Crisis Prevention and Recovery

Global Mainstreaming Initiative for Disaster Risk Reduction

Capacity Development | Mainstreaming Disaster Risk Reduction | Risk Identification and Assessment | Climate Change

To complement its support to disaster risk reduction systems at the country level, UNDP promotes efforts to integrate disaster risk reduction into national development programmes. With support of the Canadian Government, UNDP launched a Global Mainstreaming Initatitive in 2005 to strengthen the capacity of governments to integrate disaster risk reduction in national development planning and programmes. Key activities include:

Integrating disaster risk reduction into other UNDP priority areas (energy and environment, poverty reduction and democratic governance) as well as other central cross-cutting issues, including climate change and gender
Building capacities to integrate disaster risk reduction at the national level through the development of tools, such as tailored training packages and practical case studies
Promoting harmonization of disaster risk reduction approaches with key partners, including the World Bank, the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction and the ProVention Consortium

As part of its Global Mainstreaming Initiative, UNDP launched a programme in 2007 to explore the complex relationship between natural disasters and conflicts.

The conflict-disaster interface programme

Disasters and conflicts often co-exist in the same country, which can have a major impact on the approaches required to deliver successful prevention and recovery programmes.This was evident in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (after the 2002 volcanic eruption in Goma) and Sri Lanka (after the 2004 tsunami). In an effort to understand better the relationship between disasters and conflicts in these scenarios and to develop more robust approaches to programming in such contexts, UNDP launched a groundbreaking study, which will be finalized in 2008.

In 2007, the study was conducted in nine countries across four regions: Bolivia, Haiti, Indonesia, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Papua New Guinea, Sri Lanka, Sudan and Zimbabwe. The initial findings include:

The national and international response to a crisis (both disasters and conflicts) in interface scenarios can have a major impact on the scale and protracted nature of the crisis.
Clear relationships do exist between disaster and conflict. These relationships are complex and inherently unique. They are not causal in nature but can be influenced by a range of factors, including environmental and economic realities.
The impact of environmental factors will expand as the impact of climate change increases.
In the majority of observed cases, the combination of disaster and conflict, along with other factors, can generate a downward spiral of increased vulnerability and risk.

UNDP’s approach to dealing with this issue is highly context-specific, building on each UNDP country office’s capacity and knowledge of disaster and conflict risks and impacts. An increasing number of UNDP country offices are undertaking innovative programme approaches to crisis prevention and recovery issues.

Although largely in the formulation or pilot stages, these have the potential to impact positively on the relationship between disasters and conflicts. For example, in Kenya, UNDP is supporting a pilot project focusing on the linkages between armed violence and disaster risk reduction in pastoral communities. It is hoped that this approach will help reduce both the risk of violent conflict and the vulnerability to natural hazards such as floods and droughts among these communities.