Cyclone Idai: Building climate and disaster resilience in Mozambique and beyond

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Cyclone Idai is one of the most devastating storms to ever hit Africa, causing catastrophic damage in Mozambique, Malawi, and Zimbabwe.
 
Starting off in early March 2019 as a tropical depression, the storm rapidly evolved into a cyclone, affecting over 2 million people and killing close to 1,000 in the three countries affected. The port city of Beira, Mozambique – the hardest hit – is struggling to reemerge from the rubble.
 
In Africa and around the world, disasters such as floods and droughts are becoming more frequent due to climate change.  In Mozambique alone, disasters lead to an annual loss of an estimated $100 million – about 1% of the country’s GDP, and climate change is expected to cause economic damage of up to $7.4 billion between 2003 and 2050.  The poor – especially women and children – are among the most vulnerable. Each year, an average of 500 classrooms are damaged by disasters, affecting the lives of 50,000 students, according to a recent assessment by the World Bank and the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR).

The World Bank is supporting disaster risk management activities in Mozambique to strengthen the government’s capacity to respond quickly to – and mitigate the impacts of – future climate hazards.  Some of our actions include the capitalization and operationalization of the recently established Disaster Management Fund, as well as strengthening disaster preparedness and response, and building climate resilience into vulnerable infrastructure.
 
The World Bank is actively engaged in funds mobilization for disaster relief operations and the subsequent reconstruction , both through reallocating existing resources as well as mobilizing fresh funding for reconstruction. Watch a video with World Bank Senior Director Ede Ijjasz-Vasquez (@Ede_WBG) and Senior Disaster Risk Management Specialist Michel Matera to learn more.
 
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Authors

Michel Matera

Senior Disaster Risk Management Specialist

Hamidreza Abbasi
April 09, 2019

thanks for these information

Helio Nganhane
April 10, 2019

Dear Mr. Vasquez
I’m happy to know that the World Bank is engaged in the struggle to strengthen our risk governance in Mozambique.
The government makes a lot of effort to improve although the results are not very visible
I am a doctoral student in Risk Management Specialty and an employee of a Mozambican public university. I identified four weaknesses in our Risk Management System:
1st Shortage of systematized and public historical data on disasters;
2nd Deficit of previous diagnosis of hazard, exposure and vulnerability;
3rd Deficit of communication among the main actors in disaster management (Central, regional and local);
4th Centralization and politicization of the national disaster management structure;
There in the video your talk about education but we have the drought that has a greater number of victims in all territory.
I am looking for technical and financial support to create a disaster database and make it public as this will contribute to better management of future situations, now the surveys rely on EM-DAT data, DesInventar although they are good data they do not offer greater certainty to the local level.
Sorry for my English
Hélio Nganhane