April 2012

Global partners confront impacts of climate extremes on development

28 April 2012

Joint action needed to link disaster risk management, climate adaptation

WASHINGTON, April 27, 2012—On the heels of a sobering UN report on dramatic climate extremes expected to occur around the world, officials from donor and developing countries, along with international organizations have reaffirmed their commitments to making disaster resilience a priority in development planning.

Wirlwind & new disease in Vietnam

25 April 2012

Northern provinces clean up after heavy rain, whirlwind             

Authorised agencies in the northern mountainous provinces of Bac Kan, Lao Cai and Tuyen Quang have assessed the damage and set up supports to remedy the damages of recent hail and whirlwind.

The move aims to help local people stabilise their daily life and return to production work.

Hail and whirlwind were a part of last Friday's midnight storm that destroyed over 2,200 houses and a number of crop areas in the districts of Bao Yen and Bao Thang, with an estimated damage of billions of dong in Lao Cai Province.

In an

Disaster by the numbers: Experts discusses rise of climate-related catastrophes

Friday 20 April 2012

Reported natural disasters are up dramatically since 1950, with more lives damaged by homelessness and injury, even as modern medical care and improved disaster response have reduced the number of lives lost, an authority on global disaster data said Monday.

The result of these trends is that the burden of care on survivors is increasing, according to Debarati Guha Sapir, director of the Brussels-based Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disaster (CRED), which collects and maintains two major global disaster databases.

Sapir, who spoke at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH),

A preliminary analysis of disaster and poverty data in Quang Binh, Viet Nam

Friday 20 April 2012

As a follow-up to the first paper ‘A preliminary analysis of flood and storm disaster data in Viet Nam’ *, this Quang Binh case study has provided a more in-depth disaster profile of one particular province, including specific temporal and spatial distribution patterns while using district aggregated data. It also looked deeper into the relationship between disasters and poverty through analysis of various indicators: number of deaths, impact on housing and agricultural produce, poverty rate and the percentage of poor households.      

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Aid policy: Does private money buy independence?

14 April 2012

DAKAR, 12 April 2012 (IRIN) - Private donors are growing steadily more important to global aid, contributing one-quarter of the estimated US$73.9 billion spent on emergency assistance from 2006 to 2010. Among the favourable factors in private funding are independence from the political motivations of donors, being able to react fast, and the opportunity to focus on forgotten crises. But the lack of tracking creates an information black hole in coordinating aid and evaluating it, says aid funding watchdog Development Initiatives in a new report.

Trusts, foundations, businesses and individuals

Pakhar ravages southern provinces

4 April 2012

After slamming into the southern coast on April 1, tropical storm Pakhar weakened quickly and caused great property damage to the south-eastern region.

* In Ho Chi Minh City, the country’s largest economic hub, torrential rains accompanied by strong winds brought down many big trees, flooded major roads, and caused a power outage for several hours.

Strong winds uprooted big trees on Le Duan, Nguyen Du, Dinh Tien Hoang, Nguyen Van Thu, Nguyen Trai, and Truong Dinh in districts 1, 3, 5, as well as in Tao Dan and April 30 parks.

A motorcycle driver was seriously injured and hospitalised after a

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