Out of Harm's Way; Preventive Resettlement of at Risk Informal Settlers in Highly Disaster Prone Areas

Preventive resettlement of communities from extremely hazard prone areas would result in large quantitative gains in global disaster resilience, reduce annual global recovery spending, and prevent disaster events from impacting on hard won development gains. Prevention as opposed to recovery has become the norm in describing a smart approach to disaster management yet preventive resettlement, requiring action before a significant event, is rarely considered as part of national disaster management strategies. This article describes why it is underutilised and how it could be employed more systematically to reduce risk in the most hazard prone areas in countries such as the Philippines. The Paper describes how the poor global track record of development induced displacement and resettlement (DIDR) has inadvertently impacted on perceptions of resettlement in general and considers how preventive resettlement fits within current theoretical models, proposing a distinct model for preventive resettlement.