THERE will be many more natural disasters like the typhoon that hit the Philippines last week. But they don't have to be human disasters if we get people out of harm's way.
That won't be easy. There are often powerful incentives to stay put. Exposed places are cheap: so poor people dwell in seafront shacks or on landslide-prone slopes. And environmental defences have market values: forests are torn up for timber, reefs blown up to catch fish and mangroves cleared for charcoal.
Such incentives cannot easily be removed. Nor are they just an issue for poor countries. US flood insurance is largely supported by a government programme, which is $25 billion in the red and has been accused of supporting unwise land development. But reforms enacted last year were criticised as abandoning homeowners.
In 2005, 168 countries adopted the 10-year Hyogo framework to reduce the effects of natural disasters. But the UN's head of disaster risk reduction wrote just two weeks ago that not much has happened since. As preparations to redraft the framework get under way, its authors should take a tougher line. And its signatories should take it far more seriously.
This article appeared in print under the headline "Shelter from the storm"
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