Scoping Report: Addressing Land Issues after Natural Disasters

Land issues provide a powerful example of the link between human activity and natural disasters. Population growth has forced increasing numbers of people to settle in areas at risk from cyclones, floods, eruptions or earthquakes. Global climate change further heightens the vulnerability of many settlements to natural disaster risks. Approximately 32% of city-dwellers live in slums characterised by informal or illegal land tenures, and poor land planning and governance. Half of the world's population will live in cities by 2008.1 There is little doubt that the vulnerability of a settlement to disaster, and its capacity to recover from a disaster, is closely connected to the quality of systems for land use, governance and tenure.