Abstract
Disaster scholars and practitioners have argued that disaster risk reduction (DRR) is a legitimate investment and there are multiple dividends that are associated with DRR. This paper argues that there is a need for a new policy framing that DRR investment is imperative that will generate dividends for governments and society at large. Under the auspice of the Sendai Framework for disaster risk reduction, governments around the world and international communities are urged to develop DRR strategies to not only aimed at reducing mortality and disaster losses but also provide multiple benefits to the society including achieving Sustainable Development Goals. This research aims to develop a global scale baseline of investment in disaster risk reduction worldwide. A total of 222 countries and territories are included in this study to assess their relative investment in DRR. We define DRR investment as an aggregation of three distinct investment: financial investment, social investment and early warning system investment. The study generated a global index that measures disaster risk reduction investment committed by the countries. The findings suggest that investment in disaster risk reduction remains low in high risk but low to middle - income countries in contrast to higher income countries such as the OECD group. Insights from our research suggests that the concept of entrepreneurial government is needed in order to be more ambitious in triggering, facilitating and initiating investment in disaster risk reduction in a broader framework.
Highlights
Despite efforts to achieve a substantial reduction of the impacts of a disaster, economic losses are still rising
We provide a global assessment framework adjusted from previous works (e.g. Lassa, 2011; Lassa et al, 2019) that will serve as a method to assess global baseline of disaster risk reduction (DRR) investment
The Pacific, Africa and Asia are regions associated with a low degree of financial investment While the OECD countries and Europe are associated with high degrees of financial investment, Greenland is shown to be associated with a low degree of financial investment, and this is due to lack of available data throughout the datasets to quantify the indicators
Summary
Despite efforts to achieve a substantial reduction of the impacts of a disaster, economic losses are still rising. From 1978-1998, the total of global economic loss due to ‘natural’ catastrophe was reached USD 1,313 billion and from 1998–2017 it increased to USD 2,908 billion (CRED, 2018). A data from insurance industry suggests that total economic loss since 1980 reached at least USD 5,200 billion, where more than 70 per cent of such loss were not insured (MunichRe, 2020). According to (SwissRe, 2019) the combination of disaster catastrophic loss in 2018 and 2019 were USD 316 billion, where only 47 per cent was insured. Governments’ social protection programs, charity and humanitarian industries have limitations in bearing the burden of the uninsured losses. This suggests that the affected population will obviously bear the costs
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
