45 research outputs found

    Tackling Women's Vulnerabilities through Integrating a Gender Perspective into Disaster Risk Reduction in the Built Environment

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    The majority of human and direct economic losses from natural hazards occur as a result of damage to the built environment due to the vital role that the built environment performs in serving human endeavours. One of the key reasons for people in developing countries to be more vulnerable to natural disasters than their wealthier counterparts is the limited capacities in their construction industries. Among the people in developing countries, women are evidently even more vulnerable to natural disasters. Due to higher disaster vulnerability of women, recognising the different roles, capacities, vulnerabilities and needs of women, and considering them in disaster risk reduction in the built environment is significant to reduce women’s disaster vulnerabilities. Gender mainstreaming as a way of bringing a gender perspective into disaster risk reduction can be applied to recognise the varying needs and capacities of women, and integrate them into disaster risk reduction in the built environment. The paper in this context aims to demonstrate how gender mainstreaming helps to bring a women’s perspective into disaster risk reduction in the built environment. It identifies two main steps which involve in the process, identification of women’s DRR knowledge and needs, and integration of the identified DRR knowledge and needs into DRR in the built environment. The paper provides an account of the process that the study established to incorporate a gender perspective into disaster risk reduction in the built environment based on a case study conducted in Sri Lanka. It further discusses how the social, economic, political and environmental context influences the process of gender mainstreaming in disaster risk reduction in the built environmen

    Water quality and its interlinkages with the Sustainable Development Goals

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    Interlinkages among the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) lead to important trade-offs and synergies among the goals and their underlying targets. The aim of this paper is to review the role of water quality as an agent of interlinkages among the SDGs. It was found that there are a small number of explicit interconnections, but many more inferred interlinkages between water quality and various targets. A review of case studies showed that interlinkages operate from the municipal to near global scales, that their importance is likely to increase in developing countries, and that new SDG indicators are needed to monitor them. The analysis identifies many different SDG target areas where a combined effort between the water quality community and other sectors would bring mutual benefits in achieving the water quality and other targets

    The impact of poor health on factor productivity: an empirical investigation

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    A number of recent studies have illustrated the link between health and economic growth. This paper argues that a key mechanism through which health affects growth is via total factor productivity (TFP). We first estimate TFP based on a production function and then estimate the determinants of TFP, paying particular attention to three indicators of health that are particularly problematic in developing regions: malnutrition, malaria and water borne diseases. We find the impact of poor health on TFP to be negative, significant, and robust across a wide variety of specifications
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