Abstract
In 2018, the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) created a new policy marker for disaster risk reduction (DRR) to help member states to monitor and report the progress made on the mainstreaming of DRR into their development activities. Drawing on this DRR marker, this study found that DAC members’ DRR mainstreaming remains in the incipient stage, with a significant gap between rhetoric and action. Important areas for improvement include a more comprehensive understanding of disaster risk; increased funding for activities principally targeting DRR, larger scale projects; enhanced financial stability without compromising other development objectives; and further integration of DRR and climate change adaption into development projects.
Keywords
I. Introduction
The 1970s and 1980s saw a series of disasters that have claimed almost three million lives and adversely affected more than 800 million more worldwide. Especially catastrophic, 1998 suffered from a dramatic increase in extreme weather events. Typhoons in the Philippines, floods in Bangladesh and Sudan, earthquakes in Afghanistan, hurricanes in Latin America and the Caribbean, and other hazards together exceeded the cost of all such disasters occurring in the 1980s (UN, 1999). With growing risks around the world, the UN recognized the pressing need for reducing the consequences of disasters, especially in developing countries, and designated the 1990s as the International Decade of Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR). The goal of the IDNDR was to improve each country’s capacity to prevent or diminish the adverse effects of disaster risks by establishing guidelines for the application of techniques reducing their impact.
The IDNDR helped inspire a dialogue among global leaders regarding the coordination of international efforts to better manage climate and disaster risks. A number of international agreements were formed thereafter, such as in Yokohama in 1994, Hyogo in 2005 and Sendai in 2015, the latter of which described disaster risk reduction (DRR) as ‘a policy aimed at preventing new and reducing existing disaster risk and managing residual risk, all of which contribute to strengthening resilience and therefore to the achievement of sustainable development’ (UNDRR, 2015b). The Hyogo agreement established an international policy framework for DRR for the first time in history, addressing three key dimensions of disaster risk: exposure to hazards, vulnerability and capacity. Specifically, it called for countries to develop or modify policies, laws and organizational arrangements, as well as plans, programs and projects geared towards the integration of DRR. Thus, the IDNDR helped initiate progress in enhancing resilience, moving beyond the historical emergency response orientation to a broader perspective.
In 2015, the third Framework for DRR 2015–30 was adopted in Sendai. At that time, other landmark agreements such as the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, Addis Ababa Action Agenda on Financing for Development and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) also set agendas for DRR. For example, in the SDGs, there are 25 targets related to DRR in 10 goals (UNDRR, 2015a). In fact, while seemingly distinct, these agreements share the goals of building resilience and integrating DRR into broader national policy planning and sectoral risk management plans.
Almost eight years have passed since then, but effective actions to materialize the goals and targets of the Sendai Framework are few. One of its targets states ‘substantially enhance international cooperation to developing countries through adequate and sustainable support to complement their national actions for implementation of this framework by 2030’. This suggests that member states endorsing the Framework must work with developing countries to help them develop and implement locally specific strategies in line with the Framework. In other words, upon endorsement of the framework, member states assume a primary and overall responsibility to help developing countries achieve the goals of the Framework by 2030. Yet, in reality, the amount of funding for the field of DRR has been remarkably low in the past years, and this has put developing countries, particularly low-income countries (LICs) and lower-middle-income countries (LMICs) in a very vulnerable position, especially in hazardous times (UNDRR, 2021).
Extreme weather events continued to dominate the disaster landscape in the 21st century; the number went up from 3,656 from 1980 to 1999 to 6,681 from 2000 to 2019, an increase of 83% (Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters and UNDRR, 2020). A total of 7,348 recorded disasters in the two decades took 1.23 million lives, affected more than 4 billion people, and caused nearly USD$ 3 trillion in economic losses worldwide, a sharp increase over the previous 20 years. In 2020 alone, there were 40.5 million new internally displaced persons, the highest number in the last decade (Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, 2021). As evident from Table 1, many of the countries with the greatest disaster risk were LICs, meaning most victims were likely already burdened by poverty and oppression and had the least capacity to cope (Nishio, 2021).
Mean Values of the World Risk Index 2011–19.
A number of studies (e.g., Lee and Kwon, 2022; Sparks, 2012) have sought to track and analyse the extent to which donor countries have prioritized DRR in development cooperation. However, it is difficult to separate this from other development efforts, due to the absence of a clear classification of DRR aid that would allow for each donor country to define and report aid volumes dedicated to DRR at their discretion. Such vagueness with regards to DRR aid may arise from the cross-cutting nature of DRR (OECD DAC, 2017). It is the concept and practice of reducing disaster risks, not only from the perspective of reducing the existing risk of disasters but also of minimizing the potential contribution to the creation of new disaster risks (UNDRR, 2015a). In fact, DRR is an issue that must be prioritized by all government agencies, rather than by a single department. This locates DRR within wider programs and projects, including those related to housing, the environment and natural resources, education, food security, health, urban planning and infrastructure, governance and others. Because of this complexity, donor countries have found it difficult to determine how many resources are actually being delivered and how well they are being used. Similar issues can be found with climate aid, dedicated to reducing carbon emissions mostly, as is also multi-sectoral (Adger et al., 2001; Atteridge and Canales, 2017). Against this backdrop, in 2018, the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) included a new policy marker for DRR in its creditor reporting system (CRS).
According to the OECD DAC (2017), an aid activity should be tagged as DRR if, for instance, it contributes to (a) the prevention of new disaster risk, and/or (b) the reduction of existing disaster risk, and/or (c) the strengthening of resilience through the implementation of integrated and inclusive economic, structural, legal, social, health, cultural, educational, environmental, technological, political and institutional measures that prevent or reduce exposure and vulnerability to hazards, and increase preparedness for response and recovery with the explicit purpose of improving human security, well-being, quality of life, resilience and sustainable development.
As the creation of the DRR marker attests, the importance of financing DRR has been increasing over the last decade alongside calls for concrete actions by the international community as a whole. Yet, many questions regarding mainstreaming the DRR process in development remain unanswered such as what sizes and types of aid projects are funded by individual donors in the field of DRR; and whether DRR aid reaches each sector in an unbiased manner and is offered to countries most in need. These must be evaluated, and the lessons learned incorporated into future projects, particularly when the funding to fight climate change is still inadequate, even after years of global talks about the issue, and the process of mainstreaming climate change into development has been extremely slow and disappointing (Ritchie and Kenny, n.d.; Timperley, 2021). With less than a decade left to achieve the Sendai Framework, SDGs and Paris Agreement, it is important to explore whether donors are turning their DRR commitments into real actions. Thus, more detailed monitoring of international aid flow in the field of DRR will offer greater insights into the gaps between current efforts and what may be needed to achieve global goals.
II. Methodology
The purpose of this study was to analyse the extent to which donors have mainstreamed DRR into development cooperation. This study reviewed the annual disbursement and development activities published in the CRS system, which provides detailed information on aid contributions by sector, as well as recipient countries and implementing agencies. Particularly, OECD DAC member states provide information regarding the purpose of individual projects/programs and screen for policy makers to guarantee monitoring and comparability of official development measures. This helps measure the degree to which member states have put the global goals into practice. One of the markers is ‘DRR marker’ and it indicates the extent to which a project pursues the objective of promoting DRR.
To facilitate data collection, DAC has established a numeric system: ‘2’ for principal, ‘1’ for significant and ‘0’ for not (yet) targeted to a development policy objective. For instance, an aid activity is designated as principal if DRR is the primary reason for its implementation. In other words, DRR must form the core of the concept. Conversely, an aid activity is tagged as significant if its objectives are not crucial to planning but are clearly an integral part of the project concept. The present study covers data from 2018 to 2021, as the year 2021 was the latest year available at the point of writing.
It should be noted that the policy makers provide only a partial perspective on the actual situation, as the database relies on voluntary reporting. Classification of development activities within member states is not standardized, and thus evaluation and comparability are difficult. Some projects may be subjectively categorized or excluded if their flows cannot be quantitatively tracked (see, for instance, the case of Germany in Table 2). Thus, the information published in the CRS system is currently incomplete and subject to substantial uncertainties. This is supported by several studies on global climate finance that have found inconsistencies in tracking flow caused by unclear definitions and donors’ political motives for linking aid to environmental markers, simply to show that they are ‘doing something good’ (Donner et al., 2016; Junghans and Harmeling, 2012; Michaelowa and Michaelowa, 2011). Yet, the CRS system is currently the best source available for a view of the aid provided by donor countries to DRR sectors. Despite its limitations, the system provides rich information that allows for evaluation of the progress toward achieving DRR objectives in the individual donor countries’ development cooperation.
OECD DAC Member’s Total DRR Investment from 2018–21 (Unit: USD in Millions).
III. Results
Even after the 2015 adoption of global goals related to DRR, financing has been unsatisfactory, constituting only a tiny portion of an enormous development finance architecture (see Figure 1). This underscores the level of ambition that the OECD countries have thus far exhibited with regards to reaching their DRR goals. Despite an upward trend in funding (USD$1.94 billion in 2018 to USD$4.87 billion in 2021) in absolute terms, its share of the total bilateral overseas development assistance (ODA) has risen very slowly. To be exact, from 2018 to 2021, DAC donors’ bilateral disbursement to DRR sectors was USD$13.14 billion, but this represents only 2.45% of the total bilateral ODA (USD$536 billion), implying that OECD countries are not doing enough to meet their DRR commitments, hindering many developing countries from meeting needs brought about by natural disasters.
From 2018 to 2021, the United States, United Kingdom and Japan—the three largest development aid donors—allocated only 3.5%, 2.6% and 0.8% of their total ODA, respectively, to DRR activities. The absence of DRR mainstreaming within the largest aid donors’ development portfolio could have significant implications for overall DRR-related ODA flow. Particularly, Japan’s low proportional investment in DRR is surprising, given its leadership and advocacy for DRR and hosting of all three World Conferences on Natural Disasters held between 1994 and 2015.
Conversely, from 2018 to 2021, Sweden was the highest donor for DRR aid in both absolute and relative terms, highlighting ‘DRR mainstreaming’ in its development policy. About 18% of its bilateral ODA was DRR-related, reaching USD$2.7 billion. Sweden was followed by Ireland, Slovenia, Korea, New Zealand and Switzerland in terms of the percentage of overall bilateral ODA used for DRR funding. These are the only countries that allocated more than 10% of their total ODA to DRR activities, well above the DAC average of 4.9%.
Sweden is also an exemplary case of reporting in accordance with the OECD DAC guideline; it has screened all of its development projects against the DRR marker in the CRS system. Sweden has emphasized gender equality in its DRR actions. Gender is at the core of disaster crisis because the people most vulnerable to its effects are women and girls. When disaster strikes, women and children are 14 times more likely than men to die (UNDP, 2022). The Sendai Framework and its supporting documents repeatedly highlight the increasing vulnerability of women and girls in disaster contexts. Indeed, it is equally important to take gender into account when planning for DRR. In 2019, Sweden adopted a Climate Policy Action Plan that incorporates gender into all climate actions (UN, 2022). Table 2 shows that about 85% of its DRR-tagged projects are also tagged as gender-related, indicating the Swedish government’s will to overcome gender inequality and engage in climate-resilient development. A specific example is its 2019 projects in Bangladesh, the goal of which was to lift from poverty some of Bangladesh’s poorest women living in the districts of Kurigram, Lalmonirhat, Gaibandha and Jamalpur (rural areas prone to the negative effects of climate change) by making use of productive income-generating opportunities (OECD CRS). About 3,600 women were beneficiaries of this project.
On the contrary, none of Germany’s aid projects have been screened against the DRR marker, but more than 80% of its projects were actually screened against Rio markers. The Rio markers were introduced in 1998 to identify activities targeting the implementation of the Rio Conventions, such as in the field of climate adaptation and mitigation. This makes Germany’s financial contribution to DRR ‘zero’ (see Table 2). However, Germany is actually well known for its leadership in climate action. In 2021, the country provided 5.34 billion euros for climate actions in developing countries (Wettengel, 2022), and in March 2023, Germany pledged 2 billion euros to the Green Climate Fund to help developing countries build climate resilience and reduce emissions. Furthermore, in 2020, Germany spent 19% of its bilateral ODA on projects whose principal focus was the climate, well above the DAC average of 14%. Thus, it is profoundly inaccurate to say that Germany spends zero in the field of DRR, given its leadership in the climate field. With this in mind, a careful examination of the data was conducted, which showed that many of Germany’s adaptation projects deserve to be tagged as DRR. Projects such as ‘training people of the municipality of Talambote (Morocco, Chefchaouen province) on first aid and disaster preparedness so they can better handle risks such as earthquakes, floods and landslides’, ‘empowering people who were affected by the floods and the conflict in selected districts in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province by securing their livelihoods’ and ‘capacity building in the field of education and research for a forecast and management system for hydrological hazards in semi-arid Brazil’ are just a few examples (OECD CRS). Indeed, Germany’s real problem is not having separate approaches for climate adaptation and DRR, but rather not reporting against the guideline provided by the OECD DAC. Screening funding against policy markers is voluntary, meaning donors can choose to leave this field blank when reporting to the OECD. However, if Germany continues not screening, people working in the climate/DRR field will not be able to monitor whether donors are allocating sufficient resources to DRR issues.
France, the seventh-largest provider of DRR funding, is a prime example of a country promoting an integrated approach. Approximately 77%, 48% and 83% of its projects targeting DRR also targeted climate adaptation, mitigation and gender, respectively (see Table 2). For instance, one of France’s DRR adaption projects is a ‘Flood Control Project in Chad’, the purpose of which is the rehabilitation and extension of a rainwater drainage network in neighbourhoods that regularly flood each rainy season, in order to improve communities’ overall resilience to flooding (OECD CRS). Regarding gender equality, France is providing general environmental education and training to women and girls in Senegal to reduce their vulnerability to disaster risks, which in turn will lead to more empowerment and reduced poverty. Indeed, the promotion of climate adaptation and mitigation and gender equality are priorities shared by the majority of France’s DRR frameworks. This suggests that France is well aware of the importance of building coherence across different but relevant policy frameworks to improve coordination in the implementation of common goals and targets. The resulting impact of these integrated policies is certainly greater than the sum of the impacts of individual strategies.
While the overall trend of donor investment in DRR objectives is important, the focus should be the level of involvement in DRR objectives. In other words, how much are donors’ resources principally targeting DRR? The line graph in Figure 2 shows the trend in investment made by DAC donors since the creation of the DRR marker. Until 2019, the amount of total investment in activities principally targeting DRR had been significantly lower than the one for significantly targeting DRR activities, but this trend has since reversed. Principal funding began rising sharply, exceeding the amount of significant funding. In 2021, the proportions of principal and significant funding were more or less the same.
Despite the increasing trend as a group, individual country data (see Table 2) reveal that principal funding is still marginal for the top investing countries. For instance, Sweden and Switzerland’s principal funding from 2018 to 2021 constituted only 16% and 24% of their total DRR funding, respectively. In terms of the total ODA, these figures represent only 2% for both countries. If we apply the EU’s calculation 1 methodology, Sweden’s actual amount of DRR funding becomes USD$1.37 billion, less than that of Japan, the UK, the United States, France and Korea. It is worth noting that despite Japan’s low proportional investment in DRR, 83% of its DRR projects are tagged as principal.
Korea’s high proportion (76%) of principal funding reflects the country’s strong policy commitment to reducing the impact of climate change on developing countries. In 2019, South Korea committed USD$1 billion of its bilateral ODA to projects targeting climate change adaptation and mitigation. This commitment represents 30% of Korea’s bilateral ODA, greater than the DAC average of 23% (OECD CRS). Korea publishes its midterm strategy for development cooperation every five years. The latest (2021–25) outlines 12 priority goals, including strengthening global health risk response, increasing humanitarian assistance, promoting South Korea’s Green New Deal, diversifying development finance and strengthening partnerships with civil society (Government of KOREA, 2020). Assuming that Korea retains its current stance on climate change issues, its funding for climate action could increase even more in coming years under the influence of Korea’s Green New Deal, a key national strategy that focuses on renewable energy, green infrastructure and the industrial sector (Chowdhury, 2021). However, its separate approach for DRR and climate adaptation and mitigation (only 8.5% and 4.2% of DRR projects overlap with adaptation and mitigation efforts, respectively) may lead to administrative inefficiency and duplication of projects. Korea is the only country among the top DRR-investing nations with fewer than 10% of their climate projects being designed also to serve DRR purposes. For its climate projects to be truly successful and comprehensive, Korea must integrate DRR into them; otherwise, the years of hard-won progress in developing countries will be rolled back by climate crises. Overall, the data suggest that the majority of DAC donors should be working harder to meet the DRR pledges they made.
Figure 3 (left) shows that the majority of DRR funding was spent on LICs and LMICs. Countries classified as LICs received about 45% of the total DRR funding, while LMICs received around 38%. Other LICs received only 0.6% from 2018 to 2021. When combined with regional distribution (Figure 3, right), it is apparent that the majority of DAC countries’ DRR funding was allocated to LICs in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), followed by East Asia and the MENA region. This may have been an obvious choice of donors given that the vulnerability of SSA is much higher than other regions, due to weak governance and a low capacity to respond adequately and develop resilience over time. In particular, this region has been far more prone to droughts and floods in recent years. In 2022, floods affected most of Africa, causing significant damage to human life, property, land and livestock, with 1,567 fatalities, 4,401 injuries, 3.2 million people displaced and 517,000 houses destroyed across 18 countries. The most affected country was Nigeria, with over 600 deaths (McCluskey et al., 2022; OCHA, 2023). Furthermore, about a dozen countries reported six or more droughts since 1990, with Ethiopia, Kenya and Mozambique experiencing frequent droughts (IMF, 2016). If no concrete DRR action takes place, this region could see an additional 40 million people pushed into poverty since natural hazards exacerbate high levels of food insecurity, malnutrition, instability and violence (Jafino et al., 2020). The problem is that the seemingly large share of DRR funding for SSA (45%) comprised only 0.63% of the total ODA from 2018 to 2021 in terms of the actual value. This means that in general, donor countries are not doing enough to help the world’s most vulnerable regions prepare for and recover from natural hazards, especially in terms of safeguarding the most exposed populations. Stronger political commitment and more international collaborations are needed to protect human security and sustainability. Needless to say, East Asia, another region vulnerable to natural hazards, could also use more help.
Sectoral disbursement was determined using the total DRR funds spent annually on each sector from 2018 to 2021. Donors supported a total of 19 sectors in those four years (see Table 3). Of the 19 sectors, donors prioritized the ‘other multi-sector’, ‘disaster prevention and preparedness’ and ‘emergency response’ sectors, investing nearly half of the total DRR funding in them. These three sectors also attracted the highest number of donors—24—with Japan dominating by providing over half of the total disbursement. Japan also showed a strong presence in the disaster prevention and preparedness sector, along with the US and UK, accounting for 28% of the sectoral disbursement.
2018-2021 Sectoral DRR Aid Distribution.
*: Although the sector ‘emergence response’ falls outside the nominal scope of the SFDRR and DRR in general, this sector is included in the analysis as is screened against the DRR marker.
Yet, a large flow of funds is not the same as more mainstreaming, which would mean that all aid would be tagged as DRR. For this reason, Table 3 lists primary donors and recipient countries by the number of aid projects, rather than the value of DRR flow. In the case of Japan, the high value of DRR flow might mean that only a few very large infrastructure projects were undertaken, and the results prove this out. Japan’s DRR funds were heavily concentrated in a relatively few Asian countries and small number of large projects, which is consistent with the findings of previous studies (Lee, 2023; Lee and Kwon, 2022). In the emergency response sector, Sweden dominated, occupying nearly 48% of the sectoral disbursement; however, in terms of the number of aid projects, Switzerland, Ireland and Spain secured the primary donor positions, conducting DRR activities mostly in African countries (OECD CRS). Perhaps this was due to Africa’s recent climate crisis. Again, Africa has experienced severe and sometimes unprecedented extreme weather events in recent years. The year 2020 was the fourth-warmest year for the African continent since 1910 (Dunne, 2022). The rising temperature and changes in rainfall patterns have led to an increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events across the continent. In fact, natural hazards have increased at a much faster pace than in the rest of the world, and this situation is apparently reflected in the destinations chosen for emergency response aid.
The health sector received the fourth largest flow of funds and a high number of donors, led by South Korea, which provided 55% of the total disbursement. South Korea is broadly considered a successful model for its fight against COVID-19 (Kim et al., 2020; You, 2020), succeeding in minimizing the death toll from the virus due to its strong healthcare system and policy experience with containing the spread of MERS and SARS. In 2020, Korea invested USD$480 million in the emergency response and health sectors to help circulate best practices and inform other countries about ‘K-Quarantine’, a strategy used by the Korean government to limit the spread of the virus (ODA Korea, 2021). At the 2021 G7 Summit, Korea pledged to provide USD$200 million to GAVI, the Global Vaccine Alliance, to expand the COVID-19 vaccine supply to low and middle-income countries, further strengthening its response to the COVID-19 crisis (GAVI, 2021). The number of DRR projects carried out by Korea is also the highest among the DAC donors, constituting 18% of all projects, evidence of Korea’s ongoing effort to mainstream DRR concepts in development cooperation. In terms of recipient countries, the Philippines, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Cambodia and Paraguay were the top recipients for Korea from 2018 to 2021.
Also related to the health sector, there was a huge jump in disbursement from USD$42 and USD$38 million in 2018 and 2019, respectively, to USD$645 and USD$630 million in 2020 and 2021, respectively. This increase was mostly due to DAC members’ rapid support for the COVID-19 pandemic, which lies within the scope of the Sendai Framework for DRR. The framework highlights the importance of national action and global collaboration to improve health system preparedness in relation to disaster risks.
Donors have better managed to mainstream DRR concepts in certain sectors. ‘Agriculture, forestry, fishing’, ‘water supply and sanitation’, ‘general environmental protection’ and ‘government and civil society’ sectors are all examples, with higher numbers of DRR projects relative to the amount of funds allocated to them. This is a particularly good sign for the agricultural sector since it often bears the majority of impact. According to a new study by FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization), about 63% of all damage inflicted by natural hazards such as drought, floods, storms and tsunamis falls within the agricultural sector (FAO, 2021). As seen in Table 3, the top recipients from 2018 to 2021 were African countries such as Ethiopia, Mozambique, Senegal and Mali. In these countries, agriculture is the mainstay of the economy in terms of labour employment and contribution to gross domestic product, but chronic food insecurity has been exacerbated by climate shocks and natural hazards (Oluwatayo and Ojo, 2016). Indeed, it is urgent that disaster- and climate-resilient agricultural systems are built that will be capable of improving the nutrition and food security of present and future generations, especially in the face of mounting threats. To this end, Italy ran a project in Mozambique called, ‘Integrated Food Security and Livelihoods’ to improve the resilience capacity of households, allowing them to better adapt to climate change shocks and helping them construct viable livelihoods to attain food and income security (OECD CRS). Similarly, Switzerland engaged in a project in southern Ethiopia called, ‘Sustainable Water and Pasture Management to Alleviate the Plight of Ethiopian Pastoralists’, implementing various measures to improve food security and resilience to crisis situations ranging from the rehabilitation of pastureland and water points to the introduction of land use plans and diversification of income sources for women (OECD CRS). For such improvements, the most ideal circumstance could be the mainstreaming of DRR in a high number of large-scale projects.
Overall, the sectoral analysis revealed three noteworthy features of the allocation of DRR funding. First, it was concentrated in a few sectors and allocated very unequally. Of the 19 total sectors, 12 drew a large number of donors (>20). This indicates that a significant funding gap exists for investment in other sectors, despite the cross-cutting nature of DRR. In other words, there are significant unexplored opportunities for DRR mainstreaming across development portfolios. Second, the sectoral concentration of DRR funds by donors varied widely. The United States and Japan had priority sectors. The United States invested about 75% of its DRR funds in the ‘disaster prevention & preparedness’ sector, while about 62% of Japan’s DRR funds were spent in the ‘other multisector’. On the contrary, Switzerland and the UK did not prioritize a particular sector. Instead, they spread their DRR funds across the 19 sectors fairly equally, though some prioritization was observed; Switzerland focused on ‘agriculture, forestry, fishing’ (22%), while the UK emphasized ‘disaster prevention and preparedness’ (28%). Lastly, donors mainstreamed DRR concepts better in some sectors, such as agriculture, water and sanitation. Funding for these sectors was spread across a large number of small projects in less than USD$1 million increments, effectively meaning more mainstreaming.
The number of countries that received DRR funding from DAC donors from 2018 to 2021 was 145. Among those, the 20 recipients receiving the highest amounts are listed in Table 4, receiving nearly half (48.2%) of the total DRR funding allocated. The remaining recipients received rather smaller shares; each of the remaining 125 countries received less than 1%. The recipient of the highest amount was Indonesia; about 78% of its total DRR funding came from a single source: Japan. For more than 60 years, Indonesia and Japan have maintained a strong bilateral partnership. Indonesia has always been one of Japans’ largest recipients in terms of development cooperation (JICA, 2018). Other recipients include the Philippines, Myanmar, Afghanistan and Nepal, all of which are common bilateral recipients of development cooperation. In fact, Japan’s bilateral partner countries make up the majority of countries receiving DRR funding from Japan, meaning that even in the field of DRR, Japan leans more towards its bilateral priority countries. Such prioritization puts other countries at extreme risk by making them more vulnerable to extreme weather events.
Top 20 Recipients of DRR Funding from 2018 to 2021 (Unit: USD in Millions).
A similar trend can be seen in Mauritius, with 99% of its DRR funding coming from a single source, France. The top three recipients of France’s aid during the study period were Mauritius, Vietnam and Senegal, all of whom are former French colonies. This confirms that Europe’s former imperial powers continue to target aid to ex-colonies. France, Britain, Belgium, Spain, Germany and Portugal have all been found to spend most of their ODA on the countries they once ruled as colonies (Barbière et al., 2015).
The most frequent donor is Sweden, being one of the primary donors for 12 recipient countries; this means that, unlike Japan and France, it did not prioritize a particular country. Two points are worth noting. First, except for Bangladesh and Kenya, all of Sweden’s recipients were fragile conflict-affected states (marked with F in brackets for easy recognition). This is largely due to the country’s particular focus on humanitarian assistance, as channelled through emergency and reconstruction relief sectors. As seen in Table 3, Sweden is the largest investor in these sectors, steadily increasing its funding for humanitarian assistance and conflict-affected states by 55%, from USD$271 million in 2017 to USD$421 million in 2021. Secondly, most of Sweden’s DRR projects are small in scale, less than USD$1 million each. Despite this clear indication that Sweden is successfully mainstreaming DRR to a large number of development projects, most such projects are marked with a 1 (significant) in the CRS, meaning that although important, DRR is not the fundamental driver of or motivation for planning and implementing the project. It is important that Sweden creates and scales up projects with ‘principal’ DRR objectives, especially given that many of Sweden’s recipients are fragile and conflict-affected states where long-term projects improving DRR capacity and stabilizing the performance are critical. A significant number of studies have found that in fragile and conflict affected states, the occurrence of a natural hazard can exacerbate existing daily challenges, heightening sources of tension such as weak governance, historical grievances, mobilization, famine and poverty (Brown and Crawford, 2009; Yanda and Bronkhorst, 2011). In turn, instability and unrest further reduce the ability of states to respond to and recover from disasters and leave their citizens vulnerable to a range of disaster and climate shocks. It is important that all donors integrate climate change considerations into their DRR interventions, with the goal of promoting climate-resilient peacebuilding in fragile and conflict-affected states (Goulden and Few, 2011; Lee and Kwon, 2022; Vivekananda et al., 2014).
Lastly, only four of the 20 countries with the highest disaster risk (see Table 1) were found to have received DRR funding from one or more DAC donors in the past four years (shaded in Column 2 of Table 4). Those 20 countries received only 18.6% of all DRR funding mobilized by DAC donors from 2018 to 2021. When the Philippines, Bangladesh and Mauritius are excluded from the list, this figure becomes even smaller, shrinking to only 4.4%. Many of the countries in Table 1 are island nations that are well known to be highly prone to natural hazards. If there is no major DRR action from donors, the escalating impact of climate change will destroy decades of development progress in these countries. It is important that donors who prioritize ex-colonies and those with strong bilateral relationships modify their behaviour and target the countries suffering the highest losses.
IV. Discussion and Conclusion
The combined effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing disaster shocks will continue to pose challenges to the world in 2023 and beyond. People of the developing world in particular will continue to experience a wide variety of natural hazards, geographic remoteness and isolation, and the degradation of natural resources. For the developing world especially, this means that the livelihoods of millions of people are in jeopardy. Since most of these countries are already the world’s most disaster-prone nations, additional stronger calamities will put even more strain on available resources. Thus, donors must put forth their best efforts to meet the commitments made through the Sendai Framework, Paris Agreement and 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
The OECD recently expressed concerns that donors are financing activities that directly contradict all efforts to counter climate change. Specifically, donors’ combined annual investment in activities related to the production of fossil fuels was about USD$3.9 billion (OECD, 2019). Despite its small share of the total ODA (1.4%), the fact that a substantial amount of ODA is still flowing to activities that increase the risk of climate-related disasters is shocking. Of course, it may be impossible for donors to make an immediate shift and avoid fossil fuels altogether, as they are still needed in the transition of many developing countries, but donors should at least verify that their development projects are Paris/Sendai-aligned and determine whether their future plans are viable.
Another concern is that DRR funding is fragmented across many small-scale projects. While this may mean the mainstreaming of DRR into many development projects, it could also lead to high transaction costs for developing countries. The limited administrative and technical capacities of such countries constrain their ability to coordinate multiple disaster/climate funds with variable tasks such as frequent reporting (OECD and The World Bank, 2016). As a possible solution, donors should link climate change adaptation/mitigation and DRR, as they have similar aims and mutual benefits. To date, climate adaptation/mitigation and DRR projects appear to have been operated largely in isolation; only 14.5% and 4.5% of DRR projects are also tagged as adaptation or mitigation, respectively. This situation is in urgent need of change. Climate adaptation and DRR policymakers, development experts and practitioners must communicate and collaborate with one another to ensure a comprehensive risk management approach to development. To this end, donors must utilize DRR tools that have been proven effective in dealing with extreme weather events exacerbated by climate change and make DRR information and tools more accessible for climate change adaptation managers. This will result in more efficient use of financial, human and natural resources.
The biggest concern is still the minuscule amount of DRR financing for development cooperation. DRR is seeing an increasing trend but not on the scale or at the speed necessary for the required transition. From 2018 to 2021, the amount of DRR finance constituted only 2.45% of the total bilateral ODA, meaning that DRR financing remains misaligned with global DRR goals. Donors have already broken the pledge made in 2009 with regards to climate finance. They promised to provide USD$100 billion in annual funding to developing countries by 2020, a goal that has not been met. This has seriously undermined trust. Amidst multiple crises and competing budget priorities and the looming threat of recession, allocating more resources for DRR, while arguably important, will be challenging. In November 2022, the UNFCCC set up a new fund called ‘Loss and Damage (L&D) fund’ to assist developing countries hit hard by disasters. This offers another great opportunity for the DAC member countries to prove what they can do for developing countries. With various funding opportunities, DRR finance should not follow in the footsteps of what has been seen with climate finance. Overall, this study concludes that DAC donors’ DRR mainstreaming remains in the incipient stage, with a significant gap between rhetoric and action.
Lastly, this study used publicly available data collected from donors’ voluntary reporting, which may have imposed some limits on the depth of the analysis. A significant amount of DRR financing is provided through multilateral institutions and their pooled funds. However, since the OECD does not provide a detailed description of multilateral projects, such flow has been excluded from this analysis. Future work should assess the role and impact of multilateral organizations in building disaster resilience in the developing world.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.