Multi-hazard risk assessment for disaster risk reduction and financing in Madagascar

Description

Background

As much as 25% of Madagascar’s population faces a high mortality risk from natural hazards – the third most exposed country in Africa. Cyclones occur almost yearly, affecting on average some 250,000 people and causing damages of US$50 million per event. Droughts, with a frequency of 1 in 5 years, affect some 450,000 people per event, and famines, floods, pest infestation and epidemics remain a recurrent problem. Contrary to trends in many countries, there is evidence that reported mortality due to natural disasters has increased in recent years. Climate change is likely to increase the frequency and severity of these events.

A fundamental constraint in dealing with these problems is the lack of adequate data on hazard risks and impacts, and detailed projections of climate change. Although communal schools and health centres are built according to cyclone standards, roads, bridges, and irrigation infrastructure are not, requiring significant rehabilitation costs in the wake of disasters. Adaptation measures for agriculture and coastal management remain incipient, and the innovative risk transfer mechanisms, such as catastrophe insurance, have not been explored.

Through a systematic risk assessment and modelling, this project aimed to produce relevant and sound information on hazards and climate change in support of ongoing activities in risk management, risk financing and climate change adaptation. It thus supported the implementation of the Government of Madagascar’s new policy emphasising prevention and catastrophe management. The identification and modelling of risks provided critical information needed as a prerequisite for the transfer of risk through innovative financial mechanisms such as weather-based contracts and catastrophe insurance.

Objectives

The primary objectives of this work were:

  • To quantify and model natural hazard risk for Madagascar in an objective fashion that would represent a scientific and numerical basis to inform sector-specific risk management practices and policy, disaster risk reduction, and risk transfer.
  • To produce solid and validated climate change impact scenarios that would enable local stakeholders to make informed decisions on adaptive measures to climate change.
  • To produce a risk model for Madagascar that would inform the decisions and development of more effective risk financing options.

Partners

  • World Bank’s Commodity Risk Management Group
  • IIASA
  • National emergency response system partners, local development funds, Care International, Catholic Relief Services, UNDP, the World Food Program
  • African universities
  • Reinsurance companies

Linkages with other ProVention initiatives

A delegation from Madagascar attended the ProVention Forum in Dar es Salaam in February 2007. Moreover, the risk information produced will feed directly into the GRIP. Linkages have also been made with the Production Sector Climate Risk Analysis in the Philippines initiative, which led similar efforts to develop risk information for a large island, mainly agricultural based, and vulnerable to significant climate oscillations.

Outputs & events

In 2008, with the financial support of the Government of Norway and ProVention, Madagascar conducted a Post Disaster Needs Assessment for the cyclone season. This was the first PDNA carried out in Africa. More than two-thirds of the team were nationals and over half were Government staff. From this early capacity building, several PDNA national and international experts initially trained in Madagascar went on to assist in other disasters, namely in Namibia, Central African Republic and Senegal. Thus, the PDNA of Madagascar marked an important regional benchmark, and the assessment methods have since been expanding to many other countries in the region.

ProVention also supported the CATSIM training by IIASA of six delegates of the government of Madagascar and the Meteorological Service in February 2008 (see a workshop report), and the initiation of a pilot disaster contingency fund. Operational procedures for this fund, based on examples from other countries including Vietnam and Colombia for instance were being drafted when the Ministry of Finance changed hands following the political crisis hit Madagascar in early 2009. The implementation of the project was therefore postponed to a later date.

Sectoral vulnerability mapping related to cyclones, floods and droughts will be carried out by June 2010 in 3 regions among the 13 classified as most vulnerable in Madagascar for the health, nutrition, road, habitat and agriculture sectors. A national training institute will provide training in GIS to the team who was involved in the PDNA process in 2008 and help map out exposure data into a risk atlas.

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