Report: Int'l aid for disaster risk reduction a low priority

MANILA, Philippines - International aid for disaster risk reduction (DRR) remains a low priority and is skewed toward countries that already have revenues to fund such projects, a World Bank-funded report said.

The report entitled "Financing Disaster Risk Reduction: A 20-year story of international aid," said only a tiny fraction of overall investments in development aid went to DRR.

"DRR has been at best a very low priority over the past two decades," the report, a joint initiative of the World Bank Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery and the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), read.

According to the report, the international community committed just over $3 trillion in aid in the last 20 years.

Of this, $106.7 billion was allotted to disasters, and of that figure, $13.5 billion was allocated for risk reduction measures before disasters strike.

The amount is lower than the $23.3 billion spent on reconstruction and rehabilitation and $69.9 billion spent on response. This means that only 0.4 percent of total amount spent on international aid went to DRR.

"Essentially, for every $100 spent on development aid, just 40 cents has been invested in defending that aid from the impact of disasters," the report said.

Since 2003, DRR financing has been roughly stable at about 10 percent of overall financing on disasters each year, the report added.

It noted that the $1.1 billion financed in 2010 – one of the best years on record in terms of overall volumes – paled in comparison with expenditures on food aid, financing for programs against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, and peacekeeping.

“These are all worthy of finance in their own way, and their presentation here is not a criticism; rather it puts the low priority of DRR compared with other aid funding into perspective,” the report, written by Jan Kellett and Alice Caravani of ODI, said.

Impact on the Philippines

The report noted that the Philippines sustained damages of $4.43 billion due to disasters from 1991 to 2010. A total of 80 million people in the country have been affected by disasters, data presented by the report showed.

The Philippines got $834.6 million worth of DRR financing, making it the fourth largest recipient of aid during the period after China, Indonesia and Bangladesh.

The Philippines spent a total of $502.45 million on disaster-related emergency response and was assisted by 14 donors, including the United Nations and the World Bank.

The report cited the Philippines’s efforts to invest on disaster risk mitigation efforts.

“The reality is that in some contexts national financing of DRR outweighs financing from the international community, even when those countries are priorities for international actors,” it said. 

“For example, although Indonesia and the Philippines were, respectively, the second and fourth largest recipients of international DRR funding over the two decades, the amounts received pale into insignificance compared with financing for such activities from domestic government sources.”

Citing available data, the report said the Philippine government is investing 20 times more than the international community in DRR. 

“Much more has to be done to understand the financing of DRR in each and every country and in developing countries, the relationship between international financing and national budgeting for all types of DRM (disaster risk management) needs considerable investigation,” it said. 

“This raises questions concerning the role of the international community in financing so heavily in middle-income countries. Are there more ‘deserving’ contexts for the limited amounts of international financing available?” it added

Inequities

The report also cited inequities in the way international aid is given, noting that the poorest countries or those with the smallest annual revenue have received less than 20 percent of total DRR financing.

“Countries that are low-income, with low levels of government revenues but which have high levels of disaster risk are those that most require international assistance, regardless of the challenges of undertaking disaster risk management in these contexts,” it said.

“It is these countries where one would hope to see sustained engagement from the international community. However, unfortunately in reality this is not the case.”

The report said 12 of the 19 countries that have received only $2 per capita of DRR financing over the past 20 years are low-income countries including Sub-Saharan African countries.

The low-income countries that got less than $2 per head DRR financing were Niger, Uganda, Nepal, Malawi, Afghanistan, Benin, Burikina Faso, Ethiopia, Myanmar, Sierra Leone, Eritrea and Zimbabwe.

The Philippines, lower middle income country, got $10.78 of DRR aid per capital during the period.