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

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

Renewing Climate Planning Locally to Attend the 11th Sustainable Development Goal in the Tropics

In the last seven years, tropical cities with a climate plan have tripled compared to the previous seven years. According to the 11th United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal, climate planning should significantly increase by 2030. The Sendai framework for disaster risk reduction (2015) and the New urban agenda signed in Quito (2016) indicate how to achieve this goal through analysis, categories of plans and specific measures. This chapter identifies the main obstacles to the significant increase in tropical human settlements with a climate plan and the possible solutions. First of all, the distribution and trend at 2030 of tropical human settlements are ascertained. Then local access to information on damage, hazard, exposure, vulnerability and risk, and the consideration of these aspects in the national guides to local climate planning are verified. Lastly, the categories of plans and climate measures recommended by the United Nations are compared with those that are most common today, using a database of 401 climate plans for 338 tropical cities relating to 41 countries. The chapter highlights the fact that the prescription for treating tropical cities affected by climate change has been prepared without an accurate diagnosis. Significantly increasing climate planning must consider that small-medium human settlements in the Tropics will prevail at least until 2030. And most effort will be required from Developing and Least Developed Countries. The recommendations of the United Nations concerning the preliminary analyses ignore the fact that local authorities usually do not have access to the necessary information

Housing and resilience: Case studies from Sri Lanka

Research on housing and disasters indicate a critical need for assessing the resilience of permanent housing built after disasters. A survey of current research in this fi eld led to the development of an evaluation tool for that purpose. The analytical framework of the tool consisted of fi ve main factors-Inputs, Output, Result, Impacts and Effects, and External Factors-which are explained in this chapter. The severe impact of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami on housing in Sri Lanka and the consequent abundance of housing reconstruction projects allowed the testing of the evaluation tool there. Two case studies of post-tsunami housing reconstruction projects implemented by international NGOs were examined in Galle, southern Sri Lanka. Using the tool, it was found that both the projects had improved the resilience of the benefi ciary communities. However a number of challenges were also evident, particularly in meeting the wider needs of the benefi ciaries and coordinating with local government authorities. The importance of the evaluation tool is underscored in the global context of widespread disaster occurrence and their devastating impact on the housing sector, and the multiplicity of post-disaster housing reconstruction projects by humanitarian agencies

Adaptation to Climate Change and Managing Disaster Risk in the Caribbean and South-East Asia

This report includes the proceedings of the Seminar on Climate Change and Severe Weather Events in the Caribbean and Asia, held in Barbados at the Grand Barbados Beach Resort on July 24-25, 2003. The seminar provided a forum in which experts from the Southeast Asian and Caribbean regions discussed the current impacts of climate variability and the potential impacts of climate change on four critical economic sectors. The specialists then compared adaptation strategies and made recommendations for future actions. This report seeks to present a summary of the vulnerabilities identified in each sector, share the best adaptation practices developed in the individual countries, and present the recommendations for each sector