Sustainable Development and the Value of Ecosystems in Promoting Disaster Resilience and Recovery

Dear Colleagues, 

Over the last two decades, natural disasters have globally inflicted 50–100,000 deaths annually, displaced millions of households, and cost the global economy an annual average of USD 417 billion. Expenditures on disaster aid in the United States alone have averaged approximately USD 8 billion dollars annually and have increased 255% percent over this period. As rapid climate change exacerbates the frequency and magnitude of disasters, increasing the resilience and recovery rate of affected communities is becoming a central concern of scientists, policymakers, and the public across the world. While traditionally neglected, integrating both ecosystem-based approaches into more prevalent approaches to risk reduction and recovery and the methods and perspectives of research in ecology, economics, decision and game theory, and political science is essential for achieving actual sustainable development.

This Special Issue focuses on interdisciplinary research into these two topics and a broad range of other emerging issues in the role and valuation of ecosystems in disaster resilience and recovery. It welcomes empirical and theoretical submissions that offer novel and significant results to a broad audience of researchers, policymakers, industry members, the scientific press, and the public. Papers on a wide range of topics will be considered, including but not limited to the following:

• new and alternative approaches to the economic valuation of the effects of ecosystem preservation and restoration on the mortality and economic costs of disasters and disaster resilience;
• means of providing incentives to communities of ecological management in adapting to climate change;
• specific cases of the means and value of local ecosystem preservation and renovation in mitigating disasters, such as the restoration of coastal wetlands in providing environmental-based insurance against floods and the use of drought-resistant vegetation in the mitigation of wildfires;
• comparisons of the risk and economic return to expenditures on enhancing ecosystems versus engineered mitigation infrastructure in disaster loss reduction;
• the efficacy and comparative value of incorporating indigenous and traditional ecological expertise and techniques into the usage of local ecosystems in disaster mitigation and recovery;
• relative effectiveness of alternative means of financing local ecosystem restoration and disaster recovery of affected communities and regions;
• innovations in the use of insurance and risk markets in protecting ecosystems, such as the recent appearance of insurance for reef and wetland restoration in the aftermath of a disaster;
• the relative advantages and disadvantages of centralized versus decentralized decision making in the usage of the environment and corresponding ecosystem services for disaster resilience;
• strategic provision and usage by federal versus local governments of resources for improved disaster resilience;
• the benefits and costs of local government allocation of funds for disaster recovery and resilience and the incentives to misallocate such funds for electoral gain by incumbent officials.
• strategic coordination and mis-coordination among local governments in using and restoring shared ecosystems in the aftermath of disaster;
• the use of mechanism design in providing incentives for the economically efficient use of ecosystem services in promoting disaster resilience;
• effects of shifting private and public shares of liability for disaster recovery and resilience and the political tolerance by elected officials of implied fiscal burdens from such liability;
• political decision making and the equitable allocation of resources to marginalized and remote communities for disaster resilience and recovery.

Prof. Dr. David Nickerson
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• disaster resilience
• ecosystem services
• climate change adaptation
• economic valuation
• risk reduction strategies