Disaster risk, climate change and international development: scope for, and challenges to, integration

TLDR

Integrated approaches are essential to reduce weather‑related disaster losses, achieve Millennium Development Goals, and address climate change, yet current policy responses are fragmented and often conflicting due to limited interaction, institutional overlap, and divergent language, methods, and political relevance among the three communities. This paper reviews the theoretical and policy linkages among disaster risk reduction, climate change, and development. The authors conduct a review of theoretical and policy linkages among disaster risk reduction, climate change, and development. It finds that action within one realm affects capacity in the others, and that much can be learned and shared between realms to move toward integrated, sustainable development.

Abstract

Abstract Reducing losses to weather‐related disasters, meeting the Millennium Development Goals and wider human development objectives, and implementing a successful response to climate change are aims that can only be accomplished if they are undertaken in an integrated manner. Currently, policy responses to address each of these independently may be redundant or, at worst, conflicting. We believe that this conflict can be attributed primarily to a lack of interaction and institutional overlap among the three communities of practice. Differences in language, method and political relevance may also contribute to the intellectual divide. Thus, this paper seeks to review the theoretical and policy linkages among disaster risk reduction, climate change and development. It finds that not only does action within one realm affect capacity for action in the others, but also that there is much that can be learnt and shared between realms in order to ensure a move towards a path of integrated and more sustainable development.