From Disaster Risk Reduction to Sustainable Peace: Reducing Vulnerability and Preventing Conflict at the Local Level

Dec 4, 2017 | Florian Krampe and Roberta Scassa
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The summer of 2017 was a stark reminder that climate change exacerbates both the intensity and frequency of natural disasters—and that the most vulnerable people are most severely affected. A recent study shows that from 2004-2014, 58 percent of disaster deaths and 34 percent of people affected by disasters were in the most fragile countries, as measured by the Fragile States Index. Disasters in these countries receive considerably less media coverage than the recent hurricanes that hit the United States. This lack of attention also leads many policymakers to overlook a possible opportunity: By working together to reduce fragility and vulnerability, could we not only better prepare for disaster, but also help prevent conflict? We have the policy tools to take an integrated approach to climate, conflict, and disaster—but we need the political will to use them. Policymakers are often unable and even unwilling to acknowledge that complex emergencies—including disasters and conflicts—are the result of the convergence of multiple stresses and that these intersecting factors must be addressed together. The crisis in Lake Chad region is a sad example: In the region around the lake – whose shores border Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria – unemployment, poverty, and conflict interact with environmental change and degradation, producing one of the most severe humanitarian crises today, with more than 10.7 million people in urgent need of humanitarian assistance and around 7.2 million people facing severe food insecurity. Yet, the United Nations and most other governments have not focused on the underlying environmental factors that contribute to the region’s fragility.