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This paper addresses the question whether and how co-benefits, through disaster resilience building, can be further promoted. Co-benefits are defined as positive externalities that arise deliberately as a result of a joint strategy that pursues several objectives synergistically at the same time, such as disaster risk management and development goals, or disaster risk management and climate change adaptation. Of particular interest is the question of how the economic and broader benefits of disaster risk management can be recognized and realized by those in charge of fiscal policy decisions. The paper considers the interplay between public disaster risk management investment and fiscal policy, and provides an overview of the current debate as well as assessment methods, tools, and policy options. In fiscal budgeting, it has been standard practice to focus on direct liabilities and recurrent spending. Costs of disasters are often dealt with after the fact only, rather than being considered as contingent liabilities. As a consequence, the full costs of disasters have often not been budgeted for, and, with a price signal missing, there is lack of clear incentives for investing in disaster risk management. Overall, the paper identifies four steps and three dividends to be harnessed: (i) understanding fiscal risk; (ii) protecting public finance through risk financing instruments, the first dividend; (iii) managing disaster risk comprehensively, the second dividend; and (iv) pursuing a synergistic, co-benefits strategy of concurrently managing disaster risks and promoting development, the third dividend.

This paper addresses a critical problem in macroeconomic planning for natural disaster losses: how to incorporate potential future losses into current planning activity. The authors develop a technique to integrate probabilistic natural hazard losses into macroeconomic planning models. Probabilistic losses to capital stock (direct losses) serve as input to a macroeconomic model, which consequently calculates the macroeconomic impacts. The macroeconomic effects calculated comprise the indirect effects of losing and not being able to replace capital stock sufficiently or in a timely manner, as well as the effects of diverting funds to relief and reconstruction activities. The modeling can serve as a tool for planning for the effects of natural disasters before they occur and for engaging in appropriate risk management activities.

Abstract. In March 2015, a new international blueprint for disaster risk reduction (DRR) was adopted in Sendai, Japan, at the end of the Third UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (WCDRR, 14–18 March 2015). We review and discuss the agreed commitments and targets, as well as the negotiation leading the Sendai Framework for DRR (SFDRR) and discuss briefly its implication for the later UN-led negotiations on sustainable development goals and climate change.

Abstract. With unprecedented growth in disaster risk, there is an urgent need for enhanced learning and understanding of disasters, particularly in relation to the trends in drivers of increasing risk. Building on the disaster forensics field, we introduce the post-event review capability (PERC) methodology for systematically and holistically analysing disaster events, and identifying actionable recommendations. PERC responds to a need for learning about the successes and failures in disaster risk management and resilience, and uncovers the underlying drivers of increasing risk. We draw generalisable insights identified from seven applications of the methodology to date, where we find that across the globe policy makers and practitioners in disaster risk management face strikingly similar challenges despite variations in context, indicating encouraging potential for mutual learning. These lessons highlight the importance of integrated risk reduction strategies. We invite others to utilise the freely available PERC approach and contribute to building a repository of learning on disaster risk management and resilience.

Disasters pose a growing threat to sustainable development. Disaster risk management efforts have largely failed to arrest the underlying drivers of increased global risk: uncontrolled urbanization and proliferation of assets in hazardous areas. Resilience provides an opportunity to confront the social‐ecological foundations of risk and development; yet it has been vaguely conceptualized, without offering a concrete approach to operationalization. We propose a conceptualization of disaster resilience centred on well‐being: 'The ability of a system, community or society to pursue its social, ecological and economic development objectives, while managing its disaster risk over time in a mutually reinforcing way.'We present a conceptual framework for understanding the interconnections between disasters and development, and outline how it is being operationalized in practice.