IDMC's report explores the challenges in providing sustainable housing assistance to informal urban settlers displaced by disasters. It looks at nine case studies from Asia, America and Europe.

The report identifies the difficulties faced by urban informal settlers in receiving long-term housing assistance in post-disaster situations. Informal settlers are more exposed and vulnerable to displacement and are more likely to be relocated and excluded from the provision of durable housing assistance.

In 2011, 14.9 million people were internally displaced throughout the world due to natural disasters, mostly related to weather events such as floods and storms. 89% of the displacement occurred in Asia.

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n recent decades, many cities and towns around the world have seen dramatic population growth, with significant inflows from rural areas. People forcibly displaced by armed conflict, violence or natural disasters have moved to urban areas in search of greater security, better access to basic services and greater economic opportunities.

THE FOREST CONSERVATION AND MANAGEMENT ACT, 2016 No. 34 of 2016

Date of Assent: 31st August, 2016

Date of Commencement: By Notice

THE WILDLIFE CONSERVATION AND MANAGEMENT ACT, 2013 No. 47 of 2013

Date of Assent: 24th December, 2013

Date of Commencement: 10th January, 2014

The 2011 Global Food Policy Report is a new annual IFPRI publication that provides a comprehensive, research-based analysis of major food policy challenges at the global, regional, national, and local levels. It highlights important developments and events in food policy that occurred in 2011, discusses lessons learned, offers policy recommendations, presents IFPRI’s food policy tools and indicators, and takes a look forward into 2012. The Report reflects perspectives from across the globe.

In this paper we analyze mortality caused by 2,194 large flood events between 1985 and 2008 in 108 countries. Unlike previous studies that looked at natural-disaster mortality, we find that year-to-year changes in income and institutional determinants of vulnerability do not affect flood mortality directly. Income and institutions influence mortality only indirectly, through their impact on the intensity and frequency of floods. Population exposure affects the number of deaths both directly and indirectly.

After natural disasters, governments often relocate vulnerable urban communities in the name of humanitarian relief. But urban communities rarely welcome such relocation, since it frequently exacerbates their daily challenges or creates new risks. Indeed, resettlement after a disaster is often another form of eviction. This briefing discusses the situation in Chennai, where state and local authorities have been building resettlement tenements on inland marsh areas using centrally sponsored schemes for affordable housing.

This paper explores the challenges and opportunities that government officials face in designing coherent 'rules of the game' for achieving urban sustainability during times of growth. Sustainability is judged by three criteria. The first involves elements of day-to-day quality of life, such as having clean air and water and green space. The provision of these public goods has direct effects on the urban public's health and productivity. The second focuses on the city's greenhouse gas emissions.

This report shows that while more inclusive growth is the ultimate solution to poverty in Lesotho, the country can and should use selective social transfers to reduce poverty more rapidly among the extreme poor. But because the majority of the transfers are received by people who are not among the extreme poor there is room for increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of spending on safety nets which. These programs should be productive and concentrate on the extreme poor Basotho.