Purpose

ProVention was established by the World Bank in 2000 to address the increasing frequency and severity of natural disasters and their social, economic and environmental impacts on developing countries. As poor countries continue to be disproportionately affected by disasters and incur the majority of costs, there is a growing recognition of the inextricable links between disaster vulnerability, poverty and development.

Addressing disaster reduction in this broad context requires a collaborative approach, involving diverse sectors and organisations where managing risk is seen as everyone’s business. The ProVention Consortium therefore included a broad range of partners, from development to humanitarian organisations and from the public sector to the private sector, with the goal of providing a forum for dialogue and a framework for collective action.

Between 2000 and 2010, ProVention has offered an informal forum where different actors and constituencies had the opportunity to dialogue on risk issues, address critical problems, catalyse new ideas and collaborative initiatives, and share knowledge and experience. Under the umbrella of ProVention, partners had a space to work together to identify strategic issues, priorities and gaps in the field of disaster risk management and, thus, play an important agenda-setting role.

The Consortium also functioned as a dynamic network with the explicit aim of brokering links between organisations and across sectors, providing opportunities for partnerships and joint activities or simply information exchange. The Consortium relied on the active participation of donors, policy makers and practitioners to bring a range of perspectives to the dialogue and to strengthen the connections among existing networks and key decision-makers in different aspects of disaster risk management.

To bring the focus back to improved application and practice, ProVention in addition regularly supported a select number of projects to specifically develop and share new ideas and innovative approaches for risk reduction. Linked to related partner activities and resources, these projects anchored the other collaborative initiatives of the Consortium as the foundation of a knowledge hub among ProVention partners to strengthen the learning and evidence-base for better risk reduction policy and practice.