Poverty
Photo
Photo credit: UNHCR/M. Vanappelghem
The most important single influence on the impact of a disaster
is poverty. All other factors could be lessened if the affected population were
not also limited by poverty. Virtually all disaster studies show that the
wealthiest of the population either survive the disaster unaffected or are able
to recover quickly. Across the broad spectrum of disasters, poverty generally
makes people vulnerable to the impact of hazards. Poverty explains why people in
urban areas are forced to live on hills that are prone to landslides, or why
people settle near volcanos or rivers that invariably flood their banks. Poverty
explains why droughts claim poor peasant farmers as victims and rarely the
wealthy, and why famines more often than not are the result of a lack of
purchasing power to buy food rather than an absence of food. Increasingly,
poverty also explains why many people are forced to move from their homes to
other parts of their countries or even across borders to survive. Such
crisis-induced migration poses considerable challenges both in terms of
immediate assistance to the displaced and of longer-term
development.
