Mochizuki Junko, Mechler Reinhard, Hochrainer-Stigler Stefan, Keating Adriana, Williges Keith
Risk Policy and Vulnerability Program, The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Schlossplatz 1, A-2361 Laxenburg, Austria.
Clim Risk Manag. 2014;3:39-54. doi: 10.1016/j.crm.2014.05.002.
Debate regarding the relationship between socioeconomic development and natural disasters remains at the fore of global discussions, as the potential risk from climate extremes and uncertainty pose an increasing threat to developmental prospects. This study reviews statistical investigations of disaster and development linkages, across topics of macroeconomic growth, public governance and others to identify key challenges to the current approach to macro-level statistical investigation. Both theoretically and qualitatively, disaster is known to affect development through a number of channels: haphazard development, weak institutions, lack of social safety nets and short-termism of our decision-making practices are some of the factors that drive natural disaster risk. Developmental potentials, including the prospects for sustainable and equitable growth, are in turn threatened by such accumulation of disaster risks. However, quantitative evidence regarding these complex causality chains remains contested due to several reasons. A number of theoretical and methodological limitations have been identified, including the use of GDP as a proxy measurement of welfare, issues with natural disaster damage reporting and the adoption of ad hoc model specifications and variables, which render interpretation and cross-comparison of statistical analysis difficult. Additionally, while greater attention is paid to economic and institutional parameters such as GDP, remittance, corruption and public expenditure as opposed to hard-to-quantify yet critical factors such as environmental conditions and social vulnerabilities. These are gaps in our approach that hamper our comprehensive understanding of the disaster-development nexus. Important areas for further research are identified, including recognizing and addressing the data constraints, incorporating sustainability and equity concerns through alternatives to GDP, and finding novel approaches to examining the complex and dynamic relationships between risk, vulnerability, resilience, adaptive capacity and development.
由于极端气候带来的潜在风险和不确定性对发展前景构成了越来越大的威胁，关于社会经济发展与自然灾害之间关系的辩论仍然是全球讨论的焦点。本研究回顾了关于灾害与发展联系的统计调查，涵盖宏观经济增长、公共治理等主题，以确定当前宏观层面统计调查方法面临的关键挑战。从理论和定性角度来看，灾害通过多种渠道影响发展：无序发展、机构薄弱、缺乏社会安全网以及我们决策实践中的短期主义等都是推动自然灾害风险的一些因素。而可持续和公平增长等发展潜力，反过来又受到这种灾害风险积累的威胁。然而，由于多种原因，关于这些复杂因果链的定量证据仍存在争议。已发现一些理论和方法上的局限性，包括使用国内生产总值（GDP）作为福利的替代衡量指标、自然灾害损失报告的问题以及采用临时模型规格和变量，这使得统计分析的解释和交叉比较变得困难。此外，相较于环境条件和社会脆弱性等难以量化但至关重要的因素，人们更多地关注GDP、汇款、腐败和公共支出等经济和制度参数。这些是我们方法中的差距，阻碍了我们对灾害与发展关系的全面理解。确定了进一步研究的重要领域，包括认识和解决数据限制、通过GDP替代指标纳入可持续性和公平性考量，以及找到新颖的方法来研究风险、脆弱性、恢复力、适应能力和发展之间复杂而动态的关系。
