Saving lives and livelihoods: The urgent need to invest in flood resilience

Floods affect more people globally than any other type of natural hazard, with over 734 million people impacted in the last ten years. Global warming is increasing the severity of flooding and is negatively affecting livelihoods and countries’ ability to reach development objectives. There are preventive measures that can build flood resilience, but these are significantly under-resourced, and when countries fail to invest in risk reduction, these hazards become disasters with devastating consequences.

This policy brief provides recommendations to address this issue, such as:

• Increase funding for disaster risk reduction and adaptation so communities and countries reduce the potential impacts of natural hazards.
• Ensure domestic and international funding reaches the community level. 
• Align existing policies and institutional structures across sectors and geographic levels, and integrate new risk reduction measures.