Critical issue: Disasters

Disaster risk reduction is one of the greatest contemporary challenges for development and poverty reduction. Poor people in developing countries are in the front line of climate change and poverty places severe limits on the ability of people to protect themselves against more frequent shocks like droughts and floods, and longer term climate trends.

Work at IDS is exploring how far the resilience of poor people to climate-related disasters and trends can be strengthened by a range of policies, including low-carbon development, allocation of adaptation funding and vulnerability analysis. It also examines at what points more profound structural change in economies and politics will be needed if societies are to adapt to climate change successfully, and how that change can be made. IDS also works in the area of children and disasters, examining how to best put children at the heart of disaster risk reduction (DRR) work as part of efforts to adapt to climate change.

Researchers at the School of Global Studies have addressed the challenge of utilizing climate model outputs, which often have high uncertainty in strategic disaster risk management (DRM). A new methodology has been developed to identify those regions, globally, which can be logically prioritized as ‘no-regrets’ for climate-related DRM.

The approach merges data on the past historical risk of climate disasters (flood and drought) with climate model projections of changes in climate extremes. The no-regrets regions can be identified as those regions where current climate-related disaster risk is high and where models agree on projections of substantial increases in climate extremes. Such information can be used in strategic planning by DRM agencies.

Meanwhile work with farmers and local communities, Senegal Red Cross, Christian Aid and the Humanitarian Futures Programme in Kenya and Senegal has led to the development of a variety of participatory methods to combine scientific and local knowledge to increase community resilience to climate related hazards.

Experts

• Terry Cannon, IDS Research Fellow
• Fran Seballos, IDS  Research Officer
• Tom Tanner, IDS Research Fellow
• Martin Todd, Professor in Climate Change, School of Global Studies
• Dominic Kniveton, Professor of Climate Science and Society, School of Global Studies

Resources

IDS Policy Brief: Children, Climate Change and Disasters

Climate Planning: a guide to climate compatible development tools

Eldis Key Issue Guide on Disaster Risk Reduction

Publications

• Ahmed, S.A. et al.,. Climate volatility and poverty vulnerability in Tanzania. Global Environmental Change, 21(1), pp.46-55, 2011.
• Cannon, T. and Mueller-Mahn, D. (2010) 'Vulnerability, Resilience and Development Discourses in Context of Climate Change', Natural Hazards 55.3:621-635, New York: Springer
• Harris, K., Seballos, F., Silva Villanueva, P., and Curmi, P., Changing Climate, Changing Disasters: Pathways Towards Integration (2012), Strengthening Climate Resilience, Brighton, IDS
• Kniveton, D.R., Visman, E., Tall, A., Diop, M. Njoroge, E and Diz, A. Dealing with uncertainty: Integratating local and scientific knowledge of the climate and weather. Disasters (in review)
• Mitchell, T.; Ibrahim, M.; Harris, K.; Hedger, M.; Polack, E.; Ahmed, A.; Hall, N.; Hawrylyshyn, K.; Nightingale, K.; Onyango, M.; Adow, M., and Sajjad Mohammed, S. (2010), Climate Smart Disaster Risk Management, Strengthening Climate Resilience, Brighton: IDS
• O’Keefe, S.A and Todd, M.C., Global assessment of future drought and flood risk in a changing climate: A simple approach to prioritising regions for 'no-regrets' action, Climatic Change (in review)
• Olorunfemi, F. B. (2010) ‘Disaster risk and climate change in Africa’, Joto Afrika 3, Arid Lands Information Network and IDS: Kenya and Brighton
• Seballos, F., Tanner, T., Tarazona M. and Gallegos, J. (2011) ‘Children and Disasters: Understanding Impact and Enabling Agency’ Children in a Changing Climate, Brighton: IDS
• Seballos, F. and Tanner, T. (2010) 'Enabling Child-Centred Agency in Disaster Risk Reduction', Children in a Changing Climate Background Paper for the GAR2011 , Brighton: IDS
• Skinner, E. (2011) ‘Gender and Climate Change’, BRIDGE Cutting Edge Pack, Brighton: IDS
• Tall, A.,Virji, H., Padgham, J., Suarez, P., Visman, E., Kniveton,D., Kamara, M., and Ait-Chellouche, Y. Bridging the Gap between Climate scientists & Communities at risk in Africa: Learning from practice through Early Warning - Early Action Workshops. Bulletin of American Meteorological Society (in review)
• Tanner, T., Garcia, M., Lazcano, J., Molina, F., Molina, G., Rodriguez, G., Tribunalo, B. and Seballos, F. (2009) 'Children's participation in community-based disaster risk reduction and adaptation to climate change', Participatory Learning and Action (PLA) 60.3:54-64, London: IIED