Configuring Disaster Risk Reduction into Development Processes

Development is undoubtedly a core national interest and an essential goal of nations the world over. However, development processes affect vulnerability and disaster risk in considerable ways and have a huge impact, both positive and negative, on disaster risk, in kind of a 'push-pull', 'see-saw' relationship. Any development activity has the potential to either increase or decrease the disaster risk, while disasters severely limit development and set back development programs and at the same time provide many development opportunities. The evolution of the understanding of disaster risks by societies itself establishes its link with development. The current trends indicate that rush for 'development' is generating new disaster risks and the development policy and programming are not explicitly configured for risk reduction. With recent activism in disaster preparedness, much progress has been made on mitigation and response improvement, but these do not comprehensively address the development issues that are shaping disaster risk in the first place. While adequate measures are being put in place for creating awareness, mitigation and preparedness, an area that is posing a challenge the world over, is mainstreaming disaster risk reduction into development. Though the linkages between development processes and disaster risk are not difficult to visualize, predicting the outcome of development project is complex in the absence of predictive models which are difficult to develop because of the intricate relationship and interplay between the various parameters and variables of development and disaster risk. This paper attempts to examine the link between development and disaster risk and the cause effect relationship between disaster risk and development and put forth recommendations on configuring risk reduction into development processes.