United Nations Study on Disaster Risk
May 17th, 2009Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.
The UN has a just released a major new report out on disaster risk. You can read about it in the NYT here and here. Here is a detail that I have not seen in the various media coverage. Chapter 4 of the report concludes:
If the underlying drivers of risk are addressed then climate change impacts could also be addressed.
What are the “underlying drivers of risk”? Chapter 6 provides the answer:
strengthening livelihood sustainability in rural areas, partnerships for urban and local governance, innovative financial mechanisms, environmental management, and community- and local-level disaster risk reduction
See also:
Bouwer, L.M., Crompton, R.P., Faust, E., Höppe, P., and Pielke, Jr.,
R. A., 2007. Confronting Disaster Losses, Science, Vol. 318, November
2, p. 753. (PDF)
May 19th, 2009 at 5:11 am
“strengthening livelihood sustainability in rural areas, partnerships for urban and local governance, innovative financial mechanisms, environmental management, and community- and local-level disaster risk reduction”
[If writing is the expression of one's thinking, what kind of statement does this quote make?]
Reading this, and the accounts in the Times, reminds me of the old joke of the blind men and the elephant. There seems to be too great a focus on the issue at hand and too little recognition of the bigger picture and competing priorities.