{"id":52717,"date":"2025-11-05T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/?p=52717"},"modified":"2025-11-05T08:55:17","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T11:55:17","slug":"from-patching-to-prevention-how-to-align-development-in-latin-america-to-avoid-the-next-disaster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/from-patching-to-prevention-how-to-align-development-in-latin-america-to-avoid-the-next-disaster\/","title":{"rendered":"From patching to prevention: How to align development in Latin America to avoid the next disaster"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Often, when a storm, hurricane, volcanic eruption, or earthquake occurs, we still tend to speak of a \u201cnatural disaster.\u201d Yet, the forces of nature explain only part of the equation in a disaster<\/a>\u2014and sometimes not even the most significant part.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Natural hazards become disasters as a result of accumulated decisions or omissions within development processes, including land use and occupation, investment priorities, and the standards or regulations that are either enforced or ignored. Seen this way, disaster is more a social construction than a purely natural or physical phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Disasters are not purely natural events; they result from the interaction between physical hazards\u2014natural or human-induced (social, technological, biotic)\u2014and existing social, environmental, and economic conditions. This is recognized in the Regional Human Development Report 2025<\/em>, Under Pressure: Recalibrating the Future of Development<\/em><\/a>, prepared by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This perspective requires shifting from controlling or anticipating hazards to managing risk as a social process, integrated into sustainable development, to anticipate, prevent, and reduce exposure and vulnerabilities in a context of increasing uncertainty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Iconic cases in the region help explain why resilient human development demands a paradigm shift in risk management. The first is Choloma, in northern Honduras, where the boom in maquila industries multiplied jobs and incomes\u2014but at the cost of rapid urbanization along riverbanks, wetlands, and drainage zones that were filled with waste. Many ordinances were ignored, and municipal capacity to provide services and maintain drainage systems lagged behind the pace of investment. When heavy rains came in 2017 due to Hurricanes Maria and Irma, the city did not experience a \u201cclimate surprise\u201d but rather the consequences of decades of decisions that normalized exposure and deepened vulnerability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The eruption of the Fuego Volcano in Guatemala in June 2018 offers another reflection\u2014this time on the unequal distribution of protection against disasters. The village of San Miguel Los Lotes<\/em>, inhabited by low-income families, was devastated, with hundreds of victims. Meanwhile, just a few kilometers away, a tourist complex\u2014with contingency protocols, drills, insurance, and coordination with authorities\u2014was able to evacuate in time and avoid loss of life, though it suffered severe infrastructure damage. The same hazard, opposite outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Behind that divergence lie four key factors: differing institutional and community capacities, unequal access to information, differences in land-use zoning, and varying levels of trust in institutions that slow down alert systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Resilience: From slogan to development principle<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

If risk is socially constructed, resilience must not be reduced to a rhetorical element or an add-on at the end of projects. It must function as a development criterion from the start\u2014planning, financing, and implementing public policies, infrastructure, and programs through risk filters, considering multi-hazard scenarios and climate change adaptation from the design phase. The question is not only how to respond better to the next disaster, but how to stop producing them altogether.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Forensic risk research<\/a> suggests that achieving this requires action on four main fronts of change. The first front is Land: Areas such as riverbanks, water recharge zones, unstable slopes, and critical coastal fronts cannot be treated as \u201cavailable land.\u201d Real estate pressures that push the poorest households into the most dangerous areas must be prevented.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second area is the environment as risk reduction policy. The degradation of watersheds, mangroves, and vegetation cover turns heavy rain into flooding and steep slopes into landslides. Ecological restoration, regulation of sand and gravel extraction and landfills, and waste management are not \u201cgreen\u201d ornaments but essential parts of a collective safety system.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Third is Social protection as a shock buffer. Reducing poverty and inequality\u2014which generate everyday risk\u2014is in itself a form of disaster risk reduction. Safe housing, access to water and sanitation, stable income, inclusive insurance, and robust public services mark the difference between a scare and a tragedy.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fourth is Budgetary policy. Most risk-related resources are consumed in warning, response, and reconstruction. That logic must be reversed\u2014from compensatory and reactive to prospective and sustainable: incorporating risk and climate filters into project banks, protecting preventive budgets, aligning fiscal incentives so that municipalities avoiding new risk receive priority financing, and discouraging corruption in land-use processes, among others. It\u2019s not about spending more\u2014but spending differently.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All these elements are highlighted in the working paper for the Regional Report 2025<\/em>, titled \u201cRedefining Socio-Natural Resilience within the Framework of Human Development: Disasters, Risk, and Resilience in Latin America and the Caribbean,\u201d<\/em> which informed the report\u2019s general findings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking in the mirror\u2014and acting<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Over 80% of the region\u2019s population lives in cities, and the fastest growth will occur in small and medium-sized ones\u2014precisely where technical and fiscal capacities are most limited. If inertia prevails, we will consolidate territories that are expensive to fix and cheap to destroy. The window of opportunity lies in everyday actions: enforcing regulations, maintaining drainage systems, organizing neighborhoods alongside institutions, and rewarding prevention and early warning through community participation and budgetary incentives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Choloma and Los Lotes are not anomalies\u2014they are warnings. The first reminds us that employment and short-term growth demands without territorial safeguards generate risk as a byproduct. The second shows that, facing the same volcano, inequality in capacities\u2014and the social context that shapes them\u2014decides who survives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If disaster is the mirror, what it reflects is not a capricious climate but a development model that tolerates informality as a release valve, celebrates unregulated investment, and reserves protection for those who can pay for it. Changing that reflection requires coherence, long-term commitment, and a simple rule to guide public and private policy\u2014one that could be inspired by the Hippocratic Oath: \u201cFirst, do no harm\u2014do not manufacture risk.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Responding, rebuilding, and recovering faster and better will remain essential\u2014but they will also be more efficient and equitable if development incorporates risk analysis from the outset. Forensic risk research offers the bridge between diagnosis and institutional change, serving as one of the key instruments to foster resilient human development.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Latin America, disasters are not acts of nature, but the result of development decisions that manufacture vulnerability and risk from their very origin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":825,"featured_media":52694,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16824],"tags":[15635],"gps":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-52717","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-desarrollo-en","8":"tag-debates"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/825"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52717\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52717"},{"taxonomy":"gps","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/gps?post=52717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}