|
|
- Permanent Link:
- http://dpanther.fiu.edu/dpService/dpPurlService/purl/FI13042159/00001
Notes
- Summary:
- This document focuses on the increasing linkages between disasters and under-nutrition, particularly how disasters accentuate and magnify the underlying structural forces that cause malnutrition. Action Contre la Faim (ACF) advocates for integrated disaster risk management (DRM) at the community level, moving beyond the humanitarian mandate of saving lives to include the protection of livelihoods and sustainable development as a means to address malnutrition, poverty, and vulnerability to disasters. ACF defines and analyses disaster risk using a sustainable livelihoods approach with particular emphasis on malnutrition and how communities access and control the factors that determine their livelihood choices. The document highlights how vulnerability to disasters and under-nutrition is often related to disparities in power, a lack of self-determination, poor access to markets, and the existence of institutions and policies that neglect certain segments of a population. The next section focuses on the interaction between household cycles of risk and broader contexts of risk. Households plagued by poverty generally exist in locations facing the greatest threat from natural hazards. These populations are also most likely to engage in risky livelihood strategies that increase their vulnerability to disaster, and the potential of falling deeper into poverty. This dynamic is further problematic because it is occurring within the broader context of climate change, environmental degradation, rapid population growth, unplanned urbanization, poor governance, and increasingly volatile market forces. ACF calls for integrating DRM into its responses to under-nutrition and disaster situations by understanding the dynamics of both processes in order to proactively work to lessen their impacts. ACF’s five DRM objectives are to establish contingency planning in all operations, to develop a culture of safety, to reduce vulnerability and build resilience to disasters by hazard-proofing livelihoods and ensuring equitable access to socioeconomic opportunities, to build institutional capacity at the local level, and to minimize key drivers of risk by integrating climate change adaptation, sustainable resource management, social protection, and disaster risk reduction into ACF’s activities. ACF also places significant value on the role of communities in these processes, advocating for the incorporation of indigenous knowledge in the managing of disaster risks, adopting no-regret strategies that positively impact communities whether or not they face disaster, and building their adaptive capacity by securing their access to information. ( English )
- Subject:
- Disaster Risk Management ( English )
- Citation/Reference:
- Mitchell, A. (2011). Disaster risk management for communities. Action Contre la Faim (ACF) International.
|
|
