Rural areas near large cities are less vulnerable to disasters.

Rural populations living in large cities have better access to resources and are therefore less vulnerable to disasters than rural communities located near small cities, suggests a new study in Punjab province of Pakistan.

About 70 percent of the Punjab population, home to 110 million people, is vulnerable to various disasters, but particularly to flash and river floods. Germanwatch, which promotes North-South equity, placed Pakistan in eighth place in a group of the ten countries most affected by climate disasters during 1998-2017.

The study, published this month (April) in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, is based on the analysis of data linked to the vulnerability of rural households in the flood-affected rural areas of Multan (large city), Muzaffargarh (medium city) and Darya Khan (small city) in Punjab.

Ali Jamshed, author of the study and researcher at the University of Stuttgart in Germany, tells SciDev.Net that little attention has been paid to how the size of the city influences the vulnerability of surrounding rural areas and the new study had the intention to close this knowledge gap.

“After analyzing data on flood disaster management in cities and rural areas in the country’s most vulnerable to flooding Punjab province, we discovered that … rural areas around large cities have been able to cope with disasters better thanks to the timely delivery of emergency support services to big cities, “Jamshed tells SciDev.Net.

According to Jamshed, small cities across the country grapple with issues like low human development, poor infrastructure, high dependence on climate-vulnerable agriculture, inadequate health facilities, poverty and unemployment, which limit their abilities to do front and adapt.

The study findings will help focus the attention of urban planners, disaster managers and policy makers towards the importance of rural-urban linkages in reducing rural vulnerability, says Jawed Ali Khan, program manager for UN-Habitat country in Pakistan.

“Rural-urban interconnection in the context of disaster resistance can help decrease the vulnerability of rural households to disasters with increased investment in resource and capacity building,” Jawed Ali told SciDev.Net.

Rural areas around small cities can be resilient to disasters by making urban areas more economically diverse in terms of resources and paving the way for more innovative markets that provide diversified livelihoods, greater institutional capacities, establishing early warning and disaster communication, improving public health and education infrastructure and services, says Ali.

Compared to large and medium-sized cities in the Asia-Pacific region, small cities and the rural areas around them grapple with the problems of being the least disaster-resistant, says Indrajit Pal, assistant professor (disaster management ) in Asia, based in Bangkok. Institute of Technology.

“The study findings are valid for most countries in Asia and the Pacific and can help boost disaster resilience in small cities and the rural communities around them,” says Pal, author of the recent study, Governance of the disaster risk and urban resilience. in the Asia-Pacific region.

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