Reducing Risk: Sustainability in the Third World

1
Reducing Risk Sustainability in theThird World
Session 40
2
Session Objectives

• Understand the impacts of disasters on developing
  countries and how these impacts also affect the
  U.S.
• Understand the relationships between poverty and
  sustainability
• Understand effects of international development
  and debt management programs on disaster
  vulnerability
• Understand critiques of international development
  programs
• Be able to place Third World risk reduction
  strategies in the context of an understanding of
  international development efforts

3
Impact of Disasters on Developing Countries

• Most deaths from disasters triggered by extreme
  events take place in the Third World
• Most human lives lost in disasters are those of
  people living in Third World countries of Asia,
  Latin America, and Africa
• The cost of these disasters is less in absolute
  dollar terms than in industrialized countries,
  but are large in relation to the size of their
  respective economies and set back development
  efforts

4
Why Should the U.S. be Concerned with Reducing
Risk in the Third World?

• Moral reasons
• Concern with saving lives
• Others are more likely to assist the U.S. if it
  assists others
• Political reasons
• Some of the countries are allies, or are
  important to allies
• Sometimes there are international treaty
  obligations
• U.S. is concerned with regional security
• Large number of U.S. citizens with families live
  in many of the countries
• Citizen groups concerned with foreign interests
  in the U.S. constitute voting blocks

• Economic reasons
• U.S. corporations may have facilities in the
  affected countries
• U.S. may import an important or strategic
  commodity from the affected country
• U.S. banks may have outstanding loans to business
  or governments entities in the affected countries
• U.S. engineering and other companies may find
  lucrative contracts in the process of recovery
• Scientific reasons
• Helps scientists understand how to protect the
  U.S. from these kinds of extreme events
• The study of disasters helps protect the U.S.
  population

5
Economic Effects of Disasters

• Lower, and more erratic, yields of crops
• Lower weight gain by livestock
• Distress sales during bad years mean lower prices
• Economic distress means indebtedness at high
  interest rates and potentially loss of land
• Little money for education of children
• Poor diet and health care
• Under nutrition and poor health reduce working
  capacity
• More labor time (usually female) spent seeking
  water and fuel
• Fewer environmental amenities and goods with
  which to provide supplementary, non-farm income

6
Health and Welfare Effects of Disasters

• Disease transmission
• Degraded or marginal environment may harbor
  insect vectors of disease
• Isolated forest margin residence can expose
  humans to virulent retroviruses
• Lack of water can expose people to disease
• Exposure to unprotected sources of surface water
  can expose humans to disease
• Dust storms and low humidity is associated with
  spread of meningitis

• Disease increases poverty, by
• Reducing the ability work
• Increasing the amount of money used for health
  care and funeral expenses
• Diverting labor time to care for the ill and
  disabled
• Encouraging frequent pregnancies to make up for
  high infant and child mortality, diverting
  womens labor time from production and depleting
  their energy

7
Poverty Decreases Sustainability Through
Technology

• Overuse of land reduces natural fertility
• Overuse of limited pasture allows erosion
• Limited land and pasture make it difficult to set
  aside land as fallow
• Clearing of steeper slopes for farming or grazing
  allows water erosion
• Reliance on limited wood fuel resources
  accelerates deforestation
• Production of charcoal for urban markets
  accelerates deforestation
• Inability to use production technologies that
  abate pollution
• Inability to afford disposal of solid wastes from
  production

8
Poverty Decreases Sustainability Through Economics

• Inability to afford more concentrated energy
  forms results in the poor using less dense, less
  efficient forms
• Reliant on short-term crops for ready cash,
  farmers cannot afford to plant tree crops that
  would anchor the soil
• Poor farmers lack investment of money or labor in
  soil conservation works
• Poor herders cannot afford fencing to allow
  rotational grazing or improved seed for pasture
  improvement

9
Placing Third World Risk Reduction Strategies in
Context of International Development Efforts

• Internal contradiction with large development
  agencies some encouraging risk reduction, others
  encouraging investments which increase risk
• Little connection between disaster risk reduction
  and business as usual development activities
• Normalizing disasters make it hard to build
  into development activities that kinds of
  projects that reduce risk
• Complex humanitarian crises drain away aid
  money from BOTH normal development AND disaster
  prevention