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Development Programme in a 2007 report.
Of these, the UNDP says, most live in fragile environments such as arid or mountainous areas, often remote from markets and other services.
These people have fewer resources and have inadequate access to skills and technologies that could help them to make best use of these resources.
As a result, their income earning opportunities are limited. Their ability to diversify or adapt when circumstances change is constrained.
Also, poor people often live in risk-prone areas, such as on steep slopes, river embankments or floodplains because they cannot afford to live in safer areas.
The impacts of drought and floods, for example, are often worsened by unsustainable development such as deforestation or a combination of increasing population pressure, political tensions and economic changes that result in practices that cause environmental pollution.
In cases of hazards, the poor and their livelihoods tend to be hardest hit.
For example, the livelihoods of marginal and smallholder farmers, artisans and fishermen are affected as they lose their assets, food sources and employment or other income earning opportunities.
When disaster strikes, these poor people may be forced to take desperate measures to survive – at times abandoning their homes or selling vital land or tools on which their livelihoods depend due to loss of savings or other options.
This negatively impacts on their future recovery and each shock can drive them deeper into poverty.
The poor are also politically marginalised and do not have a voice in the policy or institutional decisions that affect their lives.
Schools, health facilities, extension support, transport and markets are usually inadequate or unavailable to people living in remote or challenging environments.
Mostly, they lack the safety nets that are taken for granted in richer and often more urbanised countries, such as savings, insurance policies or Government services to warn and protect them from disasters.
“Growing uncertainty is a further characteristic of the lives of the poorest,” says Katherine Pasteur, an international development practitioner.
Pasteur has 15 years experience in international development, specialising in sustainable livelihoods, natural resource management and disaster risk reduction, in Africa, Latin America and Asia.
In her book published in 2011, From Vulnerability to Resilience, Pasteur says: “As the world becomes more interconnected, the livelihoods of the poor can be affected by events happening in distant parts of the world. Financial markets can affect prices for staple crops in developing countries.”
Even more, policy shifts, for instance towards biofuels, can contribute to rising grain prices and food shortages in urban areas.
The impact of climate change is being felt directly by increasing numbers of people as changing seasons and more extreme weather patterns affect the natural environment that people depend on and contribute to crop failures and livestock losses, effectively tipping the balance between survival and destitution.
This means poverty, vulnerability and disasters are closely linked and cannot be viewed in isolation, says Pasteur.
There is therefore, a great need for effective disaster risk reduction. Before, there has been a substantial increase in the number of people affected by disasters and the subsequent economic losses, according to the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR). This is so due to socio-economic changes, poor urban governance, poverty and environmental degradation, climate change included.
However, “hazards are natural, disasters are not”, according to an international development organisation operating in southern Africa. Whether sudden large-scale hazards, or successions of smaller events – disasters are rarely isolated events.
“More often, they are the result of deep-rooted long – term failures of development which exacerbate the situation. Social and economic aspects of poverty underlie the causes of disaster risk,” says Dr Paradzai Bongo.
He is a lecturer in Disaster Risk and Development Management at the National University of Science and Technology (NUST) in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second largest city.
Dr Bongo says: “Resource poor people are not passive victims waiting for disasters to strike. Through effective disaster risk reduction (DRR), they can take action to protect themselves from the adverse impacts of
hazards and so manage disaster preparedness and humanitarian response.” This is called “livelihoods centred disaster risk reduction”, (LCDRR).
However, the concept of livelihood centred disaster risk reduction is relatively new in Zimbabwe.
The southern Africa region has long faced challenges of disaster risk, particularly the cumulative impacts of both natural and man-made hazards, which have destroyed the livelihoods of the most vulnerable.
“In many cases, failure to address the risks posed by prevailing hazards has impacted negatively on development initiatives,” says Dr Bongo.
Disaster risk reduction should be at the centre of development activities. Disasters are having a negative impact on attaining the Millennium Development Goals, and this provides further incentives for adopting a more holistic approach to development and disasters.
“If there is no proper disaster risk reduction planning and management, advances made in past poverty reduction programmes can be reversed by the impact of known hazards,” adds Dr Bongo.
It is important for all development practitioners to re-think their development initiatives with a focus on disaster risk reduction.
Historically, international concern and attention tended to focus on disaster events, rather than preparing for disasters.
Whilst preparedness has been encouraged, intentional activities to reduce the impact of disasters have been comparatively less. Lately, there has been a paradigm shift in development focus.
The progressive approach says that both the hazard and people’s vulnerability are the cause of disaster. Now, there is more emphasis on disaster risk reduction – reducing vulnerability and thereby the risk of disasters – as a critical part of poverty reduction.
But, what is the difference between a hazard and a disaster?
According to a 2011 publication, Livelihood Centred Disaster Risk Reduction (LCDRR): A Guide for Facilitators Based on Field Experiences in Zimbabwe, “Disasters are triggered by hazards.
Hazards are external factors or events that can impact on peoples’ lives with the potential to affect well-being or to do harm – depending on the circumstances in which they hit.”
The publication also says hazards come in many forms. “Natural hazards are weather-related or geographical in origin (for example floods, earthquakes, landslides, drought).
“Some supposedly ‘natural’ hazards are partly human induced, due to environmental degradation (for example landslides caused by deforestation, erosion, gullies exacerbated by overgrazing and veldt fires) or poorly executed infrastructure development.”
Epidemics such as HIV and AIDS, psychological traumas and technological hazards like chemical spillages, radiation, among others, are significant in some countries. Human activities are also contributing to climate change.
Zimbabwe does not suffer the extreme flooding and cyclones experienced in some parts of the world, such as in South Asia and Latin America.
But drought, flood, storm, pest, epidemics and bush/veld fire events have acute impacts. These have had adverse impacts in Zimbabwe since independence in 1980.
This, therefore, calls for mainstreaming livelihood centred approaches to disaster risk reduction.
Drought is the most frequently occurring ‘natural’ hazard in Zimbabwe, affecting economic performance, social infrastructure and the environmental resource base and ultimately, people’s livelihoods. Diseases such as cholera, malaria, measles and dysentery have had catastrophic effects in the country.
Epidemics such as HIV and AIDS are now seen as national disasters. Despite the fact that over 1,7 million people are infected by HIV and AIDS – it is given a low priority by disaster management authorities and policy makers.
Disaster management must therefore recognise disease outbreaks and HIV and AIDS, as playing a critical role of socio-economic risk and vulnerability.
A holistic approach to livelihoods must recognise this important aspect of development. For a long time now, Zimbabwe’s national disaster management coordination has been facing fragmented pieces of legislation.
The Ministry of Local Government, Rural and Urban Development, through the Civil Protection Department, coordinates disaster management, as enshrined in the Civil Protection Act of 1989.
In 2007, the Government published a Disaster Risk Management Policy Draft, which still awaits further consultation with stakeholders.
Although there have been concerted efforts towards disaster management, approaches had tended to be top-down.
The Environmental Management Agency (EMA) and the Police Force have been enforcing rules and meting out penalties.
Although communities are the ones who suffer most from effects of disasters, the declaration of national disasters have been coming from central government.
Development practitioners are calling for a bottom-up approach – an empowered community leadership should inform district authorities who in turn pass the information to the provincial, then to national authorities. The country has had little attention on the impacts of disasters on people’s livelihoods.
Efforts are now being made to integrate risk reduction into development processes and planning. In the past, the Department of Civil Protection focused on disaster preparedness and response.
There is now a realisation towards integrating the Livelihoods Centred Disaster Risk Reduction in the national strategy.
This will require substantial resources and support.
Online Reporter