Reducing Disaster Risks from Natural Hazards : An Evaluation of the World Bank’s Support, Fiscal Years 2010–20
Disasters caused by natural hazards are increasingly threatening the lives and livelihoods of the world’s poor and disaster-vulnerable populations. Climate change is further exacerbating the negative impacts of disasters caused by natural hazards....
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| Format: | Report |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2022
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099414108242210628/IDU0ae4c44f709826043d80b6ac0dc408e93169a http://hdl.handle.net/10986/37921 |
| Summary: | Disasters caused by natural hazards
are increasingly threatening the lives and livelihoods of
the world’s poor and disaster-vulnerable populations.
Climate change is further exacerbating the negative impacts
of disasters caused by natural hazards. Investing in
disaster risk reduction (DRR) has strong economic and social
benefits and is essential for achieving climate change
adaptation. IEG's evaluation shows that the World Bank
is successfully supporting clients to increasingly take up
DRR actions through strategic and comprehensive country
engagement. The World Bank has developed an extensive
portfolio of DRR activities, tripling its support over
FY10-20. It focuses its DRR work on countries with the most
serious natural hazards, uses synergistic pillars of DRR
engagement, and increasingly mainstreams DRR into sector
operations. Support for DRR in IDA, small island developing
states, and IDA-FCV countries has been comprehensive. The
Bank has also shifted from post-disaster response toward
pre-disaster risk reduction. The Bank has shown that it is
able to overcome political and financial constraints to DRR
client uptake by engaging the right decision makers using
rigorous evidence and by building on disaster reconstruction
efforts. Analytical work that quantified risks, assessed
costs and benefits and communicates impacts has highly
influenced DRR uptake. However, there are gaps in coverage
for some regions, sectors, and hazards that require
attention. There are DRR coverage gaps in Europe and Central
Asia and the Middle East and North Africa for all serious
hazards. Also, while the World Bank is conducting analytical
work on the needs of disaster vulnerable groups, there has
been slow progress on incorporating their needs into
operations. There are also missed opportunities to use
conflict-sensitive approaches to mitigate conflict risks and
pursue peace-building. Also, the Bank’s frequent inability
to demonstrate the effects of its DRR activities on reduced
exposure and vulnerability has consequences on its ability
to make a development case for risk reduction. Most DRR
operations are not providing sufficient information to
establish the level of DRR being achieved, inhibiting an
understanding of how DRR contributes to development impacts,
such as reduced economic loss and mortality. IEG offers the
World Bank four recommendations to improve their performance
on disaster risk reduction: (i) Incorporate DRR activities
in regions and sectors and for hazards that exhibit
significant coverage gaps. (ii) Identify and measure the
effects of DRR activities on exposure and vulnerability to
strengthen the development case for clients facing serious
disaster risks. (iii) Integrate the needs of populations
disproportionately vulnerable to disasters caused by natural
hazards into DRR project targeting and design,
implementation, and results reporting. (iv) In countries
affected by serious natural hazards and fragility and
conflict risks, identify and assess the ways in which
hazards and conflict interrelate and use this to inform
country engagement and project design. |
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