Management of natural disasters in the Brazilian Amazon region

We describe and analyze the legal, institutional, and financial dimensions of risk management in the Brazilian Amazon region, principally in the states of Acre, Amazonas, and Para and the factors that contribute to the definition of the challenges for a successful natural disaster management there. The analysis classifies the normative instruments used in sustainable development, territorial zoning, risk management, climate change, and water resources issues and identifies the state government organizations involved with disaster risk management, which are classified according to a proposed thematic–temporal–task responsibilities relationship model. State-level administrators were also interviewed. We found that states are responsible for the provision of protection and assistance to the population, roles conducted by the police and the firefighting corps and that legal instruments can indirectly assist with the reduction of vulnerability factors. Most of the institutional states’ structures have a direct relationship with disaster risk management and show a predominance of post-disasters implementation and control of policies and activities. Monetary resource transfers from the federal government to states are a mixture of voluntary and mandatory. However, by examining the national and state budgets of 2013 and 2014, it is clear that much of the financing of risk management comes from extraordinary resources. The answers given by the managers of state government institutions are categorized as risk management perception and coordination, and financial, institutional, and data challenges, all of which are faced in the Amazon region. Thus, this paper expects to contribute to the understanding of one of the most important forms of disaster risk response capacity and to the reduction of the vulnerability of the states studied.