Ecobreves – HONDURAS: The High Cost of Environmental Vulnerability

By IPS Correspondents and - - Reprint | | Print |

TEGUCIGALPA,, Oct 24 2011 (IPS) - Honduras devotes around 30 million dollars a year to confronting disasters caused by its environmental vulnerability and assisting their victims. But these disasters – floods, landslides and destruction of roads – could be prevented, according to specialists attending a forum on environmental vulnerability.

The country’s fragility could be mitigated by implementing prevention plans. In this way it could avoid having to rebuild infrastructure that is designed to last 50 years but is destroyed in the first three.

If Honduras were to reduce the risk of disasters, "the expenditure over the next few years would probably be less than the 30 million dollars a year now spent on dealing with emergencies," risk management expert Juan Ferrando of the United Nations Development Programme’s Environmental Unit told Tierramérica.

The country’s vulnerability grows more acute every year, and the magnitude of the challenge posed by natural disasters and the effects of climate change will be so great that the time has come to stress prevention, he added.