Peru Earthquake - Water and Sanitation

Project has built up a culture of risk prevention and management in the water and sanitation sector with a lot of innovation since they had to go through a slow process by generating knowledge building capacities and developing different methodologies and tools to integrate disaster risk management as a criterion within the water and sanitation sector. The project has brought up to date the Water and Sanitation sector public policy on Disaster Risk Management (DRM) and established DRM practices in urban utilities. Some policy recommendations and tools have been designed to support the Ministry of Housing Construction and Sanitation as well as the national regulatory entity the National Superintendence of Sanita tion Services (SUNASS) for them to continue improving on results in the area of disaster risk management. In this context the WSP has produced different publications and documents that have been very useful for promoting knowledge and building a culture of disaster risk management (e.g. a study “Economic Impact of the Earthquake occurred in Ica in August 2007 within the Affected Areas” a methodological guide for the integration of risk management in the entities providing water and sanitation services). Thanks to the WSP efforts and intervention a new law that creates the National System of Disaster Risk Management has been passed which is ruled by the Prime Minister Office a new partner of the World Bank WSP in the field of Risk Disaster Prevention and Management. This new law will be applied even since the pre-feasibility studies for infrastructure works and incorporates a culture of risk prevention in the country. Peru is making the Water and Sanitation Sector a greater priority as part of its efforts to reduce vulnerability to future natural disasters. For the first time Peru’s national budget in 2012 allocated resources specifically to water and sanitation as part of these efforts and the sector was added as part of a “contingency mat