Role of Disaster Risk Resilient Cities in Facilitating the Achievement of Sustainable Development

The rate of the urban population increase of most developing countries of the world in this twenty-first century is challenging, especially so because the natural and human-made disaster occurrences of the recent decades have demonstrated the vulnerability of most of these cities. Although it is widely accepted that urban centres are more exposed to natural hazards than rural areas, rapid urbanization may not be the only explanatory factor for city vulnerability, the lack of adequate disaster-resilient infrastructural facilities equally contributes to it. The increased population in these cities with little or no adequate infrastructure services and housing make people resort to living in slums and hazard-prone areas such as floodplains, steep slopes, low-lying lands, riverine and coastal areas. The sudden outburst of disasters in such cities without better-built disaster-resilient infrastructure can lead to destructions and losses which undermines the efforts geared towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In this context, this chapter aims at understanding the role of disaster-resilient cities in facilitating the achievement of SDGs in Nigerian urban settings through literature review and semi-structured interviews. Nigeria is one of the developing countries in the African continent that is experiencing rapid urbanization and regularly prone to natural hazards such as floods and droughts without the infrastructural facilities capable of making its cities resilient to these hazards. The city of Aba in Nigeria, the case study of this research, is one of such cities. The interviewees discussed the role of disaster risk resilient cities in relation to the 17 SDGs, demonstrating that the availability of disaster risk resilient infrastructure in Aba will help to reduce the impacts of disasters and facilitate the achievement of the SDGs such as poverty eradication, zero hunger and quality education. Based on this, they argue that without disaster risk resilient structures in the city under study, disaster-induced destructions and losses can hinder the achievement of sustainable development. Thus, the findings vividly highlight the role of disaster risk resilient cities in facilitating the achievement of the SDGs in cities, arguing that urban disaster destructions and losses are developmental setbacks. Therefore, the chapter recommends that to achieve the SDGs, the government, urban planners, and other organizations in these cities should strategically take action on creating disaster risks resilient cities.