**1. Introduction**

Disaster refers to an emergency caused by natural hazards or human-induced actions that results in a significant change in circumstances over a relatively short time period. Typical examples are death, displacement, disease, and loss of crops. Others may include damage to physical infrastructure, depletion of natural and social capitals, institutional weakening and a general disruption of economic and social activity. Disasters may differ somewhat in the trigger, scope, duration and requisite actions (Coletta, 2004, Olorunfemi and Raheem, 2007).

The global scenario in relation to disasters is dismal. World statistics indicate present and future trends of increasing impacts from natural and human made hazards on life and livelihoods (Niekerk, 2002; Ojo, 2003). During the past four decades, hazards events such as earthquakes, drought, floods, storms, fires and volcanic eruptions have caused major loss of human life and livelihoods; destruction of economic and social infrastructure and significant environmental damage. According to Gavidia (2000), natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods and hurricanes can wipe out years of urban development by destroying infrastructure and housing and by injury or killing thousands of people. The 2011 Tsunami in Japan is an example of a disaster characterized by an immense loss of lives and property.

Social and economic structure of a society is a major determinant of the vulnerability of the population to the impact of disasters. This explains the variation in the impact of disasters and environmental emergencies all over the world. The Munich Re-insurance estimated that economic losses due to environmental emergencies have increased three-fold from the 1960s to the 1990s, and in the first few years of this decade, are running about US \$50 billion per year.

Although most of these economic losses occurred in industrially developed parts of the world developing countries in Africa and Asia suffer greater burden of the relative impact of these disasters. The effects of disasters on such human and economic sectors as employment, balance of trade, indebtedness from reconstruction and loss of capital continued to be felt for many years after disaster events (CERD, 2000; Mac Entire, 2001).

Developing nations in particular, experience pervasive risk of devastation, human and property loss resulting from human and natural disasters (Gbadegesin, et al, 2010). According to Henderson (2004), this level of risk is attributable to socio-economic stress, aging and inadequate physical infrastructure, weak education and preparedness for disaster and insufficient fiscal and economic resources to carefully implement the preparedness, response, mitigation and recovery components of integrated emergency management.

Disaster risk is a potential factor in many development projects. Environmental hazards can affect a project area, with socio-economic consequences for the project's target populations. Development projects can increase or reduce the risk of natural disaster, through their impact on social resilience and the natural environment. By understanding and anticipating future hazard events, communities, public authorities and development organisations can minimise the risk disasters pose to socio-economic development. Understanding the interactions between projects and environmental hazards is crucial in ensuring the sustainability of development gains. Sustainable development is accepted as a fundamental objective for public policy and decision making because the overall objective of any development process is to enhance the quality of life of the target population. Thus the growing acceptance of sustainable development as an over-arching policy goal has rightly stimulated interest in assessing the impact of particular intervention on sustainable development at aggregate, sectoral or project levels (Centre for Good Governance, 2006). This sustainability objective is justified based on the fact that issues pertaining to the ecosystem's capacity to tolerate and respond to population growth and other human induced stresses have become essential for sustainable management of natural resources and human livelihood systems related to them.(Uito and Morgan, 1996). Thus due to increased pressure on resources accompanied by evidence of environmental deterioration, poverty inequality, and general economic decline needed to be addressed in regards to the immediate or potential environmental damage and social consequence that may be associated.

Social impact assessment can therefore play an important role in the understanding of the consequences and social outcome of projects that are meant to tackle poverty, enhance community development or designed to reduce vulnerability to disasters during environ‐ mental emergencies.. According to the Inter-organizational Committee of the U.S. Department of Commerce National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Marine Fisheries Service (1994), "social impacts" refers to the consequences to human populations of any public or private actions-that alter, or are capable of altering, the ways in which people live, work, play, relate to one another, organize to meet their needs and generally cope as members of society. The term also includes cultural impacts involving changes to the norms, values, and beliefs that guide and rationalize their cognition of themselves and their society. Social Impact Assessment (SIA) is the process of analysing, monitoring and managing the social consequen‐ ces of policies, programmes and projects. These consequences may be positive or negative, intended or unintended, direct or indirect; they may be short-term impacts or long-term changes. As well as helping to explain how a proposed action will change the lives of people in communities, SIA indicates how alternative actions might mitigate harmful changes or implement beneficial ones.

The rest of this paper is subdivided into four sections. After this introduction the next section is devoted to the clarification and definition of major conceptual issues with a view to establishing a link between each of the concepts and providing a framework for the entire paper. We also provide a discussion on the ways disaster risk can be minimised in community development projects. The next two sections in the paper examine respectively the livelihood contexts in disaster management and the need for a process that integrate disaster risk into community projects through social impact assessment. In this section, the paper provides a typical example from previous projects. The SIA process is also discussed as a series of interrelated steps and how hazards and disaster risk typically require a SIA. Finally the last section is devoted to examining the critical challenges to the success of adoption of SIA in community projects.
