Emerging climate change-related global disaster risk management initiatives

Disasters roundtable workshop "Disaster Risk Management in an Age of Climate Change", April 3, 2008:

This presentation advocates to further the integration of actions to reduce climate and disaster risks into development decisions at the World Bank and other stakeholder organizations. It characterizes this as a risk-based approach to climate change adaptation which uses models to project climate change and disaster impacts.

The presentation begins by pointing to the global trend in increased disasters caused by such agents as floods and windstorms. It argues that the global trend in increased disaster losses can only be reversed if poverty reduction is addressed and that there are a number of actions that can be taken to reduce disaster vulnerability:
- Map and avoid high-risk zones
- Build hazard-resistant structures
- Protect and develop hazard buffers (forests, reefs, etc)
- Improve early warning and response systems, and
- Build institutions and development policies and plans to actively contribute to these goals.