This Report is based on the premise that in many countries the process of development itself has a huge impact, both positive and negative, on disaster risk. It shows how countries that face similar patterns of natural hazards, from floods to droughts, often experience widely differing impacts when disasters occur. The impact depends in large part on the kind of development choices they have made previously. While humanitarian action to mitigate the impact of disasters will always be vitally important, the global community is facing a critical challenge: how to better anticipate, and then manage and reduce, disaster risk by integrating potential threat into planning and policy.