Assessment of disaster risk management in Mexico

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a set of policy suggestions for integrating risk management and increasing risk reduction measures and planning. Design/methodology/approach – It bases on a brief description of the disaster risk management programs in Mexico, a review of their recent available assessments as well as it makes a brief economic analysis of their performance to conclude with some policy suggestions. Findings – Despite its novel design, the still low penetration of governmental instruments for disaster risk reduction in Mexico has led to high society’s reliance on post-disaster measures. It has encouraged moral risk among potential victims. Even when crop insurance has increased coverage over the past decade, disaster prevention instruments are still underused. Accessing to prevention funding requires project proposals from national and sub-national governments based on concrete risk assessments. However, the prevailing lack of institutional capacity to elaborate proposals from sub-national governments seems to explain it at a large extent. The paper provides a set of suggestions on this regard. Originality/value – There is no recent integral assessment of disaster risk in Mexico. Although there is a recent OECD review of the National Civil Protection System, its analysis leaves out the catastrophic agricultural insurance, critical part of comprehensive risk management of a country. On the other hand, there are recent evaluations of programs public for disaster risk management, but these consist of only individual program evaluations, lacking integrative and comparative analysis. Thus, this paper provides a comprehensive view of government risk management and concludes with a series of policy recommendations.