The Capacity Crisis in Disaster Risk Management - Why disaster management capacity remains low in developing countries and what can be done

How can a place be built and managed so that it is safe for people to live? Ironically, many governments and citizens keep on asking the same question after every new disaster. Why, even with high levels of investment in increasing government's capacity to manage disasters, do the impacts of disasters continue to increase? What can the governments do differently? What is the role of local communities? Where should aid agencies invest? This book looks into these critical questions and highlights how current capacity development efforts might be resulting in the opposite-capacity crisis or capability trap. The book provides a new approach for the understanding and the developing of effective local capacity to reduce and manage future disaster impacts.


Asmita Tiwari is a development practitioner in the fields of disaster risk management, international development, urban development and environmental management. As a little girl, growing up in Bhopal, India, she was deeply affected by the Union Carbide disaster (Bhopal Gas Tragedy) that took lives of thousands of people in one night. Her passion to understand more about disaster management took her to multiple countries in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia-while working for major international development agencies as a Disaster Risk Management Specialist. Her primary job has been to support governments in the aftermath of disasters, particularly in developing their capacity to reduce future disaster impacts. This book is a culmination of her fifteen years long journey to understand how to better manage disasters and disaster risks. She has a PhD in Public Administration and Policy and Masters in Urban and Regional Planning. She is currently based in Albany, New York.