Transforming the relationship between development and disaster risk: insights from a year of research

This briefing describes the first phase (2015–2016) of the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) Initiative on Transforming Development and Disaster Risk (TDDR). The initiative aims to integrate disaster risk reduction (DRR) with sustainable development by analyzing how developmental processes create and accumulate risk, focusing on trade-offs, social inequity, and transformative governance.

• Development and disaster risk are intrinsically linked, as developmental processes largely determine the assets exposed to risk and the susceptibility and capacity of people. Conversely, disasters can cause significant social and economic losses that reverse development gains by years or decades.
• The SEI initiative identified a typology of trade-offs in development decision-making to diagnose associated risks. These trade-offs center on the distribution of power, the inequity of outcomes and processes, the balance between current and future demands, and the weighing of various disaster and non-disaster risks and their probabilities.
• Resilience efforts often fail to address root causes of vulnerability and frequently rely on technological solutions, such as drainage canals or flood retention walls, which primarily benefit large businesses, foreign investments, and the wealthy.
• Research involving fieldwork in Vanuatu suggests that 'equitable resilience' in development practice can reduce disaster risk through four methods: recognizing subjectivities regarding social and economic entitlements; ensuring agency, representation, and inclusion; transforming systems that fail to deliver well-being or reduce risk for the majority; and operating across different levels of governance and scales.
• Transformative governance for DRR and development systems is characterized by four main elements: social learning and system innovation, inclusion and collaboration, self-organization and networks, and multi-layered, polycentric institutions.
• The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 provides a strategic opportunity to implement adaptive governance and contextualized DRR policies that respect national priorities and capacities, thereby reducing trade-offs in development decision-making.
• Phase 2 of the TDDR initiative (2017–2018) intends to co-create tools and knowledge to reduce disaster risk for at-risk and poor communities in East Africa and Southeast Asia. This will involve developing a practical guidance manual in collaboration with the Inter-governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN).

APA

Stockholm Environment Institute (2016). Transforming the relationship between development and disaster risk: insights from a year of research. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/SEI_2016_TDDR_Research_Synthesis_Brief.pdf

Chicago

Stockholm Environment Institute. Transforming the relationship between development and disaster risk: insights from a year of research. 2016. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/SEI_2016_TDDR_Research_Synthesis_Brief.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Stockholm Environment Institute |title=Transforming the relationship between development and disaster risk: insights from a year of research |date=2016 |url=https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/SEI_2016_TDDR_Research_Synthesis_Brief.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{stockholmenvironmentinstitute2016transforming, author = {{Stockholm Environment Institute}}, title = {{Transforming the relationship between development and disaster risk: insights from a year of research}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2016}, url = {https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/SEI_2016_TDDR_Research_Synthesis_Brief.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }