resources

Marko Scholze et al

Source

We quantify the risks of climate-induced changes in key ecosystem processes during the 21st century by forcing a dynamic global vegetation model with multiple scenarios from 16 climate models and mapping the proportions of model runs showing forest nonforest shifts or exceedance of natural variability in wildfire frequency and freshwater supply.

Chacón-Barrantes, S. et al.

Source

Following the 2004 Indian Ocean and the 2011 Tohoku earthquakes and tsunamis, there has been steady progress in tsunami science and preparedness worldwide. Currently, there are four Tsunami Warning and Mitigation Systems as Intergovernmental Coordination Groups (ICGs) coordinated by IOC/UNESCO. They include tsunami monitoring, warning, and response.

Women and Habitat Network, 2019

Source

Cities are not neutral spaces that guarantee equality for all; on the contrary, they reflect and reproduce inequalities: gender, class, ethnicity, age, nationality, sexual orientation, and their intersectionality.
Gender inequality in the city is a form of violence that has little visibility in the public sphere and is little recognized. This is why it is necessary to maintain a space for debate to encourage reflection and raise awareness about the issue, an exchange that will allow us to advance women's equality in the cities and achieve a life free of violence

Milanés Batista, Celene
Galbán Rodríguez, Liber
Olaya Coronado, Nadia J

Source

This text is proposed as a conceptual tool for disaster risk management. It seeks to advance the understanding of risk and its intervention through a process-based approach. The document is organized into three chapters: the first deals with the theoretical and conceptual aspects of risk management for disaster reduction, identifying the fundamental elements of hazards, vulnerability and risk, describing and accompanying with examples the particularities of each of them.

CEPAL

Source

This paper analyzes the socioeconomic effects of Hurricane Mitch from a gender perspective and proposes new indicators of analysis for crisis situations, which could better reflect the unequal situation of women in relation to men.

José ElPensador

Source

The Disaster Risk Management (DRM) Systems Analysis Guide provides a set of tools and methodologies to assess the existing structures and capacities of institutions in charge of Disaster Risk Management (DRM) at national, district and local levels, in order to improve their effectiveness and integrate DRM issues into development planning, with special emphasis on disaster-prone areas, vulnerable sectors and population groups. Through the strategic use of the Guide, it is expected to improve the understanding of the strengths, opportunities, weaknesses and threats facing existing DRM institutional structures and their implications for ongoing institutional change processes.

Reporte ONU

Source

The Working Group I contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report addresses the most up-to-date physical understanding of the climate system and climate change, bringing together the latest advances in climate science.

DIPECHO

Source

A global risk management policy would increase the sustainability of development aid
and reduce the need for humanitarian aid.
Advance planning for disasters is a cost-effective way to help people,
as it reduces the costs of emergency, rehabilitation and
reconstruction. A successful policy would encompass both short-term
disaster preparedness measures as well as long-term development policies.

Gustavo Barrantes Castillo

Source

This essay aims to confront some beliefs rooted in public opinion about the relationship between climate change and disasters related to hydrometeorological events. Through a review of specialized literature, it is shown that the issue of disasters is more linked to a problem of increased vulnerability than to an increase in natural hazards. Despite the fact that climate change could probably increase the magnitude and frequency of natural hazards in the future, adaptation to climate change should begin by solving current vulnerability problems and by focusing on land use planning as a long-term adaptation process.

Esquivel Hernández et al.

Source

Costa Rica is a nation with a vast wealth of water resources; however, recently the country has faced water conflicts due to social, economic, legal, and political impediments in response to limited water availability during El Niño events and inefficient use of its water resources. This study presents a spatial distribution and temporal analysis of water conflicts in Costa Rica from 2005 to 2015. In total, 719 water conflicts were analyzed of which 54% were among private individuals and government. The largest urban areas and the Grande de Tárcoles basin were identified as the main ‘hot spot’ for the conflicts. Water conflicts were mainly caused by spills of wastewater, water pollution, water shortage, infrastructure damage, and flooding, and can be predicted using a multiple linear model including the population size and the number of hydro-meteorological events (R2=0.77).

Timothy M. Lenton et al.

Source

The growing threat of abrupt and irreversible climate changes must compel political and economic action on emissions.
Politicians, economists and even some natural scientists have tended to assume that tipping points1 in the Earth system — such as the loss of the Amazon rainforest or the West
Antarctic ice sheet — are of low probability and little understood. Yet evidence is mounting that these events could be more likely than was thought, have high impacts and are intercon- nected across different biophysical systems, potentially committing the world to long-term irreversible changes.

Eilidh J. Forster et al.

Source

Afforestation is an important greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation strategy but the efficacy of commercial forestry is disputed. Here, we calculate the potential GHG mitigation of a UK national planting strategy of 30,000 ha yr−1 from 2020 to 2050, using dynamic life cycle assessment. What-if scenarios vary: conifer-broadleaf composition, harvesting, product breakouts, and decarbonisation of substituted energy and materials, to estimate 100-year GHG mitigation.

Michelle Tigchelaar et al.

Source

Aquatic foods from marine and freshwater systems are critical to the nutrition, health, livelihoods, economies and cultures of billions of people worldwide, but climate-related hazards may compromise their ability to provide these benefits. Here, we esti- mate national-level aquatic food system climate risk using an integrative food systems approach that connects climate hazards impacting marine and freshwater capture fisheries and aquaculture to their contributions to sustainable food system outcomes. We show that without mitigation, climate hazards pose high risks to nutritional, social, economic and environmental outcomes worldwide—especially for wild-capture fisheries in Africa, South and Southeast Asia, and Small Island Developing States. For countries projected to experience compound climate risks, reducing societal vulnerabilities can lower climate risk by margins similar to meeting Paris Agreement mitigation targets. System-level interventions addressing dimensions such as governance, gender equity and poverty are needed to enhance aquatic and terrestrial food system resilience and provide investments with large co-benefits towards meeting the Sustainable Development Goals.

Yue Li et al.

Biophysical effects from deforestation have the potential to amplify carbon losses but are often neglected in carbon accounting systems. Here we use both Earth system model simulations and satellite–derived estimates of aboveground biomass to assess losses of vegetation carbon caused by the influence of tropical deforestation on regional climate across different continents.

Adolfo Quesada et al.

Source

Tropical regions are frequently affected by intense floods causing substantial human and economic losses. A proper management of floods and the prevention of disasters is, however, often hampered by a generalized pau- city of systematic discharge measurements, which in turn renders any assessment of the frequency and magni- tude of extreme floods challenging or impossible. Here, we analyze the suitability of trees impacted by floods and their growth-ring records to provide insights into past flood activity and to allow estimation of their magnitude. We base this exploratory study on the extreme floods triggered by the passage of tropical storm Nate on October 5, 2017 and investigate whether dendrogeomorphic approaches can be employed to date and quantify floods in the catchment of tropical Río General (Costa Rica).

Liliana Rainero

Source

This document presents some reflections on a human right recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and ratified by various international instruments, particularly the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which refers to the right to "adequate housing" as part of the right to an "adequate life". This implies a non-restrictive concept of housing, (i.e. not limited to "a roof over one's head") but as habitat in an integral sense, i.e. the right to an environment that guarantees services, accessibility to the different activities that make life possible, environmental quality and safety, as a human right of all people. We will refer to this right and its significance for women.

Allan Lavell

Source

During the present decade, the debate on the relationship between disasters, development, environment and sustainability, and its implications for risk and disaster management, has matured at an accelerated pace. The topic has become a point of reference and reflection, almost compulsory. This is due, among other factors, to the following circumstances: the emphasis placed on the subject of risk reduction and development during the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction, the unprecedented losses generated by disasters associated with Hurricane Andrew in Florida, the Mississippi River floods and the Northridge and Kobe earthquakes, the generally accepted fact, that the number and impact of disasters is rapidly increasing worldwide, the idea that factors such as global climate change, the introduction of new hazardous technologies and the marked increase in levels of social vulnerability could create conditions conducive to a dramatic increase in the number of disasters in the future.

Jorge Calvo-Drago

Source

Chapter 1 presents an introduction to the risk management information and communication systems diagnosis and the proposed information and communication platform. It points out some of the limitations encountered in the research and how they were overcome. Chapter 2 presents the background of the Taiwan project through a brief chronology that begins with the "Regional Information System for Natural Disaster Prevention" approved in 2001 by the Board of Directors of CEPREDENAC and goes up to the present objectives and phases of the project.

Roberto Guerrero Compeán y Sergio Lacambra Ayuso

Source

This study provides new empirical evidence on the effect of improving the conditions in disaster risk man- agement (DRM) governance in terms of human losses resulting from disaster events. To measure govern- ance in disaster risk management, we use the Index of Governance and Public Policy in Disaster Risk Management (IGOPP ), developed by the Inter -American Development Bank, which characterizes the de- velopment of regulatory, institutional and budgetary processes for disaster risk management at the national level . This analysis use regression models of count data for 26 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean for the 1980- 2017 period.

Daniela Díaz

Source

Risk, defined as the combination of the probability of a hazard occurring and its negative consequences on people or property, is a recent concept in the field of immovable cultural heritage conservation. Each year, in geographic areas with a high risk of natural catastrophes such as the Ring of Fire or Circum Pacific, the development of comprehensive risk management plans could reduce damage to cultural property by establishing criteria for prioritizing public or private investment, and by guiding preventive conservation projects and mitigation works.

Simon Dietz et al.

Source

Climate scientists have long emphasized the importance of cli- mate tipping points like thawing permafrost, ice sheet disintegra- tion, and changes in atmospheric circulation. Yet, save for a few fragmented studies, climate economics has either ignored them or represented them in highly stylized ways. We provide unified esti- mates of the economic impacts of all eight climate tipping points covered in the economic literature so far using a meta-analytic integrated assessment model (IAM) with a modular structure. The model includes national-level climate damages from rising tem- peratures and sea levels for 180 countries, calibrated on detailed econometric evidence and simulation modeling.

Diogo Andreola Serraglio et al.

The region of Latin America and the Caribbean has long demonstrated hospitality towards those fleeing conflict and persecution within the region and from further afield. Faced with newer causes of displacement, such as the violence of organised criminal gangs and the adverse effects of climate change, Latin American and Caribbean countries are continuing to expand and adapt their protection laws and mechanisms in order to address these and other situations of displacement and to meet the differing needs of affected populations. This issue contains 31 articles on Latin America and the Caribbean, plus five ‘general’ articles on other topics.

Diogo Andreola Serraglio et al.

Source

The region of Latin America and the Caribbean has long demonstrated hospitality towards those fleeing conflict and persecution within the region and from further afield. Faced with newer causes of displacement, such as the violence of organised criminal gangs and the adverse effects of climate change, Latin American and Caribbean countries are continuing to expand and adapt their protection laws and mechanisms in order to address these and other situations of displacement and to meet the differing needs of affected populations. This issue contains 31 articles on Latin America and the Caribbean, plus five ‘general’ articles on other topics.

Miguel Pleitez

Source

Climate change and disaster risk reduction (CC/DRR for the purposes of this paper) are closely related. The increase in extreme weather events in the future is likely to increase the number and magnitude of disasters, but at the same time, existing methods and tools for DRR offer powerful capacities for adaptation to climate change

Allan Lavell y Chris Lavell

Source

This paper evolved in early April 2020 in response to the need to discuss commonalities between COVID-19 and more well-established and well-known disaster contexts, and the causal processes, actions and policies used to address them. The writing of this paper was halted for four weeks because the author collaborated with other colleagues, to write a paper on COVID-19 and risk management from the angle of political economy and government action.

José Oswaldo Franco Reina

Source

This article seeks a reflection on the need for a comprehensive approach to risk management, projecting into the future, whose main challenge will be the reduction of disaster risk with a change of approach, going from a vision linked to the unpredictability and inevitability of its occurrence, to consider it as a problem linked to the processes of productive sustainable development of organizations, communities, regions and countries, in society, which have a positive impact on the community, hand in hand with the use, planning and management of the territory they occupy. This renewed integral approach implies a fundamental component, the reduction of existing vulnerability, as well as the promotion and encouragement of schemes for the transformation of society.

Daniel Calderón Ramírez
Klaus Frey

Source

In Colombia, the Organic Law of Territorial Planning (LOOT) is one of the tools that allowed the restructuring of the National System of Risk Management, generating that the territorial entities could be organized in a joint management at the central level, under the principles of decentralization, coordination, complementarity and concurrence; this with the objective of promoting coordinated strategic actions towards risk awareness, risk reduction and emergency management. In this way, the LOOT has allowed improving the competencies of the territorial entities for disaster risk management, through the transfer of greater autonomy from the national level to the departments and municipalities, as well as the strengthening of municipal associations such as the case of the Metropolitan Area of the Aburrá Valley and its intermunicipal risk management plan -Red Riesgos.

Liliana Rainero

Source

Interview with Liliana Rainero (CISCSA-Women and Habitat Network Coordination LAC) by Misión Bogotá, in the framework of the II International Conference "Safe Cities for Women and Girls", held in November 2004, in Bogotá (Colombia).

Alexandre K. Magnan et al

Source

The three recent Special Reports of the IPCC provide an opportunity to understand overarching climate risk, as they cover a wide diversity of risks to natural and human systems. Here we develop a scoring system to translate qualitative IPCC risk assessments into risk scores that, when aggregated, describe global risk from climate change. By the end of this century, global climate risk will increase substantially with greenhouse gas emissions compared to today (composite risk score increase of two- and fourfold under RCP2.6 and RCP8.5, respectively). Comparison of risk levels under +1.5 °C and +2 °C suggests that every additional 0.5 °C of global warming will contribute to higher risk globally (by about a third). Societal adaptation has the potential to decrease global climate risk substantially (by about half) under all RCPs, but cannot fully prevent residual risks from increasing (by one-third under RCP2.6 and doubling under RCP8.5, compared to today

Zamora, N. et al.

Source

In Costa Rica, despite their relative low frequency, tsunamis could pose risk to coastal communities. The integration of geophysical and geological information allows the interpretation of possible rupture areas for which tsunami propagation and inundation is evaluated through numerical modeling along the Caribbean of Costa Rica and areas adjacent to the tsunamigenic ear-thquake that occurred in 1991 (Mw 7,7). The results show that the tsunami threat in the Caribbean of Costa Rica arises particularly from earthquakes generated in the North Panama Deformation Belt. In addition, it is shown that medium-magnitude earthquakes (Mw ~ 7) in high-angle faults can cause local tsunamis. This work can be used as a basis for the generation of evacuation maps and awareness of the tsunami threat in the area

Yolanda Zúñiga Arias et al.

Source

The main objective of this article is to describe the potential of the DesInventar database as a historical source. Particularly, the contributions of this "statistical repository" for research on disaster risk management with a Central American perspective are mentioned.

Max Watanabé

Source

In Latin America, the most urbanized region in the world, serious problems of poverty and inequality persist; 111 million people live in informal settlements that are highly vulnerable to disasters. 80% of the impact of disasters is felt in cities and affects mainly the poorest populations. This guide describes the complex interaction between urbanization processes and natural hazards that generate and intensify disaster risks in Latin America.

Shirley Condorhuacho

Since the adoption of the World Heritage Convention in 1972, the World Heritage List has been constantly evolving and growing and there has been a pressing need to strengthen the delivery of guidelines for the implementation of the Convention in States Parties. The various expert meetings and the findings of the Periodic Reports identify the need to further focus training and capacity-building activities on the specific areas where States Parties and World Heritage site managers need the most support. The development of the World Heritage Reference Manuals series is a response to this need.

Bárbara Mínguez García

Raquel Lejtreger

Source

This report has been prepared by Raquel Lejtreger and Bárbara Mínguez García, Disaster Risk Management (DRM)
consultants for Cultural Heritage at the World Bank, based on the exchange, discussions, survey and workshop
results carried out with professionals from the DRM sectors, cultural heritage and sustainable tourism professionals from the Central
America and Dominican Republic region, within the framework
of the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) Technical Assistance for Strengthening Cultural Heritage Resilience and Sustainable Tourism. The complete list of participants can be found in Annex I of this document.

Omar Darío Cardona

Source

This document has been produced for two main purposes: (i) to provide an overview of the current situation regarding disaster risk retention and transfer mechanisms in the Andean Subregion; and (ii) to propose a series of general and specific recommendations for each country to encourage and promote financial protection against risks and disasters. This study required consulting work that included visits to the countries, discussions, an Andean Subregional Workshop held in March 2008 in Lima, with the participation of more than 70 officials from the Subregion, and the subsequent socialization and review of the results after the workshop.

Allan Lavell

Source

Risk management, and local risk management in particular, has strongly emerged over the last four years. This has been particularly noticeable in Central America, but is also widespread in many other Latin American countries. During this time both the concept and practice has evolved, however, the diversity of approaches, interpretations and practices that have been developed, coined by the very notion of risk management, suggest that there is still no clarity and consensus as to its meaning.

Samuel Asumadu Sarkodie y et al.

Source

Climate change has become a global burden, requiring strong institutional quality and will- ingness to mitigate future impacts. Though emissions are transboundary and have the ten- dency of spreading from high emitting countries to low emitting countries, regional exposure, sensitivity, and adaptation readiness determine the extent of climate effects. The existing literature focuses on immediate drivers and damages of emission effects, failing to account for underlying mechanisms occurring via the nexus between emission levels, economic, social, and governance adaptation readiness. Here, this study broadens the scope of previous attempts and simultaneously examines climate change vulnerability across sectors including ecosystem services, food, health, human habitat, infrastructure, and water.

Løvholt et al.

Source

This paper provides a timely review of progress and ongoing research needs in tsunami hazard and risk science since the most recent major event, the Tohoku tsunami in 2011. The tsunami community has made significant progress in understanding tsunami hazard from seismic sources. However, this is only part of the inputs needed to effectively manage tsunami risk, which should be understood more holistically, including non-seismic sources, vulnerability in different dimensions and the overall societal effects, in addition to its interaction with other hazards and cascading effects. Moreover, higher standards need to be achieved as far as the management of subjective choices and uncertainty quantification, which largely govern the basis for tsunami risk decision making.

Armelle Gouritin

Source

According to the 2018 World Bank Groundswell report, by 2050 and in a worst-case scenario, more than 3 million people will be forced to move in Mexico due to climate change.Despite its magnitude, it is only recently that the Mexican political-legal framework has begun to address the phenomenon. In this contribution to the Climate Migrations blog, we report on the evolutions of the Mexican political-legal framework to address climate displacement and provide some keys for critical analysis of this framework.

SICA

Source

The main objective of this project is to define a proposal for the formulation of a joint regional policy roadmap for technological development and mission-oriented innovation. Such a roadmap will enable to face the great challenge of creating a Central American region free of plastics. In the preparation of this Project, the conceptual and methodological framework elaborated by Mietzinki, Mazzucato and Ekins (2019) has been followed, and an important part of their discussions has been taken from.

Quesada et al.

Source

River floods frequently occur when tropical cyclones hit land. Nonetheless, systematic, long-term discharge data remain rather scarce in many tropical countries, which prevents proper analysis of peak discharges occurring during floods. The Térraba catchment is the biggest and most dynamic catchment in Costa Rica. In this study, we developed regional flood-frequency analyses combining tree-ring based estimation and measurement of peak discharge at monitoring stations during tropical cyclones to derive flood quartiles. Flood quartiles were combined with the Topographic Wetness Index (TWI) to determine regional flood hazards along floodplains.

BID

Source

Disaster risk depends not only on the possibility of the occurrence of intense natural events or phenomena, but also on the conditions of vulnerability that favor or facilitate the occurrence of disasters when such phenomena occur. Vulnerability is closely linked to the social processes that take place in hazard-prone areas and usually has to do with the fragility, susceptibility or lack of resilience of the population to hazards of different types.

INFORM

Source

INFORM-LAC is a tool for understanding and assessing the risk of disasters and humanitarian crises in the countries of the region. INFORM products can be used to support prioritization and decision making related to crisis and disaster prevention, preparedness and response. In addition, the tool could be used to monitor risk trends over time. This would make it possible to see in the medium and long term the effectiveness of the actions that have been implemented to manage these risks.

Erika Pires Ramos et al.

Source

Disasters, intensified by the effects of climate change, are recurring in Latin America and the Caribbean, one of the most fragile and vulnerable regions of the planet in the face of these phenomena. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), at least 70 extreme weather events occur every year in this part of the world, while 70% of annual emergencies are weather-related. In addition, one third of the total population lives in areas at high risk of disasters.

Banco Mundial

Source

In a context of high socioeconomic and environmental vulnerability, associated with processes of inequality, poverty, inadequate land use, unplanned urbanization and environmental degradation, among others, the occurrence of natural hazards frequently translates into disasters, whose impacts in terms of human and economic losses have a major impact on the sustainability of the region's development processes.
Between 1970 and 2010, disasters associated with earthquakes, hurricanes and floods left accumulated damages and losses of more than $80 billion, and affected critical infrastructure -including schools and hospitals- and the livelihoods of Central Americans.

Beatriz Felipe Pérez

Source

This report provides continuity to the activities and publications that the Ecology and Development Foundation (ECODES), accompanied by SdeO Comunicación, has been carrying out since 2015 on the topic of climate migrations. This is the fourth research study framed in the project on climate migrations developed by both entities.

Sánchez-Murillo et al.

Source

Global bottled water consumption has largely increased (14.35 billion gallons in 2020) during the last decade since consumers are demanding healthier and safer forms of rehydration. Bottled water sources are normally labeled as mountainous and pristine mineral springs (fed by rainfall and snow/glacier melting processes), deep groundwater wells or industrial purified water. The advent of numerous international and national-based bottled water brands has simultaneously raised a worldwide awareness related to the water source and chemical content traceability Here, we present the first database of stable isotope compositions and reported chemical concentrations from imported and national-based bottled waters in Costa Rica.

Liliana Rainero et al.

Source

Referring to sustainable development implies contextualizing it within the framework of the deep economic,
political and social transformations at world level and incorporating dimensions of analysis which cannot be ignored if we consider that the concept of
sustainability implies strengthening one of the most important resources of a society:
human resources. In this sense, the active participation of men and women, without exclusion, in the
decisions that compromise local development
is one of the conditions to make it possible.

José Alfredo Chavarría Córdoba et al.

Source

Costa Rica is a country exposed to a diversity of natural and social conditions that favor disaster risk. Various actors carry out actions for its prevention and mitigation, as well as territorial planning, research, socialization, training, and attention when emergency situations arise. There is also a growing awareness of the need to establish inter- and multidisciplinary actions for effective disaster risk management (DRM), and of the relevance of the participation of the population and the various public institutions, especially local governments.

Plataforma Temática de Riesgo Urbano – UNISDR

Source

Within the framework of the first meeting of the first Session of the Regional Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction in the Americas (Panama, March 2009), a broad call was issued to local governments, institutions, organizations and individuals to submit technical articles on disaster risk management in Latin American cities. One of the main products of this call for papers is this publication, which compiles thirteen selected articles submitted by representatives of universities, research centers, NGOs and consultants from eight countries in the region (Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Uruguay and Bolivia).

Diogo Andreola Serraglio

Source

Latin America is one of the places most exposed to climate change worldwide due to the increased incidence and intensity of extreme weather events, which have caused significant human and economic losses. Socioeconomic vulnerabilities, associated with environmental risks, weaken the adaptive capacity of local communities and impact current patterns of human mobility.

Diogo Andreola Serraglio

Source

Latin America is one of the places most exposed to climate change worldwide due to the increased incidence and intensity of extreme weather events, which have caused significant human and economic losses. Socioeconomic vulnerabilities, associated with environmental risks, weaken the adaptive capacity of local communities and impact current patterns of human mobility.

CEPAL

Source

The main objective of this study is to identify the relevance of gender issues in the causes and consequences of climate change. The main results show that these are heterogeneous and in many cases aggravate the gender inequalities that historically exist in society. The differentiated impacts of the effects of global warming on men and women require public adaptation and mitigation policies that recognize the different needs of both genders and promote the mainstreaming of a gender perspective in public policies to address climate change. In this regard, some progress has been made in the region, but there is still significant room for improvement.

Kirstin Dow et al.

Source

As attention to adaptation to climate change increases, there is a growing call for adaptation approaches that focus on risk management. There is also greater recognition that the rate and magnitude of climate variability and change may exceed the limits to adaptation of socio-ecological systems. We offer an actor-centered, risk-based definition for adaptation limits in social systems.

Paul B. Siegel

Source

This paper presents and applies the social risk management (SRM) conceptual framework
to examine links between disaster risk, hazards, vulnerability, risk management, and social protection (SP). The paper makes the case that it is important to mainstream social protection policies into the disaster risk management (DRM) agenda and, vice versa as a means to improve household and community resilience to natural disasters. The paper proposes different types of actions that can help households and communities better manage risks related to natural hazards, especially by promoting SP policies and programs that could reduce vulnerability through various ex-ante actions that strengthen assets and livelihoods, and improved “planned coping”, which are ex-ante interventions that help households and communities recover and reconstruct assets and livelihoods after a hazard event is manifested.

Erica Pires Ramos et al.

Source

Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is the second most disaster-prone region in the world and Brazilranks high on the list of populations most affected by recurring climatic shocks, particularly droughts and floods’. The intense rainfall and landslides that devastated the Serrana region of Rio de Janeiro in January 2011 marked the beginning of substantial changes in Brazil’s approach to disaster management, includingnew norms, policies and structures to guide and coordinate the civil defence at national, state and local levels. In terms of disaster data, the creation of an Integrated Disaster Information System (S2ID)represented a major step towards coordination and transparency, and improved accessibility of nationaldisaster-related data. However, gaps connected to categorisation, terminology and methodology continueto challenge the achievement of reliable information regarding the impact of disasters on communities
and, specifically, on population displacement.

UNESCO

Source

Its purpose is to provide focused guidelines on the implementation of the Convention to States Parties, heritage protection authorities, local authorities, site managers and local communities directly linked to World Heritage sites, as well as other stakeholders in the process of recognition and preservation of World Heritage sites. Its purpose is to provide information and assistance to ensure that the World Heritage List is representative and credible and that inscribed properties are adequately protected and effectively managed.

Resolución aprobada por la Asamblea General de las Naciones Unidas el 3 de junio de 2015

Source

On the basis of the Hyogo Framework for Action, this Framework aims to achieve the
following outcome over the next 15 years: The substantial reduction of disaster risk and disaster losses in lives, livelihoods, health, economic, physical, social, cultural and environmental assets of people, businesses, communities and countries.

Adolfo Quesada-Román & Daniela Campos-Durán

Source

Central America is affected by geological and hydrometeorological hazards that, together with its high exposure and vulnerability, comprise risky scenarios for disasters. This region presents a significant number of casualties and economic losses due to disasters every year. We present an analysis of the origin of extensive risks (high-frequency-low-magnitude hazards occurrences) and intensive (low-frequency-high magnitude hazard occurrences) in Central America from 1990 to 2015 using the disaster databases EM-DAT and DesInventar.

Laurent Drouet et al.

Source

Mitigation pathways exploring end-of-century temperature targets often entail temperature overshoot. Little is known about the additional climate risks generated by overshooting temperature. Here we assessed the benefits of limiting overshoot. We computed the probabilistic impacts for different warming targets and overshoot levels on the basis of an ensemble of integrated assessment models. We explored both physical and macroeconomic impacts, including persistent and non-persistent climate impacts. We found that temperature overshooting affects the likelihood of many critical physical impacts, such as those associ- ated with heat extremes. Limiting overshoot reduces risk in the right tail of the distribution, in particular for low-temperature targets where larger overshoots arise as a way to lower short-term mitigation costs. We also showed how, after mid-century, overshoot leads to both higher mitigation costs and economic losses from the additional impacts. The study highlights the need to include climate risk analysis in low-carbon pathways.

Derek P. Tittensor et al.

Source

Projections of climate change impacts on marine ecosystems have revealed long-term declines in global marine animal biomass and unevenly distributed impacts on fisheries. Here we apply an enhanced suite of global marine ecosystem models from the Fisheries and Marine Ecosystem Model Intercomparison Project (Fish-MIP), forced by new-generation Earth system model outputs from Phase 6 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6), to provide insights into how projected climate change will affect future ocean ecosystems. Compared with the previous generation CMIP5-forced Fish-MIP ensemble, the new ensemble ecosystem simulations show a greater decline in mean global ocean animal biomass under both strong-mitigation and high-emissions scenarios due to elevated warming, despite greater uncertainty in net primary production in the high-emissions scenario. Regional shifts in the direction of biomass changes highlight the continued and urgent need to reduce uncertainty in the projected responses of marine ecosystems to climate change to help support adaptation planning.

Omar Bello et al.

Source

The publication is part of the activities of the project "Sustainable development paths for middle-income countries under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in Latin America and the Caribbean" (M1-32BTS-000130), executed by ECLAC in conjunction with the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and financed by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

Platform on Disaster Displacement.

Source

The Platform on Disaster Displacement (PDD) was established in July 2016 as a State-led initiative1 to follow up on the work of the Nansen Initiative2 and to support States and other stakeholders to implement the recommendations of the Nansen Initiative's Agenda for the Protection of Persons Displaced across Borders in the Context of Disasters and Climate Change (Protection Agenda)3, which was endorsed by 109 States in October 2015. The 2019-2022 Strategy is a continuation of the 2016-2019 PDD Strategy. This Strategy describes the purpose of the PDD and defines its strategic priorities, structure and working methods for the period July 1, 2019 to June 30, 2022.

Charna Furman

Source

The most important housing policies currently being applied in our country are focused on the regularization of irregular settlements, with a very important objective, which is their "integration into the city", with financial support from the IDB. Some of us technicians who are working in housing and popular habitat have been fighting for some time for housing solutions for low-income sectors in the consolidated neighborhoods of the city. One of the objectives of this line of work is, obviously, their integration into the city. This does not imply for us, to exclude the work for the regularization of settlements, but the implementation of both paths, after studies that lead to make the most appropriate decision in each case.
Algunos técnicos que estamos trabajando en vivienda y hábitat popular, hace ya tiempo estamos bregando por las soluciones habitacionales para sectores de bajos recursos en los barrios consolidados de la ciudad. Uno de los objetivos de esta línea de trabajo es, obviamente su integración en la ciudad.
Esto no implica para nosotros, excluir el trabajo para la regularización de los asentamientos, sino la implementación de ambos caminos, luego de estudios que lleven a tomar la decisión más adecuada en cada caso.

Sistema de la Integración
Centroamericana (SICA)

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Aprobada en la XXXV Reunión Ordinaria de Jefes de Estado y de Gobierno de los países del Sistema de la Integración Centroamericana, Panamá 29 y 30 de junio de 2010.

Celia Ramírez 1 y Héctor Becerril

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This paper proposes a risk prevention strategy at a local and gender-sensitive scale, seeking to contribute to delineate ways to concretize inclusive processes of prevention and risk reduction.The strategy is based on a participatory action-research conducted between 2018 and 2019 with women from Colonia Palma Sola FOVISSSTE, in the periphery of Acapulco de Juarez, Mexico. Methodologically, the work included three complementary axes of action: involvement and sensitization, diagnosis and planning, and linkage and action. This work emphasizes the importance of generating strategies sustained by engagement processes that seek to intertwine risk management and local development, and linkage processes that allow the creation of alliances with governmental and non-governmental actors. It also highlights three key challenges to the development of gender-sensitive prevention processes at the local level: breaking down gender stereotypes and roles, designing processes and activities tailored to women's interests, needs and capacities, and promoting women's empowerment, in particular by improving their self-esteem and expanding their ability to relate to and create multisectoral alliances.

Christian Birkel et al.

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Efforts to protect tropical ecosystems aim at implementing biological corridors across the national territory of Costa Rica. However, potential near-future climate change challenges the effectiveness of such conservation measures. For this purpose, we developed near-future climate change scenarios at high spatial resolution using open-access global data from the Copernicus Climate Data Store (CDS). These projections resulted from downscaling (to a 1km ² national grid) and quantile-mapping bias-correction of the Essential Climate Variables Global Circulation Model (ECV_GCM) ensemble mean from the CDS using a moderate Representative Concentration Pathway 4.5 (RCP4.5). Projections were evaluated with limited local station data and applied to generate future ecosystem indicators (Holdridge Life Zones, HLZs).

Luke J. Harrington et al.

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High-level assessments of climate change impacts aggregate multiple perils into a common framework. This requires incorporating multiple dimensions of uncertainty. Here we propose a methodology to transparently assess these uncertainties within the ‘Reasons for Concern’ framework, using extreme heat as a case study. We quantitatively discriminate multiple dimensions of uncertainty, including future vulnerability and exposure to changing climate hazards. High risks from extreme heat materialise after 1.5–2 °C and very high risks between 2–3.5 °C of warming. Risks emerge earlier if global assessments were based on national risk thresholds, underscoring the need for stringent mitigation to limit future extreme heat risks.

UNICEF

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To ensure development in the face of the impact of natural hazards, UNICEF
helps children, communities and governments to prevent, reduce and manage disaster risk, including measures to adapt to climate change.

CNE Costa Rica

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The purpose of the magazine En Torno a la Prevención is to inform through technical-scientific articles, research, best practice reports, tests, and relevant technical notes developed at national, local and international level.

BID

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This paper investigates potential avenues for reducing economic losses resulting from natural hazards, and discusses ex ante and ex post issues affecting disaster risk management. It also assesses how both types of measures can be jointly used to reduce the economic impact of disasters on sovereign governments and the IDB. The authors argue in favor of a balanced risk management strategy, which utilizes both ex ante and ex post measures to manage different risk layers. Effective reduction of disaster risk can be aided by a risk management policy that appropriately identifies at-risk parties, the level of risk, and the available responses. The bulk of the paper treats these topics in the context of the institutional and incentive issues that may affect their implementation.

Maria Bernadette Esquivel Morales

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This article analyzes the actions taken in the Central American region in the face of constant threats to cultural heritage. The intensity and frequency of natural hazards, coupled with the lack of preventive conservation and the disinterest of governments in historic buildings and traditional ways of life, increase their vulnerability. Disaster Risk Management has barely incorporated the issue of cultural heritage into global discussions.

Emmie Oliver et al

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In the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region, countries are experiencing a significant gap in investments for actions to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) of the Paris Agreement. The limited amount of capital for investment in basic infrastructure services following the COVID-19 crisis and the investment gap of nearly US$150 billion per year lead to the critical need to maximize the impact of public finance, private capital and blended forms of finance mobilized to meet these goals.

BID

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Natural hazards continue to have an impact on the development of Latin America and the Caribbean. Human and economic losses remain high and there is a continued need to design strategies that reduce risk and minimize sovereign losses as well as those experienced by the Inter-American Development Bank. The implementation of well-designed risk management strategies can reduce future damages. The appropriate use of financial tools can conduce to the attainment of the region’s development objectives in spite of the occurrence of natural hazards.

United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction UNDRR

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This publication is the first part of the Early Days of Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) initiative, supported by the the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR). It consists of
three elements:
1. This Brief History document focuses primarily on theInternational Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR): ts origins, the 1994 Yokohama Conference, the 1999 IDNDR Closing Forum the IDNDR
2. A Walk through history webpage, consisting of different timelines focusing on the early DRR work carried out by a multitude of actors.
3. DRR pioneers’ interviews, which are hosted on a specific UNDRR YouTube channel. A link is provided from Prevention Web and the UNDRR website to the interviews.

Will Steffen et al.

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We explore the risk that self-reinforcing feedbacks could push the Earth System toward a planetary threshold that, if crossed, could prevent stabilization of the climate at intermediate temperature rises and cause continued warming on a “Hothouse Earth” pathway even as human emissions are reduced. Crossing the threshold would lead to a much higher global average temperature than any interglacial in the past 1.2 million years and to sea levels significantly higher than at any time in the Holocene. We examine the evidence that such a threshold might exist and where it might be. If the threshold is crossed, the resulting trajectory would likely cause serious disruptions to ecosystems, society, and economies. Col- lective human action is required to steer the Earth System away from a potential threshold and stabilize it in a habitable interglacial-like state. Such action entails stewardship of the entire Earth System—biosphere, climate, and societies—and could include decarbonization of the global economy, enhancement of biosphere carbon sinks, behavioral changes, technological innovations, new governance arrangements, and trans- formed social values.

Nauditt et al.

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Droughts are causing severe damages to water abundant tropical countries worldwide. Their resilience to water shortages tends to be low, often due to a lack of water infrastructure. Moreover, drought characteristics and risk in tropical catchments are poorly understood, which makes it difficult to select adequate adaptation measures. Thus, reliable methodologies to evaluate spatially distributed drought risk in data scarce tropical 20 catchments are urgently needed. We combined drought hazard and vulnerability related information to assess drought risk in four rural tropical study regions, the Muriaé, subcatchment of the Paraíba do Sul in Southeast Brazil, the Tempisque-Bebedero basin in North Costa Rica, the upper part of the Magdalena basin, Colombia and the Srepok, a Mekong tributary shared by Cambodia and Vietnam. Drought hazard was defined based on three variables, daily river 25 discharge and precipitation and vegetation condition. Conditions below defined thresholds were transformed into a cumulative drought index.