Experts say investing smaller sums now to tackle problems such as substandard housing could do much to save lives, and because money for long-term projects is scarce in developing nations, wealthy donors play a crucial role.

Reducing the toll disasters take in lives and money is the topic of a Jan. 18-22 conference in Japan's western city of Kobe, which was hit by a 7.3 quake a decade ago that killed 6,433.

"Disaster prevention means using money for something that hasn't happened yet," said Tetsushi Kurita, a senior researcher at the Asian Disaster Reduction Center in Kobe. "Developing nations need to use their money to eat and for things that are taking place right before their eyes.

"When something actually happens, you need to put money into recovery and prevention, such as building houses that won't collapse," Kurita added. "We need to think what we can learn to keep it from happening again."

Worsening matters, people in poor countries often do things that lead to ecological damage, contributing further to natural disasters, experts say.

Deforestation in the Philippines has been blamed for the high death toll in floods there last year, for example.

The destruction in south Asia of natural barriers such as coral reefs and coastal mangrove forests to build hotels and shrimp farms may have left some areas more vulnerable to the tsunami.

"Often, attempts by the poorest to improve their situation backfire," wrote John Mutter, deputy director of Columbia University's Earth Institute, in an article due out soon.

"Unwittingly, a perilous feedback loop is formed in which attempts to cope with poverty amplify the conditions that produce further poverty and put the poor at greater risk."

SIMPLE SOLUTIONS

More than 100 people died in the United States last year when four hurricanes tore through Florida and the Gulf Coast. But the toll from the same storms in Haiti, one of the world's poorest nations which is largely deforested, was in the thousands.

Simple, inexpensive solutions such as reinforcing buildings and disaster planning in local communities are often effective.

"If you strengthen a hospital it might cost $1 million, but if you have to replace it afterwards it might cost $50 million," said Brian Tucker, director of GeoHazards International, a California-based NGO. "More important, though, you save lives."

Breakwaters built around the island of Male in the Maldives cost Japan $500 million in foreign aid over several years and are credited with staving off widespread destruction by the tsunami.

Now Tokyo alone will be spending the same amount for immediate disaster relief for victims of the Dec. 26 tsunami and has pledged to come up with more for rebuilding.

Emergency relief efforts after disaster strikes are increasingly efficient, experts say. But a lack of political will and donor fatigue dampens enthusiasm for the long-term aid that could help keep disasters from taking so many lives.

Good intentions, such as when the United Nations declared the 1990s the "International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction," often come to nought, done in by a lack of firm goals.

Preventive, long-term efforts grab fewer headlines than dramatic disasters, making it hard to persuade governments to provide needed funds.

"When these issues become important for various leaders, they pull the money out from various places," said Max Lawson, policy adviser at aid agency Oxfam. "They always find it somehow.