Disasters disproportionately affect the poor, particularly those who are directly dependent upon natural resources for their livelihoods, and may deepen poverty traps by reversing or hindering progress towards sustainable development. Although connections among environmental degradation, poverty and vulnerability to disasters have been observed widely over the past few decades, the nature of the relationships among these factors and the contexts in which these connections are strongest is still largely unexplored.  Furthermore, despite a growing awareness of the influence that natural resources and ecosystem condition have played in influencing the resilience of human communities to recent disasters, relatively little work has documented how ecosystem management can be applied to reduce human vulnerability to disasters.

Results/Conclusions

This discussion will review the role that natural resources have played in influencing vulnerability to slow onset and sudden disasters and where the knowledge gaps are in this area; will address the utility of ecological tools and principles that could support disaster management; and will give examples in which an ecological approach has been used to support recovery from disasters and to decrease vulnerability to future events.  The talk will conclude with a discussion of the gaps in our knowledge regarding how ecosystems respond to disasters and, in turn, influence the human communities dependent upon them.