The Economics of Prevention Versus the Cost of Crisis
In 2015–2024 official donors spent $263 billion responding to crises in developing countries and $21 billion preventing them, 8 cents for every response dollar, while recorded disaster damage averaged $194 billion a year. Seventeen published estimates put prevention's return at 2 to 87 dollars per dollar across air pollution, climate, health, food, water, infrastructure, pandemics and conflict, and a cautious portfolio still returns several times its cost.