Disaster Risk Reduction Investment and Reduction of Response Cost in Bangladesh

Abstract

Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) is one of the prime concerns of development policies throughout the world. Bangladesh, being a disaster prone country affected by severe natural hazards like flood, cyclone, drought, has been undertaking disaster risk reduction initiatives from past few decades. A large amount of investment was made with assistance from development partners. The general assumption that informs these activities is that investment in DRR will result in less damage and loss when a disaster strikes and thus a less costly and timely response and recovery. This paper focuses on the results of a study conducted in Bangladesh based on the available data on disaster events, damage, DRR and response activities to test the hypothesis that disaster risk reduction reduces response costs. Using simple data analysis, taking absolute values of costs on both risk reduction and response measures of the limited data available, the results of the study provide a very clear indication in favour of the hypothesis. The findings of the study indicate that there has been a dramatic downward shift in the cost of responding to disasters since 1984 due to a steady increase in DRR investment.