Is national disaster legislation ready for climate change?

To address increasing disaster risk, an urgent shift is needed in disaster risk management (DRM), from post-event action towards forward-looking resilience planning. As an important part of this, many countries could improve and modernize their national legislation. Researchers from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) looked at one of the most significant risks – floods. They found that outdated national legislation related to DRM laws, which omits the dynamic and critical aspects of risk, can hamper governments’ ability to proactively prepare for flood risks and other hazards that are being exacerbated by climate change.