Studies show that a dollar invested today in disaster risk reduction saves four or more dollars in the future cost of relief and rehabilitation.
National governments have the primary responsibility for developing policies to prevent and mitigate disasters. But by using its experience in disaster situations, WFP can strengthen a government’s preparedness and add value to its disaster risk reduction strategies.
WFP’s vulnerability assessments serve as a good basis for any disaster risk reduction work. WFP can also help through its deep presence in the field. It can use its various food, cash and other instruments to help communities reinforce their resilience to disasters.
Window of opportunity
Index Insurance and Climate Risk, co-edited by Ulrich Hess, WFP's head of DRR
WFP often takes advantage of the “window of opportunity” in the aftermath of disasters to promote disaster risk reduction work. Many of WFP’s emergency response operations have disaster risk mitigation components, for example the raising of houses in flood areas, construction of water catchments, tree planting and terracing.
Disaster risk reduction often means adapting to climate change, which in turn often means preparing for more frequent disasters. WFP Food for Assets programmes often focus on watershed management, with schemes that minimize the impact of low rainfall or establish and maintain feeder roads to ensure all-weather connectivity to villages.
Similarly, Food for Training (FFT) activities can work as prevention tools, allowing a culture of safety and resilience to be infused through communities.
Weather Risk Management
In developed countries, livelihood and asset losses sustained in natural disasters are often covered by international insurance, capital markets, or simply by government budgets that act as contingency funds.
These 'weather risk transfer tools' protect livelihoods by facilitating timely support and thereby limiting the economic damage of disasters.
Many developing countries are particularly exposed to natural disaster risk, but do not make use of these risk transfer instruments. WFP tries to promote their use because the consequences of climate change will cause the exposure to natural disasters and their severity to increase. Read discussion paper
MERET
WFP’s Food for Asset programmes are often aimed at reducing risk for communities by helping to rehabilitate and protect community-level land and infrastructure. For example, the MERET project in Ethiopia targets food insecure communities in degraded fragile ecosystems that are prone to drought-related food crises. The project uses food as an incentive for labour to help regenerate vegetative cover, which increases soil water capture and helps reduce the risk of drought and flooding.
WFP’s work in DRR fits in with the organisation’s second strategic objective: “Prevent Acute Hunger and Invest in Disaster Preparedness and Mitigation Measures”.
These are the principles that guide its work:
