What are the emerging challenges for community-based landslide risk reduction in developing countries?

In spite of the acceptance of disaster risk reduction polices amongst governments and donor agencies, and their integration into development policies, disaster risk is accumulating. Urban landslide risk accumulation and the relative lack of ex-ante landslide hazard mitigation measures on-the-ground is of particular concern. This paper seeks to identify the emerging challenges for effective community-based, landslide risk reduction in developing countries. Failure to do so will result in continued landslide risk accumulation especially in vulnerable urban communities. Here, the basis for identifying such emerging challenges comes from on-the-ground delivery of community-based landslide risk reduction measures in multiple locations in the Eastern Caribbean, involving ~US$6 million investment in construction of surface water management measures. From that work, we identify three landslide risk drivers, and three groups of emerging challenges relating to: recognition of the evidence of effective hazard mitigation efforts, local adoption, and standards for implementation of mitigation measures. The taxonomy we have developed affirms the need for disaster risk reduction researchers and practitioners to develop future environmental scenarios as the basis for modeling landslide triggers in vulnerable communities.