The Road to Recovery : The Role of Poverty in the Exposure, Vulnerability and Resilience to Floods in Accra
In June 2015, about 53,000 people were affected by unusually severe floods in the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area, Ghana. The real impact of such a disaster is a product of exposure ("Who was affected?"), vulnerability ("How much did...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2018
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/264651528401990188/The-road-to-recovery-the-role-of-poverty-in-the-exposure-vulnerability-and-resilience-to-floods-in-Accra http://hdl.handle.net/10986/29898 |
| Summary: | In June 2015, about 53,000 people were
affected by unusually severe floods in the Greater Accra
Metropolitan Area, Ghana. The real impact of such a disaster
is a product of exposure ("Who was affected?"),
vulnerability ("How much did the affected households
lose?"), and socioeconomic resilience ("What was
their ability to cope and recover?"). This study
explores these three dimensions to assess whether poor
people were disproportionally affected by the 2015 floods.
It reaches four main conclusions. (1) In the studied area,
there is no difference in annual expenditures between the
households who were affected and those who were not affected
by the flood. (2) Poorer households lost less than their
richer neighbors in absolute terms, but more when compared
with their annual expenditure level, and poorer households
are over-represented among the most severely affected
households. (3) More than 30 percent of the affected
households report not having recovered two years after the
shock, and the ability of households to recover was driven
by the magnitude of their losses, sources of income, and
access to coping mechanisms, but not by their poverty, as
measured by the annual expenditure level. (4) There is a
measurable effect of the flood on behaviors, under-mining
savings and investment in enterprises. The study concludes
with two policy implications. First, flood management could
be considered as a component of the poverty-reduction
strategy in the city. Second, building resilience is not
only about increasing income. It also requires providing the
population with coping and recovery mechanisms such as
financial instruments. A flood management program needs to
be designed to target low-resilience households, such as
those with little access to coping and recovery mechanisms,
even those who are not living in poverty before the shock. |
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