Introducing Linkages Between Climate Change, Extreme Events, and Disaster Risk Reduction

Climate change has become an important factor for many environmental disasters in vulnerable communities and ecosystems. Poverty, poor education and health facilities and other aspects of human population in low and middle income countries have led to increased exposure and high levels of vulnerability and risk. Most of the deaths caused due to different disasters have occurred in developing countries. As a consequence, major efforts at the international level have been made to reduce the risks related to various disasters. The International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (1990–1999) was one of the important international initiatives followed by the International strategy for Disaster Reduction (1999), the Yokohama Strategy (1994), the Hyogo Framework for Action (2005), and most recently the Sendai Framework, the Paris Agreement, and the Sustainable Development Goals (all in 2015). Furthermore, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has played a fundamental role in assessing the state of knowledge in climate and impact science for almost 30 years. This introductory chapter summarizes the international initiatives in this field and thus prepares the ground for the following chapters which are introduced at the end of this chapter.