Red Cross: Climate change increases need to create cost-effective disaster prevention

Saturday, 20 June 2009 00:00

 “The rising dangers of climate change require a response from governments equivalent to the one made to address the global financial crisis,” Bekele Geleta, chief executive of the world’s Red Cross and Red Crescent body, said at the launch of the "World Disasters Report 2009 - Focus on early warning, early action”, this week. He emphasized that relief agencies must focus on cost-effective prevention measures, rather than expensive response operations.

With aid budgets, at best uncertain, amidst the global downturn, a relatively new approach called “early warning, early action” will save more lives per dollar, says the report, published every year since 1993. In fact, in the long run, it will be four times cheaper to invest in prevention measures than expensive response operations.

The report also points out that engagement with communities before – not after – the crisis or disaster strikes, more effective action can be taken to minimize human and economic losses. Maarten Van Aalst, associate director of the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre in The Hague and a contributor to the 2009 report, writes that donors have to be persuaded to “support continuous revision of contingency plans and updates of emergency stocks in strategic locations,” based on early-warning information.

Source: The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) press release, 16.6.2009