In this next installment in the Pounds of Prevention series, we travel to Ceará State in northeastern Brazil, which is in the midst of a severe drought. Over the past few years, the area has faced increasingly frequent drought conditions and rural residents face difficult choices.They include whether to abandon their farms and move to [...]
Tag archives for Disaster Risk Reduction
Pounds of Prevention – Focus on Indonesia
James Fleming is the Division Director for Asia, Latin America, and Europe, Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance. In this next Pounds of Prevention installment, we travel to Indonesia to look at how the country’s disaster management readiness has evolved in recent years. Against the backdrop of a powerful earthquake and aftershock recently occurring off the [...]
Pounds of Prevention: Focus on Locusts
Imagine discovering that within a few hours your entire crop for the season had been consumed by unwelcome visitors. In this edition of “Pounds of Prevention,” USAID examines the desert locust, a pest that affects the lives of millions of people in more than 65 countries throughout Africa, the Middle East, and Southwest Asia, an [...]
Pounds of Prevention: Focus on Kenya
I am really happy to share with you the second installment in USAID’s Pounds of Prevention series where we take a closer look at how disaster risk reduction work helps keep people safe from harm. This particular example from Kenya is near and dear to my heart. Since I first started work at USAID twelve years ago, [...]
Disaster Risk Reduction – Key Investments for the Future
Kasey Channell is Acting Director of the Disaster Response and Mitigation Division of USAID’s Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) Benjamin Franklin is famous for the adage “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Today, we are faced with great challenges brought about by increasing population and urbanization, a changing climate, [...]
Supporting Disaster Risk Reduction in Africa – Periperi University
Two weeks ago I traveled to Stellenbosch University in the Western Cape region of South Africa, where I announced the next phase of a remarkably successful project called Periperi University. USAID has forged an innovative partnership with Stellenbosch University, bringing together ten universities across Africa to focus on managing and reducing the risk and impact [...]
Rebuilding a City, and Lessons of Post Disaster Urban Recovery
Charles A. Setchell is Senior Shelter, Settlements, and Hazard Mitigation Advisor in USAID’s Office of US Foreign Disaster Assistance. In the field of disaster relief and recovery we face a growing challenge of urbanization. This was the focus of a recent panel discussion at the Brookings Institution. Urban areas account for perhaps one percent of [...]
