Last straw: integrating natural disaster mitigation with environmental management

Disaster Risk Management Working Paper Series, no. 5.

This paper examines the ways in which natural resources management and environmental degradation affect natural hazard risk, and makes a preliminary assessment of the importance of such linkages and the extent of their incorporation into disaster mitigation strategies and activities. The analysis is based upon case studies in three countries in the Caribbean: Dominica, the Dominican Republic and St. Lucia, which are all highly vulnerable to natural hazards. In many cases, short-term economic interests prevail above long-term sustainability, in other, poverty leaves people no other option than to use the natural resource base in an unsustainable way. The subsequent degradation of the natural environment may threaten environmental assets like biodiversity, but also harm the very natural resources that the poor depend on, and moreover increase the risk of natural hazards.