Natural Disasters: Your Questions Answered

October 14, 2009—Students at the Kings Preparatory School Parramatta, in Australia, sent Youthink! a few questions about natural disasters and how the World Bank handles recovery efforts. Thanks to Rina Meutia and Anna C. O'Donnell of the World Bank’s Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), for their detailed answers.

Q: How much does the World Bank per year spend to fix the damages of various natural disasters?

A: From 1984–2009 the World Bank has spent $52 billion in disaster-related projects. Out of this amount, $10 billion are specifically allocated for disaster emergency recovery loans. It is difficult to present an average cost because numbers fluctuate greatly every year depending on the number and type of disasters that have occurred.

Q: What is the list of priorities to fix first?

A: The first step after a disaster is to take care of the most pressing needs for people—food, shelter, water. This is usually taken care of by civil protection agencies in the affected countries, UN agencies such as WFP, UNHCR, UNICEF and international organizations such as the Red Cross, Red Crescent.

The World Bank mostly offers assistance to the country governments to finance their recovery and reconstruction activities. This assistance can be in a form of financial or technical services. To identify the priorities, a Post Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA) is conducted, led by the government and supported by the World Bank, UN and other agencies. This assessment provides a list of all of the damages and losses that resulted from the disaster and identifies the needs for recovery and reconstruction.

Q: Which disasters cost the most on average?

A: Every major disaster is expensive, regardless of the type. The cost of each is very much dependant on the intensity of the disaster, the location where it strikes—whether it is in urban or rural areas– the population density, and the country’s economy. Many studies show that developing countries bear greater losses than developed countries. The reason is because most governments in the least developed countries, and developing countries generally, have limited financial and technical capacity to deal with disaster impacts.

Earthquakes, tsunamis, and cyclones cause the most immediate damage to physical infrastructure. But disasters such as droughts and floods might cause bigger losses to a country’s development, as they tend to affect the agricultural sector, the source of livelihoods and the backbone to the economy of many developing countries. Earthquakes also tend to cause a lot of damage to buildings, such as schools, hospitals, and houses, as well as roads. The examples below will give some idea that it is quite impossible to determine the average cost based on disaster type.

The Joint Damage Loss and Needs Assessment estimates that the damage and losses caused by the Cyclone Sidr that hit Bangladesh in 2007 total $1.7 billion, while a similar cyclone that hit Myanmar in 2008 caused more than $4 billion in damage. Although you cannot measure it in money, it is also important to mention that in Myanmar Cyclone Nargis killed more than 100,000 people, while in Bangladesh 3,500 people died, probably because Bangladesh has a better early warning system.

Flash floods in Yemen had a $1.6 billion impact, while a series of storms and hurricanes caused $900 million of damage and losses in Haiti the same year. The Kashmir earthquake in 2005 caused an estimated $5 billion in damage, while damage and losses from the Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004 in Indonesia were estimated to be $4.5 billion.

Q: What are the individual costs? For example, electricity, water, road and buildings or anything else you spend money to fix?

A: The per unit cost to repair infrastructure–electricity, water, road and buildings–depends primarily on a country’s situation, the extent of the damage, and on the local cost of labor and materials. For example, the 2008 Cyclone Sidr in Bangladesh most severely affected the housing sector. The needs for this sector were estimated at $839 million, compared to transport and communication sector at $116 million, agriculture at $21.3 million, water supply at $ 2.3 million, and so on.

For the housing estimate, three different unit costs were used to estimate reconstruction of various types of houses. Typically, the per unit costs are determined by specialists who gather information on what was destroyed, and then work with sector experts from the country to determine the costs of recovery and reconstruction.

Often, two different costs are determined for the same item, depending on the requirements for reconstruction. The first estimates what it would cost to rebuild what was destroyed (to build back “as is”). The second estimates what it would cost to rebuild with greater disaster resiliency (to build back “better”). Building back better can cost more today, but can reduce destruction from future disasters. Examples of building back better include: retrofitting of schools, improving drainage structures on roads, strengthening embankments, building schools that also can function as shelters, creating awareness in communities, and strengthening early warning systems.

Q: Do you have any other information that you would like to share with us?

A: If you want know more about what can we do to reduce disaster risk and how this relates to a country’s development process, you may want to check www.gfdrr.org. This website also provides some joint damage and loss assessment reports for many different disasters, including the examples we cited from Bangladesh, Myanmar, Haiti, and Yemen.

To learn more about international disaster work, here are some useful websites:

• World Bank Disaster Risk Management
• The International Recovery Platform (IRP)
• International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR)
• Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED)

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