards, and this link receives significant media and research attention. Nevertheless, vulnerability to these hazards is also increasing due to rising poverty, a growing global population, armed conflict and other underlying devel-opment issues. Therefore, while climate change is contributing to raising disaster risk, measures to mitigate the risk need to focus on reducing vulnerability in the context of development efforts. Although this is consistent with the burgeoning policy agendas on adapting to climate change and on disaster preparedness, this double effect is not often recognised. The main technical discrepancies between these two agendas are:

• that climate change policy deals exclusively with climate-related hazards and their impacts;

• the time frames for reactive adaptations to climate change and disasters are distinct—disaster impacts are relatively immediate and concentrated, whereas the consequences of climate change may evolve, along with social change, over a longer time scale; and

• that disaster risk reduction has to date focused on the local and national scales—root causes of human vulnerability emanating from the global political economy have not been adequately analysed—while climate change policy has so far prioritised mitigation, which has been predominately global in scope.

Lack of scaled integration has produced particular challenges, including the use of mitigation in disasters policy to indicate work seeking to contain local hazards (slope stabilisation or river embankments, for example) and in climate change policy to describe efforts to change human behaviour underpinning anthropocentric climate change at the global scale. This has led to differences with regard to the actors and institutional frameworks utilised for each realm of action. Disaster risk reduction is largely a task for local actors, albeit with support from national and international organisations, particu-larly in humanitarian action. Meanwhile, climate change policy is driven by the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)—an inter-national agreement ratified by 189 countries that sets out a global policy framework for climate change mitigation and adaptation with principal actors at the national level. Figure 1 summarises the relationships between disaster risk management, global and national climate change agendas and national development policy. It provides examples of pathways that connect each realm to other spheres directly and indirectly (via the third realm). For instance, successful mitigation of anthropogenic climate change can



decrease disaster risk directly by reducing weather-related uncertainty and hazard, and by diminishing the threat of asset depletion among vulnerable natural resource depend-ent societies; indirect influence comes from the impacts of climate change on national development and, consequently, the asset base available for building resilience and coping with disasters. Where disaster risk management is effective, institutional structures and management tools to respond to weather-related shocks can form the backbone of local and national adaptation strategies. Successful management of disasters will also maximise the resources available for adapting to future climate change. One should note that Figure 1 is based on the simplifying assumption that relation-ships are linear. In reality, this is often not the case. The Samaritan’s Dilemma1 is a case in point, where humanitarian aid can be distorted and used as a strategy for risk management, in preference to risk reduction. This effect has been observed frequently, including in El Salvador (Wisner, 2001). Similarly, large-scale weather-related disasters attract much popular and political attention and can be catalysts for positive change, not simply a force that erodes assets, as indicated in Figure 1. Recovery and reconstruc-tion in countries affected by the December 2004 tsunami may provide an interesting case study of this effect (Pelling and Dill, 2005). Nevertheless, Figure 1 is useful in teasing out the dominant relationships between each realm. The details of these relationships are elaborated on below.

Disaster risk management and developmentDisasters and developmentA dramatic rise in the number of events over the past decade and a geometric increase in the number of people affected by disasters associated with natural hazards documented since the beginning of reliable recording in the 1960s have been observed (IFRC, 2003). The unequal burden of disaster mortality on low-development countries has also recently been demonstrated. For example, the United Nations Development Pro-gramme (UNDP) calculates that while only 11% of those people exposed to droughts, earthquakes, floods and windstorms live in low-development countries, they account for 53% of the people who lose their lives (UNDP, 2004). Poorer countries also suffer more when economic loss is measured as a proportion of gross domestic product (GDP), although in absolute terms richer nations bear the greater proportion of losses (World Bank, 2004). Direct economic, physical and human disaster losses constitute the mainstay of disaster impact assessments, yet they only incorporate a fraction of total loss. From a purely economic standpoint, direct losses can be overshadowed by indirect impacts, a result of lost production time or market share, and secondary losses, which are felt by the regional or national economy, such as increased indebtedness or inflation. In the year following the 1998 flooding in Bangladesh, for instance, the government borrowed USD 309 million (Pelling, Özerdem and Barakat, 2002). Benson and Clay (2004) show how disasters cause distortion in national budgets, moving away from capital expen-diture towards relief and rehabilitation, based on studies in Bangladesh (Benson and



Figure 1 Climate change, disaster risk management and national development policy

linkages

Clay, 2002), Dominica (Benson and Clay, 2001) and Malawi and Zimbabwe (Benson and Clay, 1998). However, disasters triggered by natural hazards are a consequence of development failure as much as failed development is the product of disasters (UNDP, 2004). At the global scale, inequalities in international trade have undermined rural livelihoods in poorer countries while footloose capitalism is sending the same countries to the bottom of the pack vis-à-vis labour rights and environmental standards, as they race to compete for foreign direct investment (WCSDG, 2004). National and local development policy



can lead to greater disaster risk through a variety of mechanisms. Development has increased people’s exposure to hazard via the creation of unsafe urban hill slopes, coastal fringes or other marginal areas. Privatisation, public sector retrenchment and liberali-sation have pushed many people into poverty, while simultaneously reducing the state’s capacity to provide social safety nets, thus increasing vulnerability to disaster (Wisner, 2003). Efforts to reduce risk can also backfire. This is most often the case with relocation schemes, where livelihoods and social networks are disrupted (DFID, 2005). Humani-tarian relief can exacerbate risk in cases of chronic disaster (Anderson and Woodrow, 1998; Wisner, 2001). In Ethiopia and southern Africa, the distinction between develop-ment and humanitarian aid has become blurred, and millions of people face chronic food insecurity even in years of good rainfall2 (FEWS NET, 2005).

Disasters and the Millennium Development GoalsThe United Nations (UN) Millennium Declaration, adopted in 2000, notes the impor-tance of reducing ‘the number and effects of natural and man-made disasters’ (UN, 2000, para. 23). Further plans to implement the Millennium Declaration include the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), as well as recommendations on the devel-opment of early warning systems and vulnerability maps for improving research on the causes of disasters and cooperation to reduce the impacts of El Niño and La Niña, and on initiatives to encourage governments to incorporate disaster risk reduction into national planning processes (UN, 2001). International development work is currently focused on meeting the MDGs, which emerged out of the donor response of the 1990s targeting development assistance (Sherman and Aguilar, 2005). A large majority of aid and donor agencies have adopted the MDGs, as they are considered to be ‘realistic and achievable’ (Oxfam International, 2005, p. 5), although a number of critics exist (Attaran, 2005; Bendaña, 2004). This is because targets like the MDGs concentrate attention on sectoral outputs and thus risk missing cross-cutting pressures like disaster risk, which affect chances of meeting the MDGs (Pelling, 2003). Advancement towards any of the MDGs is slowed when resources are reallocated nationally or internationally for an immediate short-term disaster response. Disaster risk reduction must be incorporated, therefore, into the MDG process (ISDR, 2005). It is hoped that the financial response of donors to the 2004 tsunami does not comprise the transfer of funds from development work or less visible disaster relief support, but rather is an extension of existing bilateral support. This additional financing would help in meeting the internationally agreed target of allocating 0.7% of GDP to inter-national development, recently reinforced by the G8 at Gleneagles, Scotland (G8, 2005). More specifically, how disasters impact on the MDGs can be summarised as follows:

• MDG1 demands the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger. It is undermined by the direct impact of disasters on livelihood sustainability and the indirect impacts on macroeconomic growth and social support.

• MDG2 calls for universal primary education. Not only do disasters damage educational infrastructure and result in population displacement and the occupation of schools



due to a lack of other temporary shelter, but they can also lead to an increased need for children to work and a reduction in household assets, making schooling more expensive.

• MDG3 promotes the empowerment of women. During disasters, though, it is often women and girls who primarily have to withstand greater workloads or decreased entitlements to food within the household. In addition, the social upheaval associated with disasters can make women and girls more vulnerable to sexual violence, and without sensitive emergency relief programmes, it can reinforce power inequalities between men and women (and between other social groups) (IAW, 2005).

• MDG4 seeks to reduce child mortality. Not only are children vulnerable to injury due to hazards, such as flooding, temperature stress and food insecurity connected to drought, but undeveloped immune systems make children (and the elderly) the most susceptible to post-disaster disease. Furthermore, disasters put children at risk in societies already experiencing extreme poverty, armed conflict and/or the spread of chronic diseases like the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

• MDG5 aims to improve maternal health. Disasters that damage health infrastructure and erode household assets or produce shocks and stresses that impact on pregnant women prevent this goal from being met.

• MDG6 seeks to combat chronic diseases like HIV, malaria and tuberculosis. Cases of diseases related to environmental quality, such as malaria and tuberculosis, may increase in places prone to weather-related hazards. The risk of disease and disease-related mortality will be higher among people whose health or livelihood have already been weakened by disaster. Disaster and health risks can create vicious cycles of harm, as the individual, household and public coping capacity is eroded by repeated stresses and shocks.

• MDG7 aspires to ensure environmental sustainability. The consequences of weather-related disaster can be devastating for aquatic and land-based ecosystems. Urban infrastructure can reduce disaster risk, but in many cities where drainage, drinking water, sanitation and solid waste management are inadequate, they compound risk, while being further eroded by floods and storms.

• MDG8 calls for a global partnership for development. Among others, it identifies small island developing states (SIDS) as a special case. The future of many SIDS is threatened by sea-level rise and increased storminess associated with global climate change.

Challenges to integrating disaster risk reduction into development planningDisaster risk management most regularly refers to both disaster risk reduction (prevention, preparedness and mitigation) and humanitarian and development action (emergency response, relief and reconstruction). According to the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the most critical barriers to mainstreaming disaster risk through its incorporation into development planning are incentive, institutional and funding structures, assumptions about the risk-reducing capacity of pro-poor development and



inadequate exposure to, and information on, disaster issues (DFID, 2005). Tearfund (2003) reached similar conclusions, observing that the low priority afforded to risk reduction by development and disasters specialists was due to a lack of knowledge on, and understanding of, the cultural divide between the two realms, where risk reduction is not fully owned by either, and the perception that risk reduction is in competition with other development agendas and pressing needs. The low visibility of disaster risk reduction work in comparison to emergency relief has made it unattractive for governments chasing votes and international recognition and for non-governmental organisations (NGOs) dependent on disasters for funding. When countries declare a state of emergency, international funds are more easily avail-able, and blame gets placed on the hazard, rather than on the conditions of vulnerability that have resulted from, for example, poor governance and corruption, unchecked neo-liberal development policies and marginalisation of the poor (Schipper, 2004). However, most donors are aware of the negative image that failed investments generate, and are reluctant to become entrenched in a Samaritan’s Dilemma where aid becomes a disin-centive for preventative action. They recognise the possibility that post-disaster humani-tarian assistance can increase vulnerability in the long term (Anderson and Woodrow, 1998). Nevertheless, the political ‘brownie points’ acquired by contributing emergency assistance to countries in need also weighs on the minds of most donor governments. The institutional separation of humanitarian and development action makes it difficult for policies that build development goals into relief or make development more secure. Where new policy initiatives have encouraged change, this is often not easy. Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) provide a vehicle for integrating risk reduction into poverty alleviation programmes but so far, emphasis has been on early warning and relief, not on prevention. A notable exception is Vietnam’s PRSP, which combines education, planning and risk reduction policy (DFID, 2005). Development specialists confront challenges in carrying out effective disaster risk reduction on the ground because their attention is inevitably focused on more imme-diate needs. Furthermore, this group is wary of an agenda that might require a rethink of development practices in favour of placing more emphasis on preventive actions. However, this process would be closer to reform than revolution. Even small admin-istrative changes, like the introduction of risk assessments (direct and indirect) as part of a project appraisal methodology, are likely to make a big difference. Another assumption about disaster risk reduction is that it is already incorporated into pro-poor development. Vulnerability and poverty, though, are not the same thing (Chambers, 1989; Swift, 1989; Blaikie et al., 1994; Jaspars and Shoham, 1999). Disaster risk reduction supports the strengthening of livelihoods but takes into account that these also need to be protected against external shocks. These include the lives and livelihoods of the less poor, who are becoming vulnerable through rapid urbanisation (UNDP, 2004), as witnessed during the landslides following the 2001 earthquakes in El Salvador (Chacón, 2001). Finally, too many development actors believe that, by definition, disasters are beyond human control, a perspective resulting in powerlessness (Cannon, 1994). Despite the



fact that since the 1970s (O’Keefe et al., 1976), analysts have stressed that disasters are not a natural phenomenon, this view remains widespread (Cannon, 2000). When disasters are seen as the outcome of accumulated risk produced by years of vulnerability and underlying hazard, the case for preventative action can be made more plainly. Contributing to such problems of perspective is a lack of data on vulnerability, hazard, risk and disaster losses. Many international initiatives are pushing to overturn this barrier (IFRC, 2003), but it remains in place, particularly where tools are needed to make an economic case for risk reduction (Benson and Twigg, 2004; Pelling, 2005).

Climate change and development Just as disasters are understood to turn back the development clock through loss of infrastructure, livelihoods and psychological stress, climate change is frequently cited as one of the most serious environmental problems confronting human development (UNDP, 2002; Gómez-Echeverri, 2000; O’Riordan, 2000). In the context of the contemporary failure to address poverty adequately (Norgaard, 1994), climate change is also seen as an additional obstacle to the achievement of sustainable development in the next century. The impacts of climate change on development are expected to manifest primarily through impacts on natural resources, on which the poor depend heavily, and on human health. Temporal and spatial changes in rainfall patterns and shifts in temperatures compound existing crises facing the water and agriculture sectors due to growing populations (Molden and de Fraiture, 2004). Four main issues characterise the relationship between climate change and devel-opment:

• the role of industrialisation in causing climate change and the differential responsibility of developed and developing countries;

• the inequitable impact of climate change on developing countries; • the significant role of development issues in influencing climate change policy and

political negotiations; and • the way in which climate change interacts with other forces affecting development,

such as globalisation.

Anthropogenic climate change is a consequence of industrialisation. Thus, according to the ‘polluter pays principle’, the North should either take action to reduce its own emissions, or provide the financing necessary to achieve this. One of the greatest debates surrounding actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions has centred on whether developing countries should also be obliged to reduce their emissions; equity arguments have often been employed to reject this suggestion (Kelly and Adger, 1999; Tóth, 1999). For the moment, the UNFCCC and its 1997 Kyoto Protocol only regulate the emissions of developed countries. Some consider that ‘the only defensible allocation scheme is one which is based on equal per capita rights to the atmospheric commons’ (Sachs, 2001, p. 7). The debate on liability issues has raged since the early days of the



discussions on political climate change. Hence UNFCCC principles specifically mention the ‘common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities’ of different nations (Article 3.1), a notion that other multilateral environmental processes have recognised (Harris, 1999), and one that is enshrined in the principles of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development’s Rio Declaration (UNGA, 1992). Nonetheless, some are of the opinion that the Kyoto Protocol is a framework that ‘perpetuates international economic inequalities’ (Tonn, 2003, p. 297). Conflict between developed and developing countries over the right to develop is therefore a standard element of climate negotiations under the UNFCCC (Najam, Huq and Sobona, 2003). Part of the reason that these issues emerge is that some of the most significant impacts of climate change are expected in tropical and sub-tropical regions, where most develop-ing countries are situated (Watson et al., 1998). Limited capacity to respond adequately to changes is evidenced and perpetuated by a lack of appropriate technologies and assessments of impacts and response options. Climate change responses, particularly building adaptive capacity and technology transfer, will regularly be akin to develop-ment activities, and vice versa. Similarly, Fankhauser (1998, p. 1) notes that ‘economic development achieved in a sustainable manner could itself be regarded as an adaptation measure’, and Suarez and Ribot (2003, p. 3) suggest that ‘increased economic output . . . should eventually lead to poverty eradication and, in an indirect way, to a reduction in vulnerability to climatic extreme events’. From the reverse perspective, others say that adapting to climate change is ‘a practical means of achieving sustainable develop-ment in the longer term, and of reducing or avoiding costs of climatic hazards in the short term’ (Smit, 1993, p. 1). Sustainable development is also associated with direct vulnerability reduction (Srivastava and Heller, 2003). Thus, the UNFCCC principles state that policies and measures to address climate change ‘should be integrated with national development programmes’ (Article 3.4). In the negotiations prior to the adoption of the UNFCCC, governments noted that ‘addressing climate change can be viewed as one component of a general sustainable development strategy which aims at increasing national and regional capacity to deal with climate variability as well as long-term climate change’ (UN, 1994, para. 25). Ramakrishna (2000) makes the case that some developing countries were initially con-cerned about the focus on environmental issues and how this might ‘deflect worldwide attention from their economic problems, or even lead to the promulgation of restrictive rules that hinder their efforts to achieve sustained economic growth and a reasonable standard of living for their citizens’ (Ramakrishna, 2000, p. 48). Recognition of the sustainable development aspect of responses to climate change was therefore crucial for gaining the support of developing countries. Not unexpectedly, funding for these activities has also represented a fierce battleground, where developing countries have been accused of seeking access to ‘the treasuries of the rich North’ (Hyder, 1992, p. 327), and developed countries of not hesitating ‘to curtail the South’s development’ (Kandlikar and Sagar, 1999, p. 131). One observed effect of climate change is that, as impacts penetrate all aspects of environment, society and economy, other global trends influencing development will



reinforce the adverse effects of climate change. The most appropriate example of this is how exposure to climate change and globalisation produce a phenomenon that O’Brien and Leichenko (2000) have referred to as ‘double exposure’. In such a situation, farmers who are already vulnerable to market fluctuations influenced by international trade will be ‘double losers’ through losses in crops, livestock, land or other agricul-tural assets as a result of changes in weather patterns. Farmers who are less vulnerable to both the adverse effects of climate change and the negative impacts of globalisation will thus have the upper hand, reinforcing the path to increased poverty for the more vulnerable. A supportive institutional and policy environment at the state and international level can enable local adaptation (Pelling, 2005). Mainstreaming these issues leads to holistic rather than sectoral engagement in climate change. In the context of climate change, mainstreaming implies the integration of awareness of future climate change impacts into the existing and future policies and plans of developing countries, as well as those of, for instance, multilateral organisations and donor agencies (ADB et al., 2003). At the national and regional level, mainstreaming shifts responsibility for implementing strategies to respond to change from single ministries or agencies dealing with climate change (such as environment departments) to all sectors of government, civil society, academia and the private sector. Multilateral organisations, policymakers and donors in the UNFCCC context have embraced the concept of incorporating adaptation into the existing development agenda (Gómez-Echeverri, 2000; ADB et al., 2003). Mainstreaming, though, will not be effective if existing policy and institu-tional structures are inconsistent with the objectives of responding in a sustainable fashion to climate change and development needs. Some believe that additional and explicit mainstreaming may not be necessary, because ‘adequate development will automatically reduce the levels of relative or total risk’ (Lavell, 2004, p. 73). Consequently, it is held that risk reduction, and more specifically measures directed at the underlying macro-level causes of vulnerability, should be integrated into development policy, rather than explicit climate change adaptation strategies that seek to respond only to the ramifications of change. Watson and Ackermann (2000, p. 24) underscore that the onset of climate change ‘does not call for a different or new strategy’, as problems created by climate change will build on existing development problems. Climate change will exacerbate the problems already faced by developing countries and the response to these changes would therefore be most effective if the development ‘problems’ were tackled simultaneously. Addressing risk, such as that related to food or nutrition security, is not a new aspect of development, in terms of either planning or practice. Evidence from El Salvador indicates that a focus on the impacts of climate change alone would not contribute to facilitating development in the same way as would a focus on the underlying causes of vulnerability (Schipper, 2004). In the case of agriculture, a focus on impacts would examine changes in crop yields resulting from more or less rainfall and the ways in which societies can adapt to these varying yields. It would not address related and depen-dent issues of unemployment, poverty, lack of technical support and food security, which would be incorporated into a vulnerability approach.



Linking climate change and disaster riskAs described, both climate change and disaster risk have clear consequences for devel-opment, which can follow a path that would minimise impacts, although often this is not the case. In addition, climate change and disaster risk are related. While the media frequently portrays meteorological hazards as direct ramifications of climate change, scientists are reluctant to attribute any particular proportion of increased hazardous-ness to climate change (Adger and Brooks, 2003). Ambiguity and incompleteness of data on disaster occurrence and impact provide further scope for media and political manipulation or misinterpretation of disaster risk. Climate change affects disaster risk in two ways: short-term climate variability and its extremes influence the range and frequency of shocks that society absorbs or adjusts to, whereas longer-term variability can lead to changes in the productive base of society, particularly in natural resource dependent economies (Parry and Carter, 1985). In reality, signals of change and variability have been considered impossible to distinguish from one another (Downing, Olsthoorn and Tol, 1999; Hulme et al., 1999; Scheraga and Grambsch, 1998). Recent studies on the European heatwave of 2003 have provided some insights into distinguishing between the two signals (Stott, Stone and Allen, 2004), and these may lead to better understanding of how climate change affects variability. While events such as the heatwave represent anomalies within existing climate averages, these new research techniques may allow for the making of estimates of when such extreme events are expected. A number of scholars agree that, for all practical purposes, such as policy design, the distinction between natural variability (including extreme events) and incremental variability due to climate change is trivial, and hence responding to existing variability will initiate the necessary actions to respond to climate change (Burton and van Aalst, 1999; Smithers and Smit, 1997; Ribot, Najam and Watson, 1996; Smit, 1993). Signifi-cantly, only anthropogenic climate change, not climate variability, is included in the mandate of the UNFCCC. Hulme et al. (1999) observe that the impact of human-induced climate change on natural resources in some cases may not be as significant as that of natural climate variability. Therefore, the ‘win–win’ role of disaster risk man-agement as a response to future climate change is obvious. International commitment to reducing disaster risk was confirmed by the ‘Hyogo Framework for Action 2005–15’, which mentions climate change. So the question to ask is: how can disaster risk be reduced in order to reduce the long-term risk of climate change? The most effective way of addressing the risks posed by climate change and disasters is to lessen the underlying factors causing vulnerability to these phenomena. While it has been noted that current responses to disasters will no longer be sufficient in a changed climate, where dynamics and mean climate have shifted (Sperling and Szekely, 2005), it must also be underlined that these current responses to disasters are not suffi-cient, as there are considerable losses that have short- and long-term effects. The unpredictability generated by climate change places more emphasis on the need to identify and support generic adaptive capacity along with hazard-specific response capacity. Concepts used to denote this type of preparedness include ‘win–win’ or ‘no



regrets’ measures that address current vulnerabilities and development needs. The idea is that by increasing resilience to existing shocks and events, this type of approach will develop sufficient flexibility to allow for uncertain future scenarios to be taken into account. This is a useful approach given that numerous other development pri-orities are more urgent for poor, vulnerable societies (Ribot, Najam and Watson, 1996). It considers that ‘actions taken today to reduce vulnerability—actions which have been justified for a long time—will increase resilience and security by providing a buffer against vulnerability to future consequences of climate change’ (Ribot, 1996, p. 15). Policymakers are often faced with the need to make a decision based on trade offs and a ‘win–win’ approach is useful in this context. It also avoids the pursuit of adaptation measures without weighing up existing needs and pressures. The absence of links between policy realms creates a further challenge. For example, reconstruction efforts in Sri Lanka in response to the 2004 tsunami indicate that policymakers are not viewing the reconstruction phase as an opportunity to take into account the potential adverse effects of future climate change-induced sea-level rise in their plans, even if the Sri Lankan Coastal Conservation Department supports integration of these concerns.3 This is not surprising, as scholarly debates on the issues are not frequently linked. Literature on risk assessment is rich in discussion of the risks and impacts of various climate-related hazards, and reports on how to deal with them (Handmer, 2003). Not unexpectedly, therefore, this literature has influenced the climate change discourse since the early days. However, specific climate change and disaster risk discourses have scarcely overlapped in the policy context (UNDP, 2002). It is only recently that the connection has been made in earnest between disaster risk reduction and adaptation to climate change (cf. Sperling and Szekely, 2005). Numerous initiatives are now beginning to emerge that address both vulnerability and risk man-agement in the hazards context, as well as adaptation to climate change, including the UN’s International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR), the UNDP Havana Risk Management Network, the Vulnerability and Adaptation Resource Group and Wage-ningen University in the Netherlands. Despite the continuing low priority afforded to vulnerability reduction by bilateral and multilateral agencies, the international frame-work for funding adaptation offers an opportunity for support. While mitigation is rightly set to remain the principal arm of the UNFCCC process, the Global Environ-ment Facility has allocated USD 50 million for strengthening adaptation issues from 2005–07 (Huq, 2004). In sum, climate change and disaster risk have been separated in research due to un-certainty about the role played by climate change in determining extremes in climate variability. With scientific evidence enabling signals to be read more clearly, policymakers are slowly starting to realise the importance of taking action that can address disaster risk while also diminishing the impacts of climate change through vulnerability reduc-tion. The scholarly realms of disaster risk and climate change are also starting to merge. Differences in language and institutional turf wars remain key barriers, although efforts to bring together stakeholders in climate change and disasters research and policy-making have begun to create an opportunity for integration. Fundamental challenges



to communication between the communities of practice do remain, however. This point is further explored in the next section, which deals with the international policy and institutional processes that support disaster risk management and climate change action.

International policy processes The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change The international response to climate change has been caught up in contentious high-level political debates since the 1970s. In the context of a high degree of scientific uncertainty regarding whether or not the atmosphere was getting warmer, scientists and eventually policymakers managed to agree on an international convention, under UN auspices, to frame global measures to rising greenhouse gas emissions. The UNFCCC sets out basic principles, commitments and institutional and procedural mechanisms for its implementation (Bodansky, 1993). Signed in 1992, the treaty entered into force in 1994. The negotiating process in the late 1980s and early 1990s already highlighted doubts among numerous countries as to whether the convention was ‘seriously flawed’ (Ramakrishna, 2000, p. 53). In this political atmosphere, the negotiations have been unable to avoid entirely the main con-flicts among the various stakeholders in the process, particularly over issues of equity, liability, financing and compensation. Nevertheless, in 1997, UNFCCC states parties adopted the Kyoto Protocol to enforce reductions of greenhouse gas emissions—it finally entered into force in Feb-ruary 2005. Under this instrument, developed countries are to attain a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of at least five percent of combined emissions levels during 1990 in the period between 2008 and 2012. Just as the original controversial challenges to the convention continue to generate intense political debate, movement towards a protocol as a legal instrument for decreasing emissions was not without controversy, hence the long delay between signature and entry into force.

International disaster reduction policyThe international agenda on disaster reduction has emerged from concern about the rising economic and human costs of disasters and their association with inappropriate development. Current policy frameworks were shaped during the UN’s International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR) (1990–99), which was prompted by mounting human casualties and property damage. As set out in UN General Assembly Resolution (No. 42/169), the aim of the IDNDR was:

to reduce through concerted international action, especially in developing countries, the loss of life, property damage and social and economic disruption caused by natural disasters such as earthquakes, windstorms, tsunamis, floods, landslides, volcanic eruptions, wildfires, grass-hopper and locust infestation, drought and desertification and other calamities of natural origin (UNGA, 1987).



The initial approach of the IDNDR, however, has been criticised for continuing to place too much emphasis on the natural hazards themselves, rather than enabling an examination of vulnerability generating processes (Blaikie et al., 1994). This top-down approach was amended somewhat following the adjustment of IDNDR objec-tives during its mid-term review in Yokohama, Japan, in 1994. Review participants adopted a ‘Yokohama Message’ that ‘warned of the danger of “meagre results of an extraordinary opportunity given to the UN and its member states” during the first half of the IDNDR’ (Wisner et al., 2004, p. 21). The resulting ‘Yokohama Strategy and Plan of Action for a Safer World’ thus led to a change in the UN’s approach to mitigating disasters. Although the misnomer ‘natural disasters’ remained in the title of the IDNDR, it was in theory eliminated from the policy. Instead, human actions and the vulnerabilities of human beings were treated as the main causes of disasters. Interest in reducing disasters was maintained with the 2005 UN World Conference on Disaster Reduction. The WCDR was the culmination of the 10-year review of the Yokohama Strategy and Plan of Action. Negotiations at the WCDR resulted in a new action framework: the ‘Hyogo Framework for Action 2005–15’. While this document has significant symbolic status, it is not legally binding. Hence, the policy response to disaster risk has not led to the emergence of mechanisms with the same legal status as the UNFCCC. Only frameworks for action, not legally binding instruments, have been negotiated.

Policy processes and alternative approachesUnder the UNFCCC, disasters are only mentioned in relation to consideration of countries that are the most vulnerable to climate change—Article 4.8 says that these include nations with disaster-prone areas. While discussions on disaster risk take place frequently within the climate change community, it is mostly through awareness-raising efforts by the Secretariat of the UN ISDR and the Red Cross/Red Crescent Centre on Climate Change and Disaster Preparedness that expertise on disaster risk is filtering through. Besides the participation of these organisations in climate change conferences, the different communities of practice may not be interacting sufficiently. Many vulnerable countries have disaster management offices, focal points or ministers. These individuals often do not see climate change as an important topic requiring their consideration. Similarly, meteorologists and climate scientists frequently do not associate with disaster managers, and even less so with the humanitarian assistance community. Significant participation of various interest groups in the WCDR was most likely a consequence of increased media interest in disasters following the December 2004 tsunami, and cannot be seen as an indication that disaster risk reduction is rapidly growing in popularity. Nevertheless, overall public interest in disaster reduction has increased since the inception of the IDNDR (Olsthoorn, van der Werff and de Boer, 1994). In addition, while the climate change debate has remained in the headlines, especially since the highly publicised rejection of the Kyoto Protocol by the US in 2001, disaster policy on its own attracts only a small amount of public interest. Although climate change



policy may impact on a higher political level, the scope of the UNFCCC is narrow. While climate change policy appears to be limited by the mandate specified in the UNFCCC and Kyoto Protocol, disaster risk management has the advantage of being broader and not restricted by a legal framework. Meanwhile, the climate change policy and scientific communities have contributed significantly to the social construction of the climate change debate. The volume of research funding and output and its coor-dination through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have contributed to the visibility of climate change as a distinct political and scientific problem (Rayner and Malone, 1998). This is a problem area with its own scientific language and dominant wisdoms that have in the past acted as a barrier to understanding and involvement of the public, development and disaster communities. This is changing, though, as the increasingly high turn out of development and humanitarian NGOs in the UNFCCC negotiations demonstrates.

Conclusion: integrating the three realms? While all three communities of practice are now aware of the need to integrate both disaster risk and climate change impacts into development policy, this has not been the case historically. We have described some of the reasons for this. However, we have also said that there are prospects for greater interaction between the three realms that could lead to a more integrated agenda. Where disaster risk reduction and climate change are incorporated into development plans, policies to reduce disaster and climate change risks make sustainable development a core requirement. Remaining challenges include how to encourage both policymakers and scholarly communities of practice to interact more regularly and effectively. One potential problem in this regard centres on the role played by humanitarian assistance in addressing disaster relief as part of disaster risk management, which has been associated with dependency and short-term strategies that fail to generate autonomy incentives and ultimately deplete the resource base. This leads to faulty development and increased vulnerability to risk, and is in conflict with development and sustainable responses to vulnerability reduction. Other aspects that pose problems are the distinct ways in which the three realms are translated into policy. Climate change policy is based on a specialised UN convention that requires global cooperation in order to function; disaster risk reduction is guided by an international framework but enacted at the national or sub-national level; and development aims to meet a set of internationally agreed goals and is under wide-spread scrutiny by a range of stakeholders. Differences among involved individuals, institutions and ministries, as well as discrepancies in terms of scale, scope and legal status among these three policy realms, pose a considerable challenge to the evolution of an integrated approach to risk management and development. Ways forward do exist, though. National disaster risk management institutions and frameworks are well placed to provide a structure for climate change adaptation work. The number of national centres for disaster risk management grew, with international



support, during the IDNDR and ongoing efforts are being made to integrate disaster risk reduction into PRSPs and UN development assistance frameworks at the national level, for example by UNDP’s Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery and the UN ISDR. These show scope for establishing national focal points for climate and disaster risk reduction work embedded within development planning. There is also potential for connecting this work with the international agenda on climate change. Greater effort is also being made to bring the different communities of practice together. Moreover, the role of the Global Environment Facility is expanding to include support for national adaptation, which is categorised as essential for disaster risk reduction. Where the institutional infrastructure of disaster risk reduction can offer climate change adap-tation some established local and national focal points for policy implementation, the higher international political and public profile of climate change adaptation might generate additional impetus for innovation in international financing frameworks and international institutional structures for disaster risk reduction within a develop-ment framework, potentially bringing the three realms of disasters, climate change and development closer together.

AcknowledgementsLisa Schipper would like to thank the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research for the financial support that it provided for much of this research. The International Institute for Sustainable Development sponsored her participation at the tenth meeting of the UNFCCC Conference of Parties and at the WCDR. Mark Pelling would like to thank the Conflict and Humanitarian Affairs Department of DFID for allowing material undertaken as part of a scoping study of disaster risk reduction to be incor-porated into this paper. The authors also wish to thank two anonymous reviewers for their comments.

CorrespondenceE-mail: [email protected] (Lisa Schipper) or [email protected] (Mark Pelling).

Endnotes1 Samaritan’s Dilemma is a variant of moral hazard. Funding of disaster relief and reconstruction can

work as a negative incentive for governments not to invest in disaster risk reduction. 2 Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) and the United Nations (UN) Office for the

Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Ethiopia estimate that in years of good rainfall, between six and nine million people still require food aid, reflecting the heavy dependency evident in the country (personal communication, August 2005).

3 Personal communication with Priyanka Dissanayake, Environmental Scientist, International Water Management Institute (IWMI), Sri Lanka, 2005.



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