Key Message
Disasters occur when hazards strike vulnerable socio-economic systems. Disaster resilience can be strengthened through careful natural resources management and sustainable livelihoods, both of which depend on effective legal and institutional arrangements.
Given the rising toll of disasters due to climate change, increasing disaster resilience is a key component of adapting to climate change.
Disaster Resilience
Natural hazards, such as earthquakes or extreme weather events, can lead to disasters when they strike vulnerable communities. Vulnerability is a product both of physical exposure to hazards and a community's capacity to cope with and recover from its impacts – i.e., its resilience.
IISD has been examining disaster resilience since 2001, predominantly through its Livelihoods and Climate Change project. Building upon this work, IISD has also begun to explore how resource rights issues, such as land ownership, affect both disaster resilience and post-disaster reconstruction efforts.
Contents
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Livelihoods and Climate Change
Climate change impacts are already being observed, signalling an urgent need for adaptive response measures that minimize current vulnerabilities and increase resilience to future change. This project promotes an integrated, bottom-up approach to adaptation that draws from four communities long tackling these issues: disaster risk reduction, environmental management, poverty reduction and climate change. -
Resource Rights and Disaster Resilience
Natural disasters such as hurricanes, tsunamis and earthquakes damage and destroy the land, sea, forest and other resources vital to peoples' livelihoods. This project investigates how clearly defined, equitable rights to land, forest and marine resources may help to increase community resilience to natural hazards and speed reconstruction after natural disasters.
Key Publication
From Conflict to Peacebuilding: the role of natural resources and the environment
» Richard Matthew, Oli Brown, David Jensen, UNEP, 2009This major report, co-authored by IISD and UNEP, discusses the key linkages between environment, conflict and peacebuilding, and provides recommendations on how these can be addressed more effectively by the international community. More...
Our Knowledge
» Themes
- Adaptation and Risk Reduction
- Climate Change and Energy
- Economics and SD
- Foreign Investment for SD
- Governance for Sustainable Development
- Internet and Technology
- International Trade
- Measurement and Assessment
- Natural Resources
- Networks & Partnerships
- Security
- Sustainable Markets
- Tomorrow's SD Leaders
» Initiatives
- Water Innovation Centre (WIC)
- The Sustainable Commodity Initiative (SCI)
- Global Subsidies Initiative (GSI)
