Blogs

On August 27, 2015, there was little sense of anxiety or urgency in Dominica as the first rains landed on this small Eastern Caribbean island state. Tropical Storm Erika was not predicted to heavily affect Dominica – but predictions could not have been off further for its 71,000 residents.

Water-related disasters are sometimes lost from the idea of ‘water issues,’ yet they are closely aligned with five Sustainable Development Goals of poverty, hunger, urban, climate, and, of course, water.

Intense drought can devastate a country. Severe flooding can be catastrophic. Dealing with both at the same time? That’s just another day for many countries around the world that struggle to accurately predict weather- and climate-related disasters while simultaneously dealing with their effects.

Whether it is building safer schools or deploying early warning systems, disaster risk management is an integral part of caring for our most vulnerable, combating poverty, and protecting development gains.

Would you rather lie on the sand at the beach, or steal it? In Mauritius, some people chose the latter. For the small island state, illegal beach sand mining was a big problem. Companies used the sand to manufacture concrete for construction, leading to severe erosion that undermined the integrity of the entire coastline—a particularly important natural barrier for Small Island Developing States (SIDS).

In disaster risk management, the main bottleneck to risk reduction is usually not the lack of information, but rather how this information is communicated and perceived. Building on recent collaborations with artists and designers, several creative approaches were explored to engage FbF stakeholders, including games, art, and virtual reality.

Without access to affordable and well-located housing alternatives, households have no other option than to build informally, and in areas most prone to natural disasters. The World Bank organized a discussion on “Improving Housing Policies to Increase Affordability and Mitigate Climate and Disaster Risks” in Washington D.C. on March 22-23.

We may not know exactly what the world will look like in two decades, but we know this: it is going to be a world of cities. Each year, urban areas are growing by an average of more than 75 million people – more than the population of the world’s 85 smallest countries combined.

In many communities along the West African coast, it is becoming increasingly dangerous, and in some cases impossible, to live close to the sea, because the beach is disappearing at an alarming rate.

While stuck in I-66 traffic one morning, a colleague and I had a vigorous debate on the merits of open-source versus proprietary (commercial) software. I was left with the realization of how much misinformation still persists about this particular subject.