Disasters can push the world’s poorest into greater poverty. Now, relief agencies are handing out small amounts of cash to people just before disaster strikesinstead of waiting until later.
Although these experiments are in their early stages, with little research into their effectiveness, there are signs they can help people protect themselves and their property in ways they otherwise could not.
This approach has been tested in various circumstances: before a cyclone in Mozambique in March, before a hurricane brought torrential rains to Central America in October, and now, to help people relocate from the landslide-prone slopes of Mount Elgon, in Uganda.
Why these one-time payments, known as advance cash assistance, matter now is that disasters are being turbocharged by human-induced climate change and often inflict the greatest pain on the world’s poorest people. People may lose their only livelihood, their land, and their only asset, livestock.
When the World Food Program sent around $50 to 23,000 families living along the Jamuna River in Bangladesh just days before the area was projected to be hit by extreme flooding in July 2020, people Those who received the money were “less likely to go a day without eating” during those floods, compared with those who did not receive payments, according to an independent review by researchers at the University of Oxford and the Center for Disaster Protection, funded by by the British aid agency.
Even three months later, the Researchers found that those who received cash ate better and were less likely to have sold their animals or taken out high-interest loans.
Cash payments are being tested more and more in different places. GiveDirectly, an aid group, has focused on villages in Malawi. Last year, he sent families two payments of $400 each.
In Chipyali, a town in the south, Suwema Gray bought five goats. And Maggie Dyton built a house of bricks and tin to replace the old one, which was made of mud and straw and leaked every year with the rains.
Dyton was relieved to have finished her house before the torrential rains hit this year after Cyclone Freddy. “The old house would have been completely destroyed,” she said.
Somini Sengupta
The New York Times
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6802422, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-07-13 17:20:08
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