Natural disasters are a tragic interruption to the development process.
And when development plans are laid and disaster strikes, development funds are diverted to the emergency. In recent years, however, the development community has been making the links between disasters and development. This evolution would seem inevitable when one considers the disproportionately high costs that developing countries pay for disasters. Moreover, natural disasters impact developing countries in other ways than developed countries. Disaster losses include not only the shocking direct impacts that we see on the news, such as the loss of life, housing, and infrastructure, but also indirect impacts such as the foregone production in utility services, transport, labor supplies, suppliers, or markets.