Economic Impact of Disasters in Developing Countries

Occurrence of disaster is a reality that poses serious challenge to the economy of a nation. This reality
is even more challenging in developing countries where the efforts to improve on the living condition
of the people are jeopardize bringing about serious setbacks.

The economic environment of a nation consists of its financial systems, social welfare, power sector,
transportation, investments, commerce, manufacturing, and construction, banking among others.
In the past, most governments usually responded to the occurrence of disasters through ad hoc
measures over a particular incident or incidences This has since given way to the more serious
approaches in the establishment of permanent organs that contend with the damages usually caused by
disasters to the economy, and indeed the nation. Disasters usually result in pains and huge losses. In
most cases it is always difficult to quantify the actual
cost of damages and recovery.

The consequences come both in human and material

losses. The impacts are also felt in the economic
front. However, the volume of such losses and
impacts usually depend on the pre-disaster
preparation. Pre-disaster preparation is a vital step in
mitigating the impacts. The preparations provide for
risk reduction, forecasting, mitigation and other
activities to assist the people cope with the
situations.

The economy of developing countries like Nigeria is put at risk in times of disasters. A single case of
disaster could wipe away several years of developmental efforts. In this scenario, there could be loss of
lives, destruction of public utilities and disruption in the smooth functioning of the system to render
fear and uncertainties among the populace. The impacts could also be felt in the loss of livelihoods,
damage to the environment, financial loss, diversion of resources, epidemics, migration, food shortages
and displacement of the people.

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A nation is vulnerable to disaster when there is a high level of poverty among its populace. Other
causal factors include inadequate education, poor systems, and lack of training on disaster, limited
media freedom, and improperly planned rapid urbanization and environmental degradation. The result
is overcrowding, frequent building collapses, poor environment and weak economy.

There would be no point running away from the reality of disaster as a phenomenon that has come to
stay. Running away from the reality could only amount to nothing short of self-deceit. Happily enough,
the federal government has demonstrated its commitment to the issues of disaster management through
the establishment of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA).

Though NEMA was established barely ten years ago in 1999, the agency has tended to demonstrate
good knowledge of dealing with the impacts of disaster on the economy. Director General of the
agency AVM MohammedAudu-Bida (Rtd) advocated for the mainstreaming of disaster management
into core national development planning. He said through this, special attention could be accorded to
the issues involved in planning for disaster forecasting, prevention, mitigation, response, recovery,
reconstruction and development. He also that said special attention must be given in setting aside
budgetary allocation to disaster management not to be caught unaware. This, according to him,
becomes imperative 'as a matter of fact because once there is a disaster the entire budget of a country
may be diverted to contain it.'

Prevention is better and cheaper in disaster management. In line with this, the NEMA chief emphasized
the need for the states governments to establish their own separate Emergency Management Agencies
(SEMAs) to complement the role of the federal agency in their areas. Through SEMAs, the states
would be seen to be more actively involved in the issues of disaster management and to prepare ahead
of the untoward circumstances. Only few states have so far responded positively in this regard. Even
then, some of the established SEMAs are not properly empowered to be functionally independent and
proactive in the discharge of their responsibilities.

Getting the people to be more involved in response to disaster in their communities is another strategy.
AVM Audu-Bida said NEMA has adopted the strategy of taking disaster management to the grassroots
through the sensitization and recruitment of volunteers in the communities. In another programme
being implemented in collaboration with the National Youth Service Corp (NYSC), corps members are
trained as Emergency Management Vanguards (EMV) to reach out to the communities in their
locations of primary assignments. The NEMA boss said his desire is to train about 20 per cent of the
Nigerian population in basic disaster management skills. There is no doubt that when communities are
train on disaster management could help to reduce the volume of loss capable of resulting from such.
Disasters results in the loss of skilled human resources and jobs, diversion of scarce resources,
destruction of infrastructure, negative investment climate, political destabilization and civil unrest

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However, when properly handled it can also result in creating opportunities to highlight vulnerabilities,
climate for positive change, external donor funds, rebuild to safer standards and development of new
skills.

By Manzo Ezekiel and Saadatu Ovosi

 

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