Why is understanding risk and enhancing disaster preparedness important for sustainable development?

I often emphasize the point that there can be no development without resilience, and that understanding risk and enhancing informed disaster preparedness are two critical elements in building resilience. Beyond enhancing governments' capacity to fulfill their most crucial obligation to protect their citizens' lives, investments in understanding disaster risk and improving disaster preparedness produce immediate, tangible, and measurable benefits to resilience, which is the foundation for sustainable development.

We make decisions about risk in everything we do; urbanization and territorial development, resilient and affordable housing, coastal city resilience, solid waste management, and water resource management, to name a few areas. Risk is the potential for loss, which we assess by considering three factors 1) the potential for the event to occur (hazard), 2) assets or population likely to be affected (exposure), and 3) vulnerability of the population. Having the right information about the risk (i.e., using geospatial information) is a crucial planning tool – it helps governments make the right decisions and avoid creating new risks. Our goal is to use the risk knowledge we have and inform disaster preparedness to take practical actions on the ground, to guide sustainable development and reduce the population’s vulnerability. For example, to make a more informed decision about where to build and how to build, we need good data to inform the analysis. We need good analysis to inform good design, and we need good design to build resilient buildings.

What would you say is the general state of disaster preparedness globally? Are most countries and communities prepared to respond to disasters?

Since the outbreak of the pandemic back in March 2020, almost all countries and cities we work with have stress-tested their emergency management systems, and many are learning that there is some room for improvement. What we have learned so far is that emergency preparedness and crisis response capacities and capabilities are now more critical than ever. Civil protection and DRM agencies are on the front line of supporting governments in executing their most important task: protecting their citizens.

The World Bank (WB) is currently conducting an analytical review examining two primary questions to inform future operations and support governments in improving their emergency preparedness and response system post-COVID-19:

1. What was the role of the key emergency preparedness and response actors in the COVID response (including first responders like police, firefighters, search and rescue organizations, utility companies, incident managers who coordinate response efforts, national DRM agencies/civil protection, and health systems)?
2. How did the health systems engage with emergency preparedness and response systems in the response? What worked well and what didn't work well and what are some good practices of collaboration?

It is worth mentioning that the fundamental issue is about different models along the scale of decentralization of civil protection/DRM mandates. In some countries, the most significant tension is the need for subnational authorities to have more autonomy, but also more resourcing, to be the "frontline" responders to natural disasters.

In many countries, even for health emergencies such as COVID, response activities are being led by the national or subnational disaster management agencies, supported by the legal and institutional frameworks for DRM. Still, many countries are experiencing challenges in responding to the crisis from an emergency management perspective and delivering a comprehensive response because of regulations and instruments that resulted in "gray areas" in policy and legal frameworks about the allocation of responsibility between health and DRM.

While the specific disaster response will look slightly different for each country or community, proactively planning an equitable response is essential everywhere. Pre-incident planning on how to respond to a disaster can include developing preparedness plans, emergency exercises and training, and multi-hazard early warning system development and implementation. This will require leaders at all levels - local, state, and federal - to plan and prepare robust disaster responses, especially in the context of COVID-19, and to better assess their integrated emergency management systems when addressing complex risk scenarios such as pandemics and other forms of risks. They must do all of this with limited resources while response systems may already be at capacity or overwhelmed.

Disasters impact billions of lives and cost hundreds of billions of dollars in economic losses every year. How can understanding disaster risk and enhancing preparedness save lives and cut costs?

As I mentioned above, beyond enhancing governments' capacity to fulfill their most crucial obligation to protect their citizens' lives, investments in understanding disaster risk and improving preparedness produce resilience benefits. There are four main areas involved in achieving these goals:

Public Safety - demonstrable EP&R capacity helps establish credibility for elected officials and public service ($1 on preparedness= $15 on relief)¹.

Builds institutional capacity - managing emergencies require strong coordination and vertical/horizontal information sharing. Emergency preparedness and response investments improve intra- and inter-governmental collaboration and improve affected regions' future preparedness (as opposed to relief spending). It is also important to highlight that in many cases, high visibility emergency preparedness and response investments can open the door to less visible, but equally important DRR activities.

Increasing climate change resilience - climate change brings more intense and more frequent disasters. Preparing for emergencies and disasters is a key element of increasing resilience to disasters and climate change as preparedness investments saved time for emergency response operations.

Safeguarding development - Emergency preparedness and response capacity reduce impact severity and enables early recovery. These investments can be the first line of defense for protecting previous investments and development gains ($1 on typhoon protection can prevent $105 in business property loss)².

In the context of emergency preparedness and response investments, I would also like to share a few key considerations that we observed from the COVID-19 response:

• Resilience must be systemic to be effective. Focusing on health capacity is important, but those capacity gains will not be maximized if the larger EP&R system is fragile.
• Clear accountability leads to coordinated action. Regardless of the hazard, knowing who does what, when, and how, leads to effective and efficient preparedness and response. This accountability mapping is often lacking in emergency support functions, including health.
• Capacity must be coordinated. Operating in silos quickly fails in emergency and disaster response. Strong response requires centralized coordination capacity and an understanding that coordination is different than accountability.

What particular challenges do cities face in preparing for disasters? What strategies do you recommend DRR leaders/practitioners take to better prepare for disasters?

The main challenges cities face in preparing for disasters are related to crowding, rapid growth and inadequate planning. Cities cannot always manage rapid population growth, and poor people settle illegally in hazardous areas predominantly when less dangerous areas are already occupied.

Population density is another related challenge many cities face. When people are concentrated in a limited area, a natural hazard will have a more significant impact than if people are dispersed. As we know from our work, population density in the largest cities in developing countries is high and often higher in old parts of the city such as slums, making it even more challenging to protect the population in a time of disaster.

Changes in local ecosystems due to rapid urban development is another challenge that many cities are facing. For example, a shortage of appropriate drainage systems and insufficient planning has left some cities vulnerable to natural disasters such as flash floods. In other situations, deforestation has led to hillside erosion, increasing the risk of landslides triggered by heavy rains. Overuse of groundwater resources can also lead to land subsidence, making the area more susceptible to flooding or earthquakes.

Dependency on infrastructure and services is another challenge many cities face, especially following disasters when health care and firefighting services are critical.

Inappropriate construction is also a major risk in many urban areas in developing countries. We know that in earthquakes for example, up to 80% of victims are killed by falling buildings. This is also relevant for public buildings of first responders. If the police station or fire station will not survive the earthquake or an urban flood, they will not provide the essential services following the emergency. The WB is implementing many projects around the world with a focus on the retrofitting of public buildings. Retrofitting public facilities and improving construction methods are usually effective in reducing casualties and can be done at a low cost.

Historically, the humanitarian community has filled the funding gap for emergency preparedness and response activities mainly through grants. Though impactful, this state of affairs has resulted in a lack of coherent strategy for comprehensive emergency preparedness and response investments and an unwillingness for some country governments to borrow funds to invest in preparedness.

However, government demand is steadily increasing to accept lending for systematic investments in emergency preparedness and response activities, creating an opportunity for the WB. The WB seeks to meet this demand through upstream engagement with the government counterparts to identify opportunities and entry points and leverage our global knowledge and partnerships that connect resources, expertise, and technical skills.

The most crucial aspect, in my opinion, is to address emergency preparedness systems improvements systematically, adapting to the country context and thinking about ways to make our investments more sustainable. In some cases, we found that DRR leaders implement a fragmented approach to establishing a functional system across governments' levels and departments, and we need to avoid it. We need to see it as one system working together in order to save lives.

Another strategy I would recommend DRR leaders and practitioners take to better prepare for disasters is to advocate for the enhancement of emergency preparedness and response systems by analyzing a recent emergency in the country in a collaborative manner that provides an effective platform for consolidating lessons learned by key government first responders. In some cases, we found that governments are focusing on moving from the relief phase to early recovery without taking the time to see what they can learn from the disaster response and how to improve their response to future emergencies. The Lessons Learned Exercise (LLE) is an innovative approach developed by the WB, which we use to help governments capture the lessons from their recent emergencies and improve their emergency preparedness and response capacity. From our experience in conducting this kind of exercise in different countries around the world we fund that it provides key government, private sector and emergency relief entities an opportunity to discuss the systems, policy, doctrine, procedures and experiences related to emergency preparedness and response. This is leading to collaborative recommendations for emergency preparedness and response capacity improvements.

The LLE takes a past emergency as a "focusing event" to examine emergency preparedness and response capabilities and capacities. The exercise process considers the focusing event timelines; national, provincial, municipal, and local preparedness before the event; responses to the event by government and partners; and a review of the respective outcomes. Although a single "focusing event" is proposed as a tool for engagement, the exercise will also opportunistically capture any emergency preparedness and response observations, comments, and feedback relating to other events stakeholders have participated in.

Finally, I have found that it is essential to help country leaders understand the value of improving emergency preparedness and response and investing in upgrades to their systems' capabilities and capacities. In some cases, we found that lack of understanding amongst Finance Ministries of economic justification for emergency preparedness and response investment and challenge for some government counterparts to visualize their role in preparedness and response can prevent decision-makers from supporting these investments.

Based on the WB’s global experience in this field, we found that just-in-time technical assistance, together with operational support and inventory of experience, analytical support and good practices, are useful for informing the decision-makers about these kinds of investments.

What role does the Sendai Framework play in enhancing disaster preparedness and why is the Words into Action guide, Enhancing Disaster Preparedness for Effective Response, important?

As I mentioned before, it is crucial to approach understanding risk and enhance disaster preparedness systematically and leverage global standards and benchmarks when possible and available. In that sense, the Enhancing Disaster Preparedness for Effective Response guide ensures global access to expertise, technical knowledge, and relevant practitioners' networks. It is also essential to provide governments with specific advice and practical guidance on implementing a transparent approach in accordance with the Sendai Framework.

The Sendai Framework's role in enhancing disaster preparedness is in drawing attention to the issue of DRR and acting as a planning tool to guide countries that are interested in improving their disaster preparedness. In some sense, it connects the different aspects and challenges that I highlighted in his conversation and provides a platform for the relevant global agenda. This is also relevant to the point I mentioned at the beginning of our discussion about reducing disaster risk and sustainable development. If we do not ensure that any national or local level development is risk-informed, we are just creating new risk. And the Sendai Framework is a critical tool to help to guide us in this direction.

The Sendai Framework provides clear direction and guideline that highlights prevention and government preparedness as the core of disaster risk reduction. It sets seven global targets for reducing disaster risk, paving the way for more concerted efforts to measure progress and a detailed set of indicators that support countries in collecting data to do so. In addition, the Sendai Framework helped governments agree about the need to strengthen disaster risk governance to manage risk, which is an important guiding principle that recognizes the political nature of reducing risk and requires greater transparency, accountability, and stakeholders' participation at all levels.

The World Bank has a long track record of engaging in emergency preparedness and response systems improvements, and we will be happy to continue our collaboration with UNDRR and use this guidance in our work.

¹ UNICEF/WFP Return on Investment for Emergency Preparedness Study, 2015
² UNICEF/WFP Return on Investment for Emergency Preparedness Study, 2015