This document examines how disaster risks are integrated into private sector investment decisions throughout the Americas, particularly across the food and agriculture, tourism, and construction industries. Emphasis was placed on these sectors due to their economic centrality in a number of societies throughout the region, and their particular sensitivities to disaster risks. While the management of disaster risk has traditionally been viewed as the purview of government, increasingly the role of other societal actors in generating risk, facing the impact of risk, and thus sharing in the responsibility for managing risk, is also being acknowledged. Fifty-one of the world’s hundred largest economies are corporations, not countries. In Latin America and the Caribbean, nearly 90% of all economic activity is driven by the private sector. It is for this reason that this document analyzes how the private sector is planning for risk throughout the Americas. The study focused on six major cities within each of the Americas’ sub-regions: 1) Vancover, Canada and Miami, U.S. in North America; 2) San José, Costa Rica in Central America; 3) Bogotá, Colombia in the Andean Region; 4) Santiago, Chile in the Southern Cone; and 5) Kingston, Jamaica in the Caribbean. These cities were chosen based on their high population density, outstanding economic activity, and exposure to natural hazards. This research examines how emergency plans are being promoted in the private sector; whether regulatory frameworks exist to ensure that proper building codes, land use management, and consumer protections, are being followed; if quality standards in industrial safety, environmental management, and risk management exist; the degree corporate social responsibility is being promoted in the form of disaster risk management (DRM); and if business continuity measures exist to ensure day-to-day operations will be available or rapidly restored should disaster occur. The authors found that most companies engage primarily in philanthropic activities once disaster has occurred, and not in comprehensive disaster risk reduction (DRR). Most legal frameworks that exist concerning the private sector’s role in disasters are often vague. The research also discovered that over 56% of survey participants stated that they had no business continuity plan. And 36% believed that while one was desirable, other priorities were more important. Thus, this study proposes that more work be done to understand how attitudes and accountability structures impact whether or not the private sector engages in DRR.
Disaster Risk Management
Disaster Risk Reduction