How do we prioritize when making decisions about development and disaster risk?

This briefing from the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) presents a typology of five key trade-offs—power, equity, time, risk, and aggregation—that occur when making decisions about development and disaster risk reduction (DRR). The document argues that development often exacerbates disaster risks due to poor decision-making and proposes that understanding these trade-offs can help transform the relationship between development and DRR to build greater resilience, specifically applying this framework to the 'Building Back Better' approach to post-disaster recovery.

• The SEI identifies five primary types of trade-offs in decision-making regarding development and disaster risk: power (who is involved and how power is shared), equity (distribution of gains and losses), temporal (short-term vs. long-term gains), risk (prioritization of different types of risks), and aggregation (macro-economic gains vs. disaster losses).
• The power trade-off highlights that inclusive, bottom-up decision-making processes involving marginalized people and local governments often conflict with efficiency and may face resistance from those currently in power. The document notes that when decision-makers are isolated from the impacts of their choices, they lack the incentive to minimize risks.
• The equity trade-off involves the uneven distribution of benefits and harms, where disasters in low- and middle-income countries disproportionately impact informal settlements, low-income households, and small businesses due to their limited capacity to reduce risk.
• The temporal trade-off describes the tendency of individuals and businesses to prioritize immediate gains over long-term resilience. This is often exacerbated by cost-benefit analyses that heavily discount the value of potential future losses.
• The risk trade-off occurs when decision-makers prioritize risks based on social norms, beliefs, and awareness rather than technical assessments. This can lead to a disconnect where policy interventions are ineffective because they do not align with how citizens actually account for risk.
• The aggregation trade-off involves weighing overall macro-economic growth (often measured by GDP) against sustainable development and disaster risk. The document argues that GDP is an inadequate measure of development quality and that national-scale gains can mask significant local disaster, social, and environmental risks.
• When applied to 'Building Back Better', the typology reveals that top-down, donor-driven reconstruction often produces technically safer housing that is nonetheless inappropriate, too expensive to replicate, or difficult to maintain compared to inclusive processes.

APA

Tuhkanen, H., Han, G., Rosemarin, A., & Davis, M. (2017). How do we prioritize when making decisions about development and disaster risk? Stockholm Environment Institute. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Initiatives/TDDR_DB_Tuhkanen_Trade-off_typology_0517_lowres.pdf

Chicago

Tuhkanen, Heidi, Guoyi Han, Arno Rosemarin, and Marion Davis. How do we prioritize when making decisions about development and disaster risk? Stockholm Environment Institute, 2017. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Initiatives/TDDR_DB_Tuhkanen_Trade-off_typology_0517_lowres.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Tuhkanen |first1=Heidi |last2=Han |first2=Guoyi |last3=Rosemarin |first3=Arno |last4=Davis |first4=Marion |title=How do we prioritize when making decisions about development and disaster risk? |publisher=Stockholm Environment Institute |date=2017 |url=https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Initiatives/TDDR_DB_Tuhkanen_Trade-off_typology_0517_lowres.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{tuhkanen2017how, author = {Tuhkanen, Heidi and Han, Guoyi and Rosemarin, Arno and Davis, Marion}, title = {{How do we prioritize when making decisions about development and disaster risk?}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2017}, url = {https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Initiatives/TDDR_DB_Tuhkanen_Trade-off_typology_0517_lowres.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }