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This disaster risk financing country note for Serbia provides an overview of the way its government currently finances the costs imposed by natural disasters. Meanwhile, poverty deepened after the financial crisis and during the recessions of 2012 and 2014, mainly because of losses in employment and labor income. In an effort to overcome its fiscal challenges, the government of Serbia adopted an ambitious fiscal consolidation and structural reform program to halt the rise in public debt and send it on a downward trajectory by 2017. This program is supported by a three-year stand-by arrangement from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Because of the growing frequency and severity of disasters, the government has faced the rising costs of responding to disasters as well as the challenges of financing emergency response and reconstruction costs. Having sufficient access to financial instruments and resources in order to respond to disasters is crucial for building the financial resilience of the country and minimizing the negative impact of natural disasters on Serbia’s economic growth. In this report, chapter one gives introduction. Chapter two provides the background and country context, including the recent economic impacts of disasters. Chapter three reviews the current institutional and legal framework for disaster risk management and financing. Chapter four is a review of the public financial management of disasters in Serbia, including ex ante and ex post disaster risk financing and insurance (DRFI) instruments currently in use for budget mobilization, and it looks at the 2014 floods in more detail. The chapter concludes with a summary of financial resources available and a look at the potential resource gaps.

Agriculture is a major driver of the Kenyan economy, contributing 54 percent to the national gross domestic product (GDP) and accounting for 65 percent of total export earnings. Kenya’s GDP growth is highly correlated with the sector’s performance, and its performance is highly volatile. The frequency and intensity of severe weather events has increased, and will be further exacerbated as a result of climate change. The country’s overwhelming reliance on rain-fed agricultural production systems renders it highly vulnerable to food supply disruptions and shortages. Climate information services (CIS) include immediate and short-term weather forecasts and advisories and longer-term information about new seeds and technologies and market developments. CIS is especially useful in helping farmers to manage risks in what is already an exceptionally risky sector in which to operate, and in offsetting much of the uncertainty that so often constrains decision making and innovation. CIS is a relatively new area in extension service delivery. Case studies reported on in this report reveal that only a small number of Kenyan farmers currently access CIS.

The purpose of this report is to present the results of an assessment of national weather, climate, and hydrological services in Central Asia and to present a program to improve these services. The report is based on the findings of three country assessments - the Kyrgyz Republic, the Republic of Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan - and supporting regional documentation. These and other countries that form the Central Asian region share common concerns, regarding economic development and the vulnerability of their economies and people to weather, climate, and hydrological extremes. National assessments are based on evaluations of weather, climate, and hydrological hazards; key users’ needs; national hydro meteorological services’ (NMS) capacities; and potential economic benefits from improvement of hydro meteorological service delivery. The results of this global facility for disaster reduction and recovery (GFDRR) work and summary report will contribute directly to the development of the regional initiative to improve weather, climate, and hydrological service delivery in the Central Asia.

Recent economic research documents a range of adverse welfare consequences from extreme heat stress, including health, labor productivity, and direct consumption disutility impacts. Without rapid adaptation, climate change will increase the burden of heat stress experienced by much of the world’s population in the coming decades. What will the distributional consequences of this added heat stress be, and how might this affect optimal climate policy? Using detailed survey data of household wealth in 690,745 households across 52 countries, this paper finds evidence suggesting that the welfare impacts of added heat stress caused by climate change may be regressive. Specifically, the analysis finds that poorer households tend to be located in hotter locations across and within countries, and poorer individuals are more likely to work in occupations with greater exposure to the elements not only across but also within countries. These findings—combined with the fact that current social cost of carbon estimates do not include climate damages arising from the productivity impacts of heat stress—suggest that optimal climate policy, especially when allowing for declining marginal utility of consumption, involves more stringent abatement than currently suggested, and that redistributive adaptation policies may be required to reduce the mechanical inequities in welfare impacts arising from climate change.

Climate change is becoming a source of significant additional risks for agriculture and food systems. Climate projections suggest that impacts will include shifting average growing conditions, increase climate and weather variability, and more uncertainty in predicting tomorrow’s climate and weather conditions. Agricultural risk management (ARM) is ideally placed to support stakeholders in building resilience to these increased risks in short and medium term. ARM can also play an important role in the transition to a climate-smarter agriculture system by offering a useful entry point for dialogue. The clear initial focus on the management of shorter term risks and their economic impact can help create a sense of urgency and attract stakeholder involvement that then paves the way for broader discussions around climate-smart agriculture. This study seeks to understand the climate change impacts on agricultural risk - how do risks change? - and on ARM - how can agricultural risk managers respond? This response has two elements: First, what role can ARM play in meeting the climate change challenge? Second, how will ARM need to adapt its methodology to the new normal of climate change? Chapter one briefly sketches a conceptualization of climate change impacts on agricultural risk. Chapter two assesses the impact of climate change on production risks, including temperature fluctuations, drought events, heavy rainfall (including floods), and other direct weather events, such as cyclones and storms, as well as indirect implications of climate change, such as pests and diseases. Chapter three discusses risk repercussions at the market level. Chapter four focuses on the implications of climate change risks on the enabling environment. Chapter five assesses the implications of climate change impacts for agricultural risk management.

The Pacific Region is one of the most natural disaster prone regions on earth. The Pacific Island Countries (PICs) are highly exposed to the adverse effects of climate change and natural hazards, which can result in disasters affecting their entire economic, human, and physical environment and impact their long-term development agenda. The average annual direct losses caused by natural disasters are estimated at US$284 million. Since 1950 natural disasters have affected approximately 9.2 million people in the Pacific Region, causing 9,811 reported deaths. This has cost the PICs around US$3.2 billion (in nominal terms) in associated damage costs. This report focuses on the development of the country catastrophe risk profiles, the information collected, how it was catalogued and processed, and now being used for a variety of applications in Climate and Disaster Risk Management. The country risk profiles integrate data collected and produced through risk modeling and include maps showing the geographic distribution of assets and people at risk (section one), hazards assessed (section two) and potential monetary losses and casualties (section three). The profiles also include an analysis of the possible direct losses (in absolute terms and normalized by GDP) caused by tropical cyclones and earthquakes, and their impact though severe winds, rainfall, coastal storm surge, ground shaking and tsunami waves. The expected return period indicates the likelihood of a certain specified loss amount to be exceeded in any one year.

Hydrometeorological monitoring, as discussed here, describes the activities required to characterize the properties and processes of the hydrosphere as it exists in the three-dimensional mesoscale environment of the high-mountain catchment basins of the Hindu Kush-Himalaya (HKH) Mountains. Credible monitoring involves: (a) functional institutions; (b) operational instruments; (c) trained, motivated individuals; (d) scientific procedures; and (e) dedicated funding. Establishing a regional hydro-meteorological research facility in the HKH Mountains will involve developing solutions in the areas of integrated data collection and analysis procedures, instrument selection and placement, compatibility of monitoring instruments and procedures, training of personnel, procedures related to scale and modeling, ensuring accessibility of monitoring sites, and management, analysis, and archiving of the acquired data, all in the context of processes within the mountain basins, not in the adjacent lowlands. Mountain hydrometeorology is defined by a set of complex, three-dimensional, biophysical environments, produced by interactions among terrain, geology, and meteorology. The homogeneity seen from the distant lowlands becomes a complex mosaic of environments within the headwater basins. Altitude determines the properties of an atmospheric column extending upwards from a point within the mountains. These atmospheric properties determine the potential water and energy budgets at a point, or within a basin, in the mountains. Relief, slope aspect and angle, defines local topography.

This report argues that the practice of disaster risk management (DRM) is a defining characteristic of resilient societies, and should therefore be integrated, or 'mainstreamed', into all aspects of development. The report will inform the Development Committee at the annual meetings 2012, and support discussion at the Sendai dialogue, a special event co-organized by the Government of Japan and the World Bank as part of the Annual Meetings program. This event will engage delegates on the importance of mainstreaming DRM, drawing upon the lessons from the great East Japan earthquake and tsunami of 2011, and other disasters. This paper includes the following headings: disasters and development: an alarming trend; disaster risk management in action; national policies and planning; International Development Cooperation; disaster risk management at the World Bank; the way forward: priorities and opportunities; and glossary and references.

Bangladesh is one of the most climate vulnerable countries in the world. Situated in the delta of the Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Meghna (GBM) rivers, the country is exposed to a range of river and rainwater flood hazards due to climate variability, the timing, location, and extent of which depend on precipitation in the entire GBM basin. The Government of Bangladesh is fully committed to global climate-change advocacy and action, having already invested heavily in adaptation measures and policies. In recent decades, the government has invested more than US$10 billion to protect its population and assets in the floodplains. Given the uncertain magnitude and timing of the added risks from climate change, it is essential to identify the costs of climate proofing Bangladesh's critical infrastructure from intensified monsoon floods and cyclonic storm surges. Previously, few if any detailed studies have been developed on the costs of climate-proofing the country's infrastructure assets from inland monsoon floods and cyclones. Most analytical work to date has been confined to case studies, with relatively limited sets of locations, impacts, and adaptation measures. This study aims to fill that knowledge gap by providing detailed vulnerable population estimates and estimates of the incremental costs of asset adaptation out to the year 2050. It is part of a larger World Bank-supported study, entitled Economics of Adaptation to Climate Change (EACC), funded by the governments of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Switzerland.

This paper is a distillation of the findings of the work undertaken by the World Bank. It is deliberately not a collation of case studies, but rather a practical overview of the subject. The purpose of this paper is to introduce task managers and development professionals, who are not insurance sector specialists, to weather index insurance. Ultimately, the paper seeks to take the reader through the main decision points that would lead to a decision to embark upon a weather index insurance pilot and then assists them to understand the technical procedures and requirements that are involved with it. In addition, the paper seeks to advise the reader of the practical challenges and implications that are involved with a pilot of this nature and what they might expect to encounter during the initial stages of implementation. The very nature of an index based product creates the chance that an insured party may not be paid when they suffer loss and/or that they may receive a payment when they have suffered no loss. This paper also does not seek to delve deeply into the technical details and science that lie behind the 'black box' that is at the heart of the index.

This book is designed for governments that make decisions on the application of preventive resettlement programs as disaster risk reduction measures, as well as for institutions and professionals in charge of preparing and implementing these programs, civil society organizations participating in resettlement and risk reduction processes, and at-risk communities. The basic premises of the guide are that resettlement as a preventive measure should be incorporated in comprehensive risk reduction strategies in order to be effective; and that resettlement's objective is to protect the lives and assets of persons at risk and to improve or at least restore their living conditions. The guide has two parts. The first consists of two chapters. The first of these looks at disasters occurring worldwide and their impacts, and discusses strategic frameworks for disaster risk reduction. The second chapter analyzes resettlement as a preventive measure in the context of comprehensive risk management policy. It examines the relevance of resettlement according to the type of natural hazards and to their characteristics, as well as the savings achieved by promoting this type of resettlement rather than handling a disaster generated emergency and recovering from it. In this chapter, preventive resettlement is to be included in the public policy sphere, since it is based on recognition of the rights and responsibilities of public, private, and civil society stakeholders, and is to be guided by principles of effectiveness, equity, and general public well-being.

This paper presents the conceptual framework for a training program on integrating disaster risk reduction and climate-change mitigation into Agriculture and Rural Development Department (ARD) programming. Its target audience consists of World Bank task team leaders and their national counterparts and partners working in agriculture and rural settings.

This report addresses the fact that natural disasters have caused vast social upheaval and economic damage to Armenia. This ongoing vulnerability to natural disasters has led Armenia to appreciate the advantages of developing a comprehensive strategy to help minimize ensuing fiscal exposure because the national budget will never be adequate to mitigate, respond, and recover from these recurrent but unavoidable crises. Since the Spitak earthquake, Government has reorganized its emergency management system and established many seismic mitigation activities and created a Ministry of Emergency Situations (MoES) and established a cabinet-level Minister responsible for disaster response. Government may wish to build on these achievements. The report is also based on a study carried out in Armenia under the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) project, which analyzed disaster risks, assessed existing systems, mechanisms, and institutional capacities, and made recommendations for developing a comprehensive national disaster reduction and preparedness agenda, which could form the basis for a natural disaster reduction project.

The provention consortium was created in February 2000 as a formal partnership between the World Bank, other International Financial Institutions (IFIs), bilateral donor organizations, the insurance sector, the academic community, and civil society. Designed as a think-tank to commission research and to disseminate risk reduction tools, the provention secretariat was to rotate from one partner organization to another. Thus, after three years at the Bank, the secretariat was transferred to the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) in Geneva. The overall goal of provention is to reduce the social, economic, and environmental impacts of natural disasters on vulnerable populations in developing countries in order to alleviate poverty and contribute to sustainable development. This is achieved through (a) forging partnerships; (b) promoting policy; (c) improving practice; and (d) sharing knowledge. Under the Washington-based Secretariat, provention supported four types of activities: applied research studies, pilot and demonstration projects, education and training activities, and workshops and conferences. Provention was repeatedly criticized for its weak governance structure. Therefore, the secretariat commissioned a governance review in 2005. The governance review recommended reactivating the presiding council (PC); replacing the Steering Committee (SC) by a forum to discuss the impact of disasters in developing countries; and creating an Advisory Committee as the main governing body.

This strategic framework serves to guide and support the operational response of the World Bank Group (WBG) to new development challenges posed by global climate change. Unabated, climate change threatens to reverse hard-earned development gains. The poorest countries and communities will suffer the earliest and the most. Yet they depend on actions by other nations, developed and developing. While climate change is an added cost and risk to development, a well-designed and implemented global climate policy can also bring new economic opportunities to developing countries. Climate change demands unprecedented global cooperation involving a concerted action by countries at different development stages supported by "measurable, reportable, and verifiable" transfer of finance and technology to developing countries. Trust of developing countries in equity and fairness of a global climate policy and neutrality of the supporting institutions is critical for such cooperation to succeed. Difficulties with mobilizing resources for achieving the millennium development goals and with agreeing on global agricultural trade underscore the political challenges. The framework will help the WBG maintain the effectiveness of its core mission of supporting growth and poverty reduction. While recognizing added costs and risks of climate change and an evolving global climate policy. The WBG top priority will be to build collaborative relations with developing country partners and provide them customized demand-driven support through its various instruments from financing to technical assistance to constructive advocacy. It will give considerable attention to strengthening resilience of economies and communities to increasing climate risks and adaptation. The operational focus will be on improving knowledge and capacity, including learning by doing. The framework will guide operational programs of WBG entities to support actions whose benefits to developing countries are robust under significant uncertainties about future climate policies and impacts-actions that have "no regrets."