The Poverty-DR Nexus

Abstract

It should come as no surprise to learn that poorer countries have disproportionately higher risks of mortality and economic loss from disasters than rich ones, given similar levels of hazard exposure. Earlier we listed the underlying disaster risk drivers, namely, rural and urban poverty, urbanization, bad urban governance, and eco-system decline, i.e., environmental degradation, all of which are more present in poorer countries than in rich ones. The unequal distribution of these drivers translates poverty and every day risk into disaster risk. Concomitantly, the poor cannot buffer disaster losses and therefore generally become even poorer when disaster strikes. The weakness of social protection in poor countries (and increasingly in the poorer sections of rich ones) adds to this problem.