The times they are a-changing The governance arrangements adopted by many

countries, relying heavily on specialized emer-gency management organizations, are not al-ways appropriate to address disaster risk. The governance approach based on the disaster management cycle and represented by a special-ized disaster risk management sector may have reached its limit, while at the same time a new governance paradigm has yet to emerge.

Emergency management is a specialized techni-cal domain that is relevant not only to disasters but also to technological, marine and aeronauti-cal accidents, civil disturbances and other events.

However, the governance arrangements required to manage emergencies effectively are not nec-essarily appropriate to address development challenges related to urban development and environmental management. Put simply, while the fire services at the local level may be com-pletely capable of rescuing flood victims from their roofs or earthquake victims from collapsed structures, these capabilities and the underlying institutional and legislative arrangements have little connection with those required to address issues of land use or water management.

While emergency management was able to evolve as a stand-alone sector addressing the challenges of responding to accidents, techno-logical disasters and the impacts of conflict, the governance arrangements required to manage disaster risks need—by definition—to interweave with and flow through the broader governance arrangements used by countries to manage eco-nomic and social development (UNDP, 2014a). As

additional responsibilities have been assigned to specialized emergency management orga-nizations in their syncretic evolution into disas-ter risk management systems, the governance arrangements adopted by many countries have become unfit for purpose. In other words, while specialized and self-contained arrangements for disaster risk governance may be appropriate for emergency and disaster management, other aspects of disaster risk management are heavily dependent on the overall quality of governance to achieve its objectives (UNDP, 2014a; Lavell and Maskrey, 2014).

As such, while strengthening disaster risk gov-ernance may have catalysed progress in disas-ter management and contributed to a significant reduction in mortality in some countries, it has not guaranteed effectiveness and success in those areas of the HFA related to prospective risk management. Today’s governance failures may ripple through time and affect future gen-erations; this is the case with the 2008 financial crisis, which resulted from decades of failure to effectively govern increasingly interdependent financial markets and mechanisms (Turnbull and Pirson, 2011).

When the multiple mirrors that make up the hyper-reality of the disaster risk manage-ment sector begin to shatter in real disasters, it becomes clear that—in the same way that disas-ter risk is endogenous to the social and economic processes that configure it over time—managing risks cannot be separated from the broader gov-ernance of social and economic development.

Capacities for disaster risk management can-not be strengthened autonomously without ref-erence to broader governance constraints such as low levels of voice and accountability, under-resourced local governments, dysfunctional judi-cial systems, sojudi-cial conflict and economic crisis.

As this hyper-reality is revealed through the experience of risk and disaster, new forms of

managing disaster risk, new stakeholders and new forms of governance are beginning to emerge. The traditional disaster risk manage-ment sector now shares an increasingly crowd-ed space with the climate change sector, finance and planning ministries, the private sector and city governments, amongst other stakeholders and players.

The creation of the UNFCCC in 1994 as an inter-national mechanism to address global climate change soon spawned a specialized climate change sector. Climate change is an underlying driver of disaster risk, and many plans for climate change adaptation have a strong disaster risk management component (IPCC, 2012; SEI, 2014;

UNDP, 2014a). However, this sector, which is usu-ally anchored in environment ministries, is only weakly integrated with the disaster risk manage-ment sector in most countries (SEI, 2014); excep-tions include the small island states in the Pacific (UNDESA, 2014a). The climate change sector, however, has been more successful in attract-ing resources and political support and now challenges the disaster risk reduction sector for salience. Climate change adaptation has there-fore become another forum for disaster risk gov-ernance. At the same time, it remains a major challenge to reconcile the policy arenas of disas-ter risk reduction and climate change adaptation as well as climate change mitigation, economic growth and sustainable development (SEI, 2014).

Recent years have also seen a growing interest in risk financing from both the disaster risk reduc-tion and climate change sectors. Finance minis-tries, insurance regulators, international finance institutions as well as insurance, reinsurance and catastrophe modelling companies (Arnold, 2008; Cummins and Mahul, 2009; Muir-Wood, 2011; GFDRR, 2014b) have also increased their involvement in developing and extending risk financing mechanisms such as insurance, contin-gency financing and catastrophe bonds, includ-ing in regional arrangements such as CCRIF and

PCRAFI.⁶ These mechanisms have the explic-it objective of protecting social and econom-ic development against external shocks and can be interpreted as a modernization of the logic of the disaster management cycle. At the same time, finance and planning ministries have also been involved in promoting new approaches to disaster risk governance based on public investment plan-ning and evaluation (Lavell, 2014; GFDRR, no date;

UNISDR, 2009a and 2011a) and have responded to concerns regarding sustainable public invest-ment and the quality of public spending.

Since the major disasters in Japan and Thailand in 2011 exposed risks to global supply chains, interest in disaster risk reduction has increased among businesses and, more recently, in the financial sector (Ingirige et al., 2014; UNISDR, 2013a). This has led to a large number of ini-tiatives that seek to develop new forms of risk governance involving both business and govern-ment, investors and financial regulators, such as the innovative R!SE or 1-in-100 initiatives, both of which seek to make investments more risk-sen-sitive.⁷ In addition, large cities are now provid-ing spaces where the public and private sectors, disaster risk management and climate change adaptation are starting to converge.

Government statutory regulation has also been complemented by a range of voluntary stan-dards relevant to disaster risk reduction, not just in sector-specific areas such as private hous-ing, transport networks and hubs, schools, hos-pitals’ electro-technical equipment and other critical infrastructure, but also in cross-cutting areas such as environmental management (Fig-ure 6.5), corporate social responsibility and busi-ness continuity (UNECE, 2014). Both public and private organizations have begun to apply stan-dards that combine risk management with envi-ronmental and social codes of conduct and principles in areas as diverse as housing, protect-ed areas management, industry and investment portfolio management. Codes governing social

Notes

1 http://iog.ca/defining-governance.

2 For more information on local, national and regional HFA reports, see http://www.preventionweb.net/english/hyogo/

progress/?pid:73&pil:1.

3 www.duryognivaran.org.

4 http://www.unisdr.org/campaign/resilientcities.

5 Various sources:

http://www.nat-hazards-earth-syst-sci.net/11/2321/2011/

nhess-11-2321-2011.pdf;

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30453552;

http://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2014/12/12/xynthia-l- ancien-maire-de-la-faute-sur-mer-condamne-a-quatre-ans-de-prison-ferme_4539436_3244.html (accessed 11 January 2015).

6 For more information on the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk In-surance Facility, see http://www.ccrif.org/content/about-us and the Pacific Catastrophe Risk Assessment and Financing Initiative:

http://pcrafi.sopac.org/ (accessed 28 August 2014).

7 For more information on these initiatives, see www.

theriseinitiative.org and http://www.un.org/climatechange/

summit/action-areas.

and environmental responsibility are increasing-ly being adopted by businesses to enhance their value proposition (UNECE, 2014).

The way in which disaster risk management has been approached is now being challenged by these innovative efforts, most of which are cur-rently in a phase of exploration rather than con-solidation. As the HFA comes to a close, therefore, disaster risk management finds itself at some-thing of a crossroads. Disasters such as Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines in 2013 are blowing away the veils of hyper-reality to show that even countries with apparently mature and compre-hensive disaster risk governance arrangements in place are challenged by continued risk accu-mulation. The governance approach based on the disaster management cycle and represented by a specialized disaster risk management sector may have reached its limit, while at the same time a new governance paradigm has yet to emerge.

(Source: ISO, 2014.)

Figure 6.5 Uptake of environmental management system standards

A culture of prevention