The tsunami disaster on 26 December 2004 claimed more than 200,000 lives. It triggered an unprecedented outpouring of reconstruction assistance from both private and public donors.The prompt provision of emergency relief averted the threat of epidemics and prevented major movements of refugees out of the affected regions.
2005 was a year of natural disasters.The impacts of the tsunami in the Indian Ocean, Hurricanes Katrina and Stan, and the Pakistan earthquake prompted calls for better disaster prevention and preparedness systems.
The devastating tsunami has shown in a tragic way the great vulnerability and exposed nature of coastal communities to natural calamities. It also has drawn global attention to the poor living conditions of fishing communities and the many threats to the sustainable use of fishery resources and coastal ecosystems.
Post-tsunami reconstruction has been under way in the Indonesian province of Aceh for nearly two years. In the authors' view, swift coordination of goals and instruments has enabled positive synergies to be created between short-term development-oriented emergency aid and long-term recovery.
People-centred early warning systems empower communities to prepare for and confront the power of natural hazards.
The series of dramatic natural events is never ending. 2005 again illustrated that natural disasters are unavoidable. For disaster prevention systems to function properly, investments in raising risk awareness are key.
Rural areas are not exempted from the impacts of globalisation. Global trends affecting agriculture are particularly significant in this respect. A number of options are available to developing countries in responding to these trends. Given the scarcity of resources it is important that they choose carefully.
Two images have dominated the northern media in recent months.The first is of desolation in remote, rural areas in Africa affected by drought, conflict or famine, such as in Somalia, northern Kenya or Darfur, Sudan. The second is a different kind of desolation - that of urban squalor as portrayed in the film «The Constant Gardener».
The rural areas of the South have undergone vital socio-economic and technological changes marked by globalisation, economic liberalization and political decentralization and by the information and communication sector.
More than 70 percent of the world's poor live in rural areas.The World Bank's approach to rural development is holistic and multisectoral, focused on improving the wellbeing of rural people by building their productive, social, and environmental assets. The author of this article explores what this means in the longer term horizon of beyond 2015.
Few aspects of development policy are better furnished with empirical evidence than the interplay between support for agriculture in the context of rural development and the reduction of poverty and hunger.
In November 2004, after a two-year drafting process, the FAO Council adopted the Voluntary Guidelines on the right to food - in effect, a new legal instrument for defending and enforcing the right to food.This article addresses the following questions: