Natural disaster

About: Natural disaster is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 5456 publications have been published within this topic receiving 104808 citations. The topic is also known as: natural calamity & natural hazard.

Natural Disasters: Mitigating Impact, Managing Risks

Abstract: This paper reviews the literature on the macroeconomic impact of natural disasters and presents the IMF's role in assisting countries coping with natural catastrophes. Focusing on seven country cases, the paper describes the emergency financing, policy support, and technical assistance provided by the Fund to help governments put together a policy response or build a macro framework to lay the foundation for recovery and/or unlock other external financing. The literature and experience suggests there are ways to strengthen policy frameworks to increase resilience to natural disaster shocks, including identifying the risks and probability of natural disasters and integrating them more explicitly into macro frame-works, increasing flexibility within fiscal frameworks, and improving coordination amongst international partners ex post and ex ante.

Landscape ecology and urban biodiversity in tropical Indonesian cities

Abstract: Indonesia has recently been faced with a number of great problems: poverty, natural disasters such as tsunami, earthquakes, flooding and typhoons, volcanic eruptions, loss of biodiversity, decreasing water quality and quantity, increased pollution, and aesthetic degradation of the landscape. These disturbances have been caused by rapid changes in land use and land cover, deforestation, the application of monoculture farming systems in commercial agriculture, urbanization, industrialization, and other types of infrastructure development. The government, urban communities and companies have promoted some programs to ameliorate the problem of environmental degradation. The government has ratified law no. 26/2007 as a commitment to sustainability; this law ensures that cities are obliged to provide green open spaces covering a minimum of 30% of urbanized areas. Many metropolitan cities have feverishly enacted policies to promote greening programs, such as those applied in Jakarta. However, a new town—Sentul City—has engaged in policies that aim to create a well-designed eco-city with urban greenery and ecological networks. This new policy is supposed to herald a better future for urban quality. It is expected that green spaces will provide environmental services: water resource management, biodiversity conservation, carbon sequestration, and landscape beauty.

Social Capital, Community Resilience, and Faith-based Organizations in Disaster Recovery

Abstract: In August of 2005, Hurricane Katina struck the Gulf Coast, flooding eighty percent of the City of New Orleans (Associated Press, 2005). This disaster that continues to be defined as the most destructive natural disaster to impact the United States in recorded history illustrated the social vulnerability of urban populations living in hazard prone regions. Moreover, the disaster illustrated that a community’s vulnerability to disasters was not only a product of the built environment’s varying resistance to disasters and a community’s physical proximity to hazards, but also a byproduct of social dynamics that contribute to the vulnerability of populations (Miller and Rivera, 2008; Cutter et al., 2009). The subsequent effects of these social dynamics, when placed under the pressure of a severe natural disaster, illustrates to both the directly affected communities and the rest of the nation, that organizational, governmental, and private sector arrangements designed to mitigate detrimental disaster affects are inadequate (Gunter and Kroll-Smith, 2007), and that the public’s reliance on governmental structures can be more detrimental to the success of community survival than self-reliance (Miller and Rivera, 2008; Rivera and Miller, 2010). As a by-product of the public’s realization that governmental structures put in place to mitigate disaster risks and aid communities in the disaster recovery process were inadequate, reliance on other types of organizations was necessary for some communities to survive. Although there are a number of different actors that played a role in the reestablishment of communities within New Orleans since the Hurricane took place, the Mary Queen of Vietnam (MQVN) Catholic Church is a prime example of how a community based organization stepped in to address the needs of its community in the wake of the disaster. This paper examines how MQVN garnered social capital within its surrounding community to pursue successful community development in the absence of governmental support, and to a certain extent in the presence of political resistance. This paper will first review the government failure and decrease in civic trust that fostered a robust third sector response in disaster recovery and redevelopment. Then, using social capital theory, the paper follows Newton’s (2001) proposition that civic distrust and confidence is derived from government and institutional performance, rather than “increasing individualism, declining social trust, or the disintegration of community life” (Newton, 1999, p. 12); and argues that the social trust fostered by MQVN empowered community solidarity, bridged social networks and successfully pursued community redevelopment initiatives in the aftermath of disasters, even when resources are restricted and local political structures are at odds with neighborhood priorities. ct will be provided by author.

Resilience—Now More than Ever

Abstract: In the northern hemisphere, the cyclone season has just ended, whereas the southern season is beginning. The 2005 Atlantic season was especially severe, as indicated by the increase in total power developed and expended by hurricanes (Emmanuel 2005). Along with an increase in the ferocity of storms, this past year has seen an unprecedented magnitude of impacts from natural disasters, including hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, fires, storms, droughts, and floods. In our most recent editorial, we wrote about the reorganization following the devastating tsunami that occurred just about a year ago in southeast Asia; this time we can point to recovery efforts in the south central United States in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Worldwide, redevelopment from natural disturbances seems to be more and more frequent (Webster et al. 2005). At the heart of society's ability to adapt and reorganize is the property of resilience (Holling 1973, Gunderson 2000, Carpenter et al. 2001, Adger et al. 2005b).