Overlooked: examining the impact of disasters and climate shocks on poverty in the Europe and Central Asia Region

This report explores the links between disaster impacts and poverty levels in select countries in the Europe and Central Asia region. When a disaster strikes, it not only affects households’ physical assets, but also their income levels and ability to contribute to the local economy. Critically, these socio-economic disparities shape not only the severity of shocks on household-level economies, but also the duration of subsequent recovery and reconstruction efforts. Socio-economic characteristics may therefore help to determine in advance which households or communities are more likely to recover faster, and which are in need of external assistance to accelerate reconstruction efforts.

As illustrated in this report, the risks posed by disasters and climate risks are rising most acutely for the poor and other vulnerable population groups, whose welfare and long-term economic prospects have been acutely vulnerable to exogenous shocks such as disasters and climate risks. Today, with access to a variety of analytical tools, commensurable datasets, global best practices, and other forms of innovative methods to better grasp, quantify, and explain the effects of disaster impacts, decision-makers can rethink the ways such shocks are quantified so that they can better anticipate or identify which population groups (or geographical areas) are likely to be the most impacted, and why.