Blogs

Covid-19 has demonstrated, more than ever before, the weakness of our current begging bowl approach to funding disasters, where the money is found after disaster strikes and is given in a discretionary manner.

We spend a lot of time considering what ‘good’ disaster risk financing (DRF) looks like in practice. Here we share our current working list, our ‘7 habits of highly effective DRF’.

The Centre for Disaster Protection was proud to be part of this year’s Climate:Red, the global climate change summit organised by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).

Daniel Clarke, Director of the Centre for Disaster Protection, joined others at Risk Informed-Early Action Partnership, in a ‘Call for Collaboration’ at the IFRC’s virtual global summit Climate:Red

In the thick of the covid-19 crisis, surrounded by its devastating human and economic cost, we need to do more, not less, to better financially prepare for the next outbreak.

International organisations have committed more than $48 billion in covid-19 funding, yet this money is not reaching the countries where poverty is increasing most.

Over the next few months, the Centre for Disaster Protection will be tracking humanitarian and development funding directed at helping low and middle-income countries manage the health and economic costs of covid-19.

By 17 April, all seven of the World Bank’s Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility (PEF) payout conditions had been met, triggering the release of $195.84 million from its insurance window in response to the covid-19 pandemic.

Lawrence Summers, former World Bank Chief Economist, called the Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility (PEF) a symptom of “financial goofiness” within the World Bank. But was this criticism fair?

Covid-19 is the largest global shared experience of crisis since the Second World War. This shared experience is giving many of us a personal understanding of some fundamental truths about crises that we had hitherto, luckily, avoided.

Public health experts and commercial risk modellers knew that something like this was quite likely, and that the world was woefully underprepared.

Sophie Evans, Head of Country Programmes, explains what she’s excited to get working on and why the COP was her favourite conference of 2019.

Here Daniel Clarke, Director, talks about who has inspired him and what in DRF is exciting him currently.

The poorest people in the poorest countries bear the brunt. They are six times more likely than people in rich nations to be injured, lose their home, be displaced or require emergency assistance.

Re-thinking disaster response: how the World Bank and CSOs can work better together via disaster and crisis risk financing.