天然災害風險評估的政府對策

Abstract

Disaster management and insurance are of increasing significance in today’s world. Every year, natural disasters cause tens of thousands of deaths and tens of billions of dollars worth of losses. The figures available from international agencies such as the International Federation of Red Cross/Red Crescent Societies and from major transnational insurance and reinsurance corporations meeting in Davos every year under the World Economic Forum show that mortality rates have been fairly consistent, whilst the number of recognized catastrophic events, and even more, the size of economic losses, have rapidly increased. This research examines the difficult task to successfully mobilize the requisite financing for adaption. Traditionally, governments have endorsed ex-post financing instruments. This research argues that there is substantial value in shifting to a comprehensive disaster risk management strategy that stresses the combination of a broader distribution of risk and the implementation of ex-ante financing instruments as the most effective way to achieve coherent financial protection. This research analyzes the diversity of national disaster risk governance across East Asia from the comparative perspective of the national disaster management plans implemented by the governments of Taiwan, Japan and China to handle the rising costs of natural disasters. This research aims to provide a research platform to assist policy development design to increase government financial preparedness for catastrophe risks. Disaster management studies are not a discipline per se, but a field of study borrowing to several disciplines of social sciences from economics to geography. Since government responses to threatening disaster situations are what draw the attention of this research, it makes sense to consider problem-solving theories of political science as the most appropriate theoretical settings to locate this analysis. Therefore, the theoretical foundations of functionalism and disaster theory serve as a theoretical support. Using a descriptive approach, this research favors a qualitative type of methodology. The primary sources consulted during the fieldwork, as well as the information gathered as evidence, demonstrate that the governments of Taiwan, Japan and China have taken a series of measures and actions to tackle the financial costs of natural disasters, including the elaboration of legal frameworks, the enactment of budgetary rules and the development of local support and private participation. However, despite the efforts and policies adopted, these governments continue to bear the financial burden of handling the majority of economic losses, and to resort to post-disaster financing instruments to assume their financial responsibility. This research concludes that, given their exposure to natural disasters and the rising costs associated with these events, the governments of Taiwan, Japan and China have no choice but to shift towards effective national disaster risk governance that will promote private coverage and preserve public finances.