DISASTER RISK MANAGEMENT FOR COMMUNITIES

The impacts of disaster and undernutrition are increasing. Compounded by an increase in the number of disasters, the numbers of people affected and the amount of economic damage to livelihoods is increasing and more people are being displaced and are experiencing longer periods of vulnerability.

Evolving regional and global drivers, including climate change, environmental degradation, market fragility, economic marginalisation and unplanned urbanisation, are exposing more people to more frequent hazards, whilst incrementally eroding the resilience of people to these hazards. Poor governance and insecurity threats magnify the components of disaster risk.

The causes of disaster and undernutrition are increasingly linked. Crisis and disaster may not directly cause undernutrition, but act to reinforce or accelerate underlying structural factors leading to undernutrition. The vulnerability of people to disaster is greatly affected by discrimination, lack of self-determination, lack of access to economic systems such as markets and institutions and policies that neglect people.

Poor governance and aid-agency practice reinforce the impact of hazards and drive long-term trends, resulting in more disasters and further risks.
Disaster losses and risk are concentrated in developing countries where most the poorest live. In these countries, marginalised and discriminated groups are particularly vulnerable to disaster and undernutrition.

Without disaster risk management, families can experience self-reinforcing spiral of poverty, undernutrition and further disaster risk. This has resulted in a backwards step in the gains made by the Millennium Development Goals and a continuous ballooning of those suffering from hunger and undernutrition.

In response to these challenges, ACF advocates for integrated DRM at community level that expands on the humanitarian mandate from saving lives to saving livelihoods and creating an enabling environment for successful development to help solve world hunger, poverty and vulnerability to disaster. Here, ACF action aims to do (i) the right thing, (ii) at the right time, (iii) in the right way, to manage the risk of disaster and undernutrition. This means aligning action towards (i) five key risk management outcomes (systematic ACF contingency planning, preparation of communities for hazards, mitigation and prevention of risk, capacity building of local institutions, minimisation of the impact of key drivers of risk), (ii) taking into account the timing of the action in the disaster cycle, and (iii) recognising that the role of communities should be adapted according to their context and wishes, whilst structuring action using programme and project cycle management.

This policy outlines the current and likely future dynamics of disaster risk, the commitment of ACF for Disaster Risk Management in communities and how to make this practice sustainable within ACF via an institutional strategy.