Disaster risk reduction
Responding to disasters when they occur is a crucial part of Oxfam's humanitarian mission. But finding ways to help communities prepare for emergencies and prevent natural events from becoming disasters is the cutting edge of our work.
Top priorities continue to be saving lives, upholding the health and dignity of disaster survivors, and providing support for communities to build back better than before.
In regions hit often by floods, droughts, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions, we and our local partner organizations are helping communities find ways to prevent the injury, loss, and death that can accompany those events. Beyond encouraging practical steps—such as improving the water supply in areas prone top devastating shortages of rain—we also urge governments and international aid groups to direct resources toward disaster prevention.
What Oxfam is doing
Oxfam's work to help communities reduce disaster risks in regions that are prone to floods, earthquakes, droughts, and volcanoes includes the following:
Preventing injury, loss, and death, community by community
- Planting trees to prevent catastrophic flooding;
- Training communities to become effective emergency responders in regions that experience powerful earthquakes, hurricanes, and floods;
- Improving water sources in areas where droughts periodically decimate the livelihoods of impoverished communities;
- Providing the means for communities to store food and seed in regions where harsh weather and pest infestations often cause devastating food shortages.
Advocating risk-reduction efforts
Disaster prevention also takes the form of helping ensure that resources from national governments and international agencies are directed at reducing risks, not simply at responding to disasters after they've occurred. In El Salvador, for example, an Oxfam partner co-authored a law that for the first time requires that disaster preparedness be incorporated into development planning.
Addressing root causes of disasters
Extreme poverty translates into extreme vulnerability at times of emergency. Oxfam's work to end global poverty includes campaigning for fair trade, campaigning for wealthy nations to lift the crippling burden of debt from impoverished countries, helping strengthen the voices of women and other vulnerable and disenfranchised groups, and assisting marginalized communities around the world through microfinance programs.
