The Road to Recovery : The Role of Poverty in the Exposure, Vulnerability and Resilience to Floods in Accra

Erman, Alvina ; Motte, Elliot ; Goyal, Radhika ; Asare, Akosua ; Takamatsu, Shinya ; Chen, Xiaomeng ; Malgioglio, Silvia ; Skinner, Alexander ; Yoshida, Nobuo ; Hallegatte, Stephane

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: FLOODS;    POVERTY;    RESILIENCE;    VULNERABILITY;    NATURAL DISASTERS;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-8469
RP-ID  :  WPS8469

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

In June 2015, about 53,000 people wereaffected by unusually severe floods in the Greater AccraMetropolitan Area, Ghana. The real impact of such a disasteris a product of exposure ("Who was affected?"),vulnerability ("How much did the affected householdslose?"), and socioeconomic resilience ("What wastheir ability to cope and recover?"). This studyexplores these three dimensions to assess whether poorpeople were disproportionally affected by the 2015 floods.It reaches four main conclusions. (1) In the studied area,there is no difference in annual expenditures between thehouseholds who were affected and those who were not affectedby the flood. (2) Poorer households lost less than theirricher neighbors in absolute terms, but more when comparedwith their annual expenditure level, and poorer householdsare over-represented among the most severely affectedhouseholds. (3) More than 30 percent of the affectedhouseholds report not having recovered two years after theshock, and the ability of households to recover was drivenby the magnitude of their losses, sources of income, andaccess to coping mechanisms, but not by their poverty, asmeasured by the annual expenditure level. (4) There is ameasurable effect of the flood on behaviors, under-miningsavings and investment in enterprises. The study concludeswith two policy implications. First, flood management couldbe considered as a component of the poverty-reductionstrategy in the city. Second, building resilience is notonly about increasing income. It also requires providing thepopulation with coping and recovery mechanisms such asfinancial instruments. A flood management program needs tobe designed to target low-resilience households, such asthose with little access to coping and recovery mechanisms,even those who are not living in poverty before the shock.