Abstract
As a result of their poverty, developing countries are especially vulnerable to natural hazards because they are unable to invest sufficiently in structural and non-structural measures to mitigate the impact of the natural hazards they face. This is why, at the commendable initiative and with the generous support of the Government of Japan, the Working Party on Development Assistance and Environment of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) (*) decided in 1991 to develop Guidelines for Aid Agencies on Disaster Mitigation. These Guidelines, it was agreed, would help to increase the awareness among those involved in designing and implementing development co-operation programmes of the threat posed by natural hazards and of the range of measures that may be adopted so as to reduce their impacts on developing countries.
