The study described here examines the short- and long-term economic, and financial impacts of natural disasters. It relies in part, on in-depth case studies of overall sensitivity to natural hazards in the small island economy of Dominica; public finance consequences of disasters in Bangladesh;...

Two worldwide trends in recent decades are commonly noted and sometimes linked in discussing disasters. First, the reported global cost of natural disasters has risen significantly, with a 14-fold increase between the 1950s and 1990s ( Munich Re, 1999 ). During the 1990s, major natural...

As the human and financial costs of disasters rise, there are increasing demands for evidence that mitigation “pays”. Until this proof exists, many development organisations remain reluctant to pursue risk reduction as a key objective, or even to protect their own projects against potential...