Disaster risk reduction (DRR) pioneers interview with Charlotte Benson [1]

Abstract

Purpose

This transcript provides a historical overview of the discussions on economics in disaster risk reduction.

Design/methodology/approach

The transcript and video was developed in the context of a United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) project on the History of DRR.

Findings

The transcript discusses how the work on the economic impacts of disasters started and evolved over time.

Originality/value

The interview highlights the importance of studying and understanding risk and risk creation in disaster risk management.

Citation

Benson, C. (2024), "Disaster risk reduction (DRR) pioneers interview with Charlotte Benson [1]", Disaster Prevention and Management, Vol. 33 No. 1, pp. 39-44. https://doi.org/10.1108/DPM-10-2023-0253

Bruno Haghebaert

Thank you Charlie for joining this DRR Pioneer interview. You studied economics at the London School of Economics. How did you then get engaged in disaster work in general and DRR work in particular because it's not like the obvious connection between the two fields?

Pioneer on disaster economics

Charlotte Benson

It was really, totally, absolutely by accident. I graduated in 1985, with a degree in economics. Then, I went straight on to volunteer for a very small research institute in London called, at that time, the International Disaster Institute. That was at the tail end of the mid-1980s African drought and famine. And so that crisis dominated the work that the organisation was engaged in at that time. It then had a new director, that would have been probably around late 1986, who was an economist himself, Ed Clay. And Ed at that point, took me onto the payroll, working very closely with him initially on food aid and food policy. The organisation at some point changed its name to the Relief and Development Institute because it was felt that the International Disaster Institute wasn't a great name to turn up with—it sort of made people a little a little nervous that you were on the scene because you were in what was deemed a disaster situation. So I then left there in about 1989, and went on to do a master's degree, also in economics at the LSE, then spent about 18 months working in the city, which I hated. And then I rejoined the group I had been working with, by which time they had merged with ODI—the Overseas Development Institute. Very shortly thereafter, Ed was approached by the World Bank, to do some research on the economic impacts of droughts in Sub-Saharan Africa. So, I was heavily involved in that work. And then on the back of that, in the mid-1990s I applied for some research funding from the UK FCDO [Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office]— ODA [the Overseas Development Administration] as it was then—to take that forward to do some further work on the economic impacts of disasters, focusing on Fiji, Vietnam, and the Philippines. I led that work and undertook most of it directly myself. So disaster economics was not a chosen destination. I sort of meandered along and somehow found myself in a space where there were very few people working and a lot of opportunity to take it forward.

Engagement in IDNDR

Bruno Haghebaert

And was there already a link with DRR at that time? What was it mainly looking at the economic impact of disasters or you're already looking at cost-benefit and all of that?

Charlotte Benson

Yeah, no, not really, so much cost-benefit. I guess that that came over time and I think partly, really due to the IDNDR which linked me into that wider community, through which I met the likes of John Twigg and Ian Davis. And you know, that whole crowd, such as Andrew Maskrey, who were more oriented into the disaster risk reduction world. In particular, I then went on to work with John Twigg on the role of NGOs in disaster risk reduction work which, if I recall correctly, was actually funded by the UK IDNDR committee.

Bruno Haghebaert

But there were not many people interested in the topic of economics and disasters at that time. I mean, you are still somehow like known to be the focal point in the field. I mean, at that time, it was pretty lonesome job to focus on economics and disasters, I presume.

Charlotte Benson

I'm certainly not the known focal point these days, although I think people of an older generation still think of me in that regard. There are many people working on various aspects of this now and very successfully taking it in a number of very important directions. So, it has emerged as quite a big topic. But it was at that time very much an open field, particularly in terms of drilling down to individual country case studies. There was a lot of rhetoric, bringing in all kinds of assumptions on how disasters might impact economies, but very little substantive work had been done, particularly on a longitudinal basis, to see how over time these things play out, and then to link back to the fact that those impacts are not inevitable, and therefore that there are measures that could be taken to enhance resilience.

Bruno Haghebaert

What were your major achievements in those early days? When you look back at it, what were your insights? Also, at that time, that have them somehow guided your further career? But also probably, there were some challenges? I'm just thinking about getting the data or interpreting the data? Can you elaborate on that a bit?

The challenges of doing evidence based research

Charlotte Benson

The big achievement, I would say, is helping to play a role in getting that solid, evidence-based research underway, and the agenda off the ground. And weirdly, one of the early case studies I did on Vietnam is still knocking around, people still occasionally mention that they've just read it and how valuable it is, which I do find very hard to believe but maybe, you know, for some countries, there still isn't a lot that's been done.

Challenges in those early days—it wasn't so difficult getting funding, or at least, you know, relatively small-scale funding, because I think intuitively it could be seen as a potentially important area. There wasn't a lot of competition to get money in that area. So it was fairly easy to locate and secure some research funding. The biggest challenge, as you've alluded to, was really doing indepth, evidence-based country work, going beyond high-level conjecture to tease out really how economic and fiscal consequences of disasters play out over time. And, therefore, to find those concrete recommendations to enhance resilience at a macro level and then feed them down into individual sectors and measures that could be taken. The desk based work, in particular, was a real challenge. I did a small bit of work when I was at ODI for the British Geological Survey, working with Simon Young, a volcanologist who’s gone on to work with CCRIF (the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility) and beyond; with Peter Baxter, a medical doctor specialising in the health impacts of volcanic ash; and a few others. The task was to assess the risk posed by a volcano in Costa Rica that was adjacent to the capital of the country, San Jose, and that had last erupted back in about 1963. I had to do a desk-based study on the potential economic and community impacts of an eruption. That was a really difficult bit of work because there was nothing really to work off, just a few small pieces of data on the impacts of the 1963 eruption but nothing beyond that. But even the in-country research wasn't particularly easy. I did a number of very intense periods in various countries. You would have to run around trying to persuade people to meet you, trying to persuade them that disaster risk was actually of relevance to what they were doing in their role in government or the private sector. It was always particularly frustrating getting meetings with ministries of finance, particularly in countries that hadn't recently experienced disasters and then trying to explain why there was a link between fiscal management and disasters. You would come back with suitcases full of volumes and volumes of annual development plans and all sorts of things to sift through and weave some analysis.

Bruno Haghebaert

And which are the main lessons that you gained in those early days, which you think are still relevant today, but may not always be known or be followed by the next generation of economists or DRR people? Always we hear a lot about reinventing the wheel, and people not being willing to listen to what future or what past generations have found as their insights. And are there any lessons that you learned—which you think of still very relevant today?

Working in silos

Charlotte Benson

The obvious one, which is acknowledged today, is that disasters do, indeed, have potentially very significant far reaching economic, fiscal and social impacts—and they're not inevitable. We did have to work quite hard to get that that view across, but I don't think anybody would dispute that these days. One thing that was very apparent then and remains a big issue is around the fact that we work in silos, between the various groups working on different aspects of disaster. So back in, it would have been maybe '90 to '93, under the early years of IDNDR, the UK committee organised a meeting of scientists and social scientists. The idea was that we would come together, and we would listen to each other and, understand why we were all engaged in this one topic. I think we focused specifically on drought if I remember correctly. In the morning, the scientists had the floor and presented on their work on climatic patterns, predictive techniques, and so on. The social scientists asked the questions and, I thought, asked intelligent, clever questions. And then in the afternoon, it was reversed and the social scientists spoke and the scientists asked the questions. At that point, it became apparent that actually, perhaps, we weren't really speaking the same language at all, because, you know, the questions coming from the scientists showed quite some significant lack of understanding of what social scientists were all about. And no doubt the questions that had been asked in the morning had been equally sort of wanting. On some levels the situation, I think, has improved enormously. It is now a much more interdisciplinary subject, you do work alongside scientists and so on. But that saying that you don't know what you don't know still very much applies. And you can hit a pause, caught up on the boundaries of people's understanding and knowledge, which still show through. Perhaps younger people would totally disagree, but I sometimes feel that those of us who have been around a longer time, may have a better breadth of understanding, perhaps we've been forced to dabble a little bit more in areas beyond our comfort zone. We perhaps know what we know and do not know a little bit more and the limitations of our understanding.

Risk screening at the Asian development bank

Bruno Haghebaert

Speaking to some of the more kind of radical or critical, DRR pioneers, they said that disaster risk creation is as much an issue or even a more important issue than disaster risk reduction. And then they kind of point to some of the bigger international financial mechanisms that sometimes do contribute to risk. And is it one of your tasks at ADB to make sure that all investments are either risk sensitive, or, climate sensitive? So that risk creation is being avoided? Or is this an uphill struggle in your little corner within ADB?

Charlotte Benson

No, ADB is pretty good. We have a climate risk screening tool, which has been in place for a number of years. And that, now, takes into account disaster risk as well. So projects are screened.

Bruno Haghebaert

But there are interests sometimes, which do not necessarily coincide with disaster risk.

Charlotte Benson

No, sure. It's complicated, because, you know, country building codes and standards apply which may not reflect the latest known risks, and so on and so forth. So, you know, it's not a straightforward issue.

Bruno Haghebaert

When we reflect on the field of DRR now, and the changes, there has been massive changes, since, let's say, 2000 or so—there's first resilience that came about after Kobe, and then climate also got much more dominant in the field. Do you see that as a positive development or is it a more challenging context? Also, from my perspective DRR has been much more fragmented. There are many communities and there's like, people dealing with DRR and ecosystems as people that do climate adaptation. How do you see the field now, from your perspective? Is there a linear improvement? Or is it still a very challenging field to deal with?

Integrating climate change with DRR

Charlotte Benson

I think that probably varies from organisation to organisation and country to country, on how well particularly that integration with climate change goes. Where I work at the Asian Development Bank, we have the benefit of being a relatively small institution. So, I sit within the same division as climate change colleagues, and we work very closely together. I think, though, that DRR can often get quite lost in the emphasis placed on climate change. I feel we quite often need to make the point that DRR/disaster risk management is not a subset of climate change. It is a topic in its own. Right, that there are significant areas of overlap. And it is very important to work very closely with climate change colleagues, not least because, as we all know, if you don't take climate change into account in risk reduction measures then you are potentially creating future risk, or at least not achieving the full benefits you would hope to achieve for your risk reduction efforts. So it's, I think, swings and roundabouts, I think we are probably getting more attention than we have and that is partly due to climate change. Certainly, in Asia, we are seeing evidence of increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. At the same time, as you know, exposure and vulnerability are also increasing. And so it's not just climate change that's fuelling the continuing rise in disaster risk.

Philippines as an example of an effective DRR system

Bruno Haghebaert

Now a more specific question about the Philippines where you're based. They are known at least in literature in being highly effective in dealing with the main disasters they're facing, which are the typhoons and some of the other natural hazards. Is this also your impression that the Philippines could be used as an example for other countries in the region and elsewhere?

Charlotte Benson

I think the Philippines is certainly, within developing Asia and the Pacific, one of the countries furthest advanced in its financial preparedness, in its financial arrangements for disasters. It's had various insurance pilots, subsovereign and sovereign insurance; it's had a number of contingent disaster loans which have disbursed. It's not that international assistance isn't provided after disasters, but that it's partly provided in slightly different ways. It's also got in place a very solid governance structure, which goes down to the local level, and funds in place, right the way down to the local level. So I think it is doing a fair amount and , as you say, the early warning systems are pretty good. There was some learning after Typhoon Haiyan. I think the country is doing well.

IDNDR and socioeconomic aspects of disasters

Bruno Haghebaert

Looking back at IDNDR, most people said, during that period there was a strong technocratic and hazard focus. You being an economist, economy is somewhere in between, there is an aspect of social vulnerability, but also the physical side. Did you feel like you were able, together with Ed and others, to influence and get economics on the radar screen of the disaster people at that time? Or was it still very much all about the physics of engineering and all of that?

Charlotte Benson

I think it's important to remember that going into the IDNDR in 1990, socioeconomic aspects were not on the table at all and by the end of the decade they were. So they were certainly the poor relative at the beginning but we progressed—we were definitely a minority group but were given some space and some time. So overall, I think it was positive, in as much as there was growth over that period that perhaps otherwise might not have happened in quite the same way because the decade did bring people together.

Bruno Haghebaert

Thanks so much, Charlotte, for the interview. It's been a pleasure. And I wish you all the best in your further career at ADB.

Charlotte Benson

Thank you, Bruno. It's been a pleasure.

Notes

1. The text is based on the recorded interview but occasionally minor additions have been added or certain statements rephrased for greater clarity. The transcript and video was developed in the context of a UNDRR project on the History of DRR. The views expressed therein are not necessarily those of UNDRR or its sponsors. For more information on UNDRR work on DRR History, visit the “A Walk through DRR History” PreventionWeb page