Economics and policy - a statement on research priorities for natural hazards emergency management in Australia
Research outputs and artefacts
03 Jul 2017
Throughout 2015-2017, emergency service agencies around Australia participated in workshops hosted by the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC to consider the major issues in natural hazards emergency management.
This publication on economics and policy summarises the outcomes of one of these workshops and poses questions as a guide for a national research agenda in natural hazard emergency management.
The contemporary policy approach to major disasters and emergencies needs to evolve from the traditional focus on investments in response and recovery to investments in mitigation activity. This change is encouraged by policy enablers such as the National Strategy for Disaster Resilience and the Productivity Commission inquiry into natural disaster funding arrangements. As the Productivity Commission observes,
“Current government natural disaster funding arrangements are not efficient, equitable or sustainable… Governments over-invest in post-disaster reconstruction and under-invest in mitigation that would limit the impact of natural disasters in the first place. As such, natural disaster costs have become a growing, unfunded liability for governments.”
Under current arrangements, government funding for natural disasters favours disaster response and recovery. There is broad agreement that the existing approach is no longer adequate or sustainable given the frequency, intensity and consequences of significant events. Furthermore, the frequency and intensity of such events is likely to change, potentially resulting in greater impacts and higher demands on the emergency management sector.
Rebalancing government investment across disaster mitigation and recovery supports increased mitigation activity, strengthens community resilience and helps to reduce the impact of disasters on Australian communities. Investment in mitigation strategies could include:
activities that physically protect communities and/or harden infrastructure
land use planning and the built environment
understanding future risk and resilience posed by trends in demographics, population and climate change
development of resilience and vulnerability indicators and the ability to measure changes in resilience
risk communication and warnings
resilience education and research.
However, there are barriers to increased focus on mitigation activity. As noted in the Productivity Commission report:
“… government action is not always in the best interests of the community (government failure). Research shows that natural disaster policy is beset by political opportunism and short sightedness (myopia), which biases how funding is allocated to natural disaster risk management. …. To create incentives for better risk management, natural disaster policy and funding arrangements need to clearly define roles and responsibilities (and how these relate to private and public risks), and have strong, transparent and credible commitment mechanisms so that governments avoid ad hoc policy responses, myopic policy settings and disincentives for private risk management.”